Steve McQueen’s Doc On The New Cross Fire Shows How Easily Black British History Is Erased

I was a self-proclaimed boffin at school. When it came to starting my GCSEs, history quickly became one of my favourite subjects. Continuing on to A-level, I learned about the Russian Revolution, President Reagan’s war on drugs and the Swinging Sixties under Prime Minister Macmillan. To this day, I can wax lyrical about most key historical moments in European history. But when it comes to Black British stories, my knowledge is sparse. 

Many Black British people rely on tales from our elders to fill in the blanks. My grandparents on my father’s side moved to south London in the '60s from their native Guyana. My grandma will often regale me with anecdotes about when they first arrived. The little allotment across the street from their first house in Wandsworth that’s now a shopping centre; the grandiose bingo hall in Tooting where The Beatles performed, twice. In her gentle Caribbean accent, my grandma always remarks on moving in next door to the Davids — a Black family who offered a sense of community in a country that felt so far removed from her tropical home.

Steve McQueen taps into this familial connection with his latest documentary series, Uprising. Scheduled to air on BBC One, the three-part body of work focuses on the 1981 New Cross fire. Survivors, police officers and activists detail the events that led to the death of 13 (eventually 14) Black teenagers and the aftermath of the tragedy, which inspired the Brixton riots later that year. Although the subject matter is painful, McQueen tells a story that’s rooted in humanity and the joys of Black culture. To start off with, members of the Gooding family share memories about their lives growing up in Camberwell. From playing dominoes together to spinning classic lovers rock records, the director taps into a collective nostalgia that’s uniquely Black British. 

This sense of a shared experience is the crux of what Uprising is all about. I have always felt proud to be part of the Black community in Britain — but there’s a complex, troubled history steeped in racism that often gets left untold. McQueen's storytelling starts off on a joyful note as Yvonne Ruddock and Angela Johnson throw a joint birthday party at Yvonne’s mother’s house, 439 New Cross Road. Sound systems blaring and curry goat bubbling on the stove, teenagers dance the night away in the multi-floor building. Soon, shouts of "Fire!" echo throughout the property and partygoers are forced to flee for their lives. Survivor Wayne Haynes solemnly explains that the heat was so strong, he could feel the skin falling off his face like grains of sand.

Listening to other survivors and the parents of children who didn’t make it home retell their experiences of that night felt sadly familiar. I remember being awake in the early hours of the morning when news broke of the blaze at Grenfell Tower. The names and photographs of the people who lost their lives appeared across most news channels. But before watching Uprising, I had never heard of the New Cross fire. In decades to come, will the Grenfell tragedy suffer the same fate? A story forgotten in time because POC were predominantly affected? 

The documentary explores the belief that the fire was started as an act of racial violence. During the '70s and '80s, racial tension was high across England. McQueen offers a comprehensive look at the pernicious way anti-Black discourse seeped into every aspect of British culture. News segments positioned old white women as frail victims in comparison to horrible Black teenagers who were intent on robbing them down dimly lit alleyways. Clips of The Battle of Lewisham between the National Front and anti-NF protestors felt reminiscent of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in London — both featuring a degree of uncertainty as to which side the police were truly on. 

Perhaps most prescient are the scenes of the Brixton riots that occurred shortly after the New Cross fire. McQueen’s interviewees explain that Brixton in the '80s was a cornerstone of Black pride, a place where Black people from across the country could congregate to feel a sense of belonging. Now, the Black history of the area has largely been relegated to blue plaques. Thanks to good ol' gentrification, that community vibe has since been disrupted by the presence of tapas-style brunch places. 

The riot footage, though violent, is galvanising to watch. In the documentary, Haynes remarks that "these were good fires" and to a Black British person, the weight of his statement doesn’t go amiss. It’s long been discussed that institutional racism exists within the police force but to see irrefutable evidence of said corruption is nothing short of transformative. Graphic scenes of clashes with the police echo the 2011 London riots, where Mark Duggan’s killing sparked outrage that brought the city to a standstill.

What Uprising manages to elucidate is the fact that although many of these events happened nearly 40 years ago, race relations are arguably equally as problematic now as they were then. Black British people have been forced to accept that our history has been divorced from British culture: separate but not equal. Oftentimes, our stories are simply crammed into Black History Month programming, never to be revisited.

McQueen recently remarked that he believes the story of the New Cross fire should be part of the national curriculum — and I’m inclined to agree with him. There’s an issue of generational trauma at play that cannot fully heal while there are still gaps in our collective consciousness — not just in regard to Black people, but all British people. For those shocked at the racist abuse of Black players Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka after their performance at the Euros, Uprising serves as a necessary reminder that history, sadly, has a destructive tendency to repeat itself.