Toxteth 40 Years on From the Riots

For a time, ‘Toxteth’ was a byword for one of the roughest parts of Liverpool.

It was down as being somewhere that you’d want to avoid, with many remembering the riots that occurred in the area what is now more than 40 years ago.

Time, of course, is a great healer and perhaps no part of the city knows that better than L8. The riots happened because of long-standing issues between the police and the local black community, following on from the riots in Brixton that had occurred earlier in the year.

What sort of a difference can be seen in Toxteth four decades on? Is it now a multicultural haven, or still somewhere to avoid?

Why the Riots Happened & What They Were

In the 1980s, the Merseyside Police had a bad reputation within the black community of Liverpool. Many young black people, particularly men, were stopped and searched under what were known as the ‘sus’ laws, which allowed police to search people if they suspected that they might be vagrants.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly for police during that decade, the laws were abused and when Leroy Alphonse Cooper was arrested in a heavy-handed manner on the third of July, it led to a disturbance that sae three members of the police get injured. The economy was in recession, unemployment was at an all-time high and Toxteth was badly hit.

In the weekend that followed, the disturbance turned in a full-blown riot. Police and youths engaged in pitched battles, included the throwing of petrol bombs and paving stones. Milk floats were commandeered, set on fire and directed at the police lines. Members of the force were charged at with scaffolding poles, whilst the police themselves were mostly under-prepared to deal with what was happening.

The only thing that they could do was charge with batons flailing, but even that had little impact. At just gone two in the morning on the sixth of July, police fired CS gas grenades for the first time in the UK outside of Northern Ireland.

The Aftermath

The rioting left Toxteth in a terrible state. More than 500 people were arrested, with the police claiming 468 officers had been injured. In the region of 100 cars had been damaged or destroyed, whilst over 70 buildings were so badly affected by fire that they had to be demolished. Police reinforcements had to be drafted in from the likes of Birmingham, Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

On the 27th of July, a second wave of rioting began, although this only lasted for several hours thanks to the police tactic of driving Land Rovers into the area at high speed; a tactic learned from the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland.

@zacjonesliverpool♬ original sound – zacjonesliverpool

In the wake of the riots, the Scarman Report was published and said that a big part of the reason for the riots was social deprivation and poverty. Michael Heseltine was sent along as the ‘Minister for Merseyside’, working to set up the Merseyside Task Force and launching a series of initiatives.

In the Liverpool area nowadays, there is no such thing as a ‘good Tory’, but Heseltine is one of the few that was given respect for his work on the Mersey Basin Campaign and the Liverpool International Garden Festival. The likes of the Albert Dock area wouldn’t be what it is today without the work of Heseltine and his Task Force.

40+ Years On

When the 40th anniversary of the riots came around in 2021, many journalists looked to see how much had changed in Toxteth in the years that had been since. Both the area of Toxteth and Merseyside Police as an organisation have changed beyond all recognition. Even so, there is a reality that the relationship isn’t as good as it good be.

The founder of the Merseyside Black Lives Matter Alliance, Chantelle Lunt, was born in Toxteth and then moved to Halewood, joining the police in the January of 2017 but leaving in the August of 2018, entirely disillusioned about the culture in the police force at the time that left her feeling cynical.

Upper Parliament Street, Toxteth, 1981 and 2024

Showing some of the burned out buildings following the riots that summer pic.twitter.com/7i5GDKIeEI

— Liverpool: Then and Now (@keithjones84) January 12, 2024

Whilst training to be a police office, Lunt experienced both sexism and racism that was reported to senior officers without anything happening. Having flagged it up, she then felt bullied by other officers, resulting in a decision to leave the force on account of the fact that it felt as though nothing was going to change with the culture of policing.

She chose to play an active role in her community, working with the police in order to built trust in communities like Toxteth, where trust has been in short supply in the years since the riots. For Lunt, experiencing both sides of the debate showed her exactly how much, and how little, had changed since 1981.

In 2021, Toxteth experienced 119 stop and searches compared to 15 that were carried out in Aigburth, a nearby area. That tells a story of a police force not entirely ready to stop treating the L8 area of the city with less suspicion than before.

Figures from 2019-2020 showed that black people were three times more likely to be subject to stop and search requirements than white people on Merseyside. The neighbourhood, meanwhile, has changed quite a lot. In the wake of the riots, Thatcher’s government’s plan of ‘managed decline’ resulted in a slow recover for the area, including many black-owned businesses never recovering.

@zonjy_ police found nothing innocent black man Stop and Search I got racially Profiled for being black and rasta in United Kingdom uk #stopandsearch #policeoftiktok #policeofficer #policeuk #policeman #raciallymotivated #raciallyprofiled #raciallymotived #racism #racismawareness #englandpolice #policechase #ukparliament #americanpolice #discrimination #discriminationawareness #london #unitedkingdom #britishpolice #british #sadiqkhan #primeminsterimrankhan #primeminster #youngpeople #race #londontiktok #viralpolicevideo #viral #foryoupage #fyp #brixton #southlondon #eastlondon #northlondon #islington #blm #blacklivesmatter #investigation #breakingnews #newsuk #croydon #hackney #acton #ealing #lambeth #drilluk🇬🇧🗡 #schooluk #morningroutine #stopbullying #policebully #women #relationship #mosside #manchester #bbc #whitepeople #whitepolice #learnlessonfromlife #scousers #cockneyaccent ♬ original sound – Zonjy

It is now a much more gentrified area than ever before, with more and more students moving in. That, in turn, has forced a lot of the black residents to move out of Toxteth and spread across the city. The city itself has seen major changes, including the election of its first black City Mayor in Joanne Anderson in 2021.

There is, perhaps, a long way to go before the black community of Liverpool feels entirely at ease with the police in the city, but there is a solid argument that that is the case around the rest of the country too. There have been big changes to both Toxteth and Merseyside Police, but that doesn’t mean everyone can rest there.