I started to smell something, like, burning.
You got people screaming and shouting. Everything's gone out.
There's no electric. I can't see anybody.
I don't know what's going on.
It all happened so quickly.
It was just thick, black smoke.
People started to panic, right,
so even if you can get to a window, people are pushing you back.
And it's panic.
I'm only 11, and I remember thinking that I haven't even lived my life.
Do you know what I mean?
I've not even lived my life, and now this is it.
And I just remember feeling my way through the smoke.
Falling over, tripping up.
Scared. Really, really, really scared.
Why haven't Parliament said anything?
Children have been burnt!
Not West Indians, Black British!
That is what I want said!
They're burning our children!
About 8:30 that morning, my door went.
I answered the door. There was two policemen at my front door.
And they said to me that there'd been a fire
at 439 New Cross Road,
and that my husband had been seriously hurt.
And he was in Greenwich intensive care,
and I need to get there.
I had to pass the house to get to the hospital,
and the flames were still coming out of the roof.
And I was trying to get out of the car because I,
for some unknown reason,
had blocked out what the police officer had said to me,
and thought Paul was still there.
Even though it's 40 years gone,
to me, it's as if it happened yesterday.
The phone rang.
-And my husband picked it up.
He said it's Greenwich Hospital.
Rang in to say that Denise is in there. She's got a burn.
So I'm saying, "Well, how could she be in there?"
The fire brigade were now in the house, poking around,
looking for bodies and whatever to see
which parts of the building were ready to fall down.
The fire officer went round the back, and it was him who found me
in the outside toilet, all broken up,
where I had smashed me hip into a hundred-odd pieces.
I just couldn't really believe it had all happened.
And the next thing I know, I'm in Greenwich Hospital.
You know, I was probably classed as walking wounded.
"You sit over there."
Paul was rushed off into a cubicle somewhere.
I arrived at the hospital.
And it was a bedlam. It was just loads of people running around.
And then I saw Andy, and he took me to the ICU unit where Paul was.
But on that way there, kids lying on stretchers,
burnt till they were pink,
and the smell of burning flesh will go to my grave.
You know, in the hospital at Greenwich,
it was just horrible.
I saw Denise in Greenwich.
When I saw her, all of her hair was singed.
I must have just passed out somewhere along the line
because when I woke up, I was...
Yeah, in-in Greenwich Hospital.
It was very confusing.
It was very scary.
It was just like waking up in a completely different world.
It was just... crazy.
Denise, she just had a little burn on her forehead,
but then I didn't know where David or Andrew was.
Then the officer come and she said to me,
"David is in King's College Hospital,
but we can't find Andrew yet."
This is all that remains of the three-story house
where nearly a hundred young West Indians were celebrating
at an all-night birthday party for two young friends.
Just before 6:00 this morning,
the singing and dancing gave way to panic
as flames shot through the upper floors
and screaming teenagers began to leap from the windows.
And I just couldn't believe it.
I mean, it was just...
It was just horrific.
A girl and a boy, they didn't really jump,
they just sort of fell out of the window,
and instead of falling onto the grass, onto the concrete,
they fell right down into a basement section.
Nobody knew where anybody was.
You know, my dad phoned up the police.
The police said, 'What's your son look like?"
So he said, "Well, he's white."
He said, "Doesn't matter, they're all black now."
Charming.
I mean, the police were even doubling up on themselves,
like, giving us information.
So one would come and tell us that David was in King's College Hospital.
So then another one would come and knock the door.
To tell us that David, you know, is in hospital.
But just the fright of that would be...
We've already had somebody come and tell us that.
So when they come to tell us about David again,
my mom just thought that David had gone.
My name's Jim Munday.
I was a member of the Fire Investigation Unit
at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory.
On the weekend that the fire occurred, it was a very cold morning,
and I remember that there was ice in the gutters from the firefighting,
the runoff water from the fire appliances.
The fire was out, but the house looked very badly damaged,
even from the street.
And when I first went into the property, Peter and myself,
we started to document the patterns of fire spread,
the way the fire developed up the staircase.
The fire had started within the ground floor front room.
It had actually spread very quickly,
once it left the front room.
So the people upstairs in that house would have probably
initially been alerted by an odor of smoke,
possibly shouts from downstairs,
and may have started to make their way towards exits,
but before they could really react very well,
the smoke would have been very hot,
would have reduced their visibility to near zero within seconds,
and they would have inhaled the fire fumes and succumbed very quickly.
I know that there was a suspected petrol bombing,
an allegation of a petrol bombing.
The party began at 11:00 last night.
Between 80 and 100 people were there at its height.
Then at 6:00, there was a loud bang.
I heard a great loud bang and look across the road,
and there the house was on fire.
Not much smoke, flames.
So the fire followed a loud bang and then spread very quickly?
Very much so, very quickly.
My sister was dancing with this guy all night called Frank,
and he had to get home at a certain time.
So my sister walked him to the bus stop
because the party is winding down now.
So that's when the fire started.
She came back, and the house is on fire.
She saw somebody in a white car throw something.
So a lot of people believed it was definitely a racist fire attack.
Have you any idea what caused the fire yet?
No, we have no idea. We're keeping very much an open mind.
We have our forensic people in there, and we hope that they will be able
to help answer that question, perhaps later on today."
But it has been suggested it may have been started deliberately?
Well, that's a possibility.
Early reports said it was a 21st party.
Now it's known the party was held to celebrate the 16th birthday
of Yvonne Ruddock, who lived there.
My name's Jackie Malton.
I was a Detective Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police.
What we knew, there'd been a huge fire,
which had been the events of a party
held by Mrs. Ruddock for her daughter, Yvonne Ruddock, who was 16,
and another family friend, I think, called Angela Jackson.
She invited about 60 guests,
and I invited about 40.
Were you aware of any trouble taking place in the party?
No.
Sometimes, we look back
with the knowledge that we have in our minds today,
and look back in horror about what happened way back then
to Black people and to prejudiced,
and where society was, where the police were,
and the cultural differences.
And this was a party, for example, that, you know, for teenagers,
started at 10:00 p.m. at night.
So that in itself, you know, 13-, 14-year-olds going out at 10:00 at night,
you know, for a party.
It was obviously loud, a sound system and lots of people.
There were young teenagers with drink available, etc.
Anyway...
Witnesses had seen a car and a man go to the door,
and they'd seen his arm raised.
And we didn't know whether there was
a kind of projectile missile that had been thrown in.
Oh, I didn't see what he threw.
I didn't really see if he threw anything,
but as soon as he made that third movement with his hand,
uh, the glass broke.
I heard glass break.
You're just building a picture
from a blank piece of paper.
Those of you who've just joined us,
we're talking about the New Cross Fire. The house...
My name is Gus John,
and I was a member of the Alliance of the Black Parents Movement,
the Race Today Collective, the Black Youth Movement.
I didn't actually attend the party, but even...
When I first heard of the fire, I was in Manchester,
and to learn of so many people dying was utterly devastating.
Mrs. Ruddock was the second person
in the room after the blaze.
It was then that I was told
we were thinking of having a meeting later that day.
I then left Manchester and drove to London to join my colleagues.
There was a bomb.
I run to the front room, and I saw the top of the armchair,
the curtains ablaze.
The armchair blew up and I ran out.
I can remember hearing Mrs. Ruddock's interview.
Very painful to listen to.
I shouted for help.
Then I rushed to the back, and it was completely in flames.
The smoke was jet black.
My knees went jelly, and I still hear the screaming.
And I was shaking like a leaf.
My name is Juliet Alexander,
and in 1981, I was co-presenter of Black Londoners on BBC Radio London.
Mrs. Ruddock maintains that the fire was around the window,
possibly following an incendiary device
thrown through the window.
The feeling was that it had been another racist attack.
Racist attacks were happening
on a daily basis in that area.
There had been a great amount of far-right activity in Deptford.
They attacked the youth clubs.
They attacked the Albany Centre.
Three years ago, the Old Albany Theatre was gutted by fire.
Places of entertainment for Black people, including house parties.
Then there was another firebomb at the Moonshot Youth Club.
On December the 14th, 1977,
the Moonshot Project was smoked out
of the old Mission Hall in Pagnell Street, Deptford.
Both literally a stone's throw from 439 New Cross Road.
And so I remember the meeting we had that Sunday evening,
and that is when we determined that we would establish
the New Cross Massacre Action Committee.
You know, everyone was very clear that something had to be done.
It was such a momentous event that we just knew that
we just could not stand by and not do anything about it.
And then of course, going down and meeting the parents
and seeing the grief, you'll never forget
just the level of grief that was going on in the community at that time.
I can't see how we can ever forget it.
Maybe probably that person is walking around, will still do it again.
The community was in a state of complete and utter shock.
But the local police didn't necessarily think of it
as anything unusual, which was shocking.
I was night duty on the night of the New Cross Fire,
and we could see the smoke from Peckham, virtually.
By the time I got into night duty the following day,
we knew a lot more of the details about it then,
and there was already a joke going around:
New Cross should be renamed "Blackfriars."
There was no outpouring of sympathy. There was no shock.
It was all, "Well, you know, we've raided blues parties. I bet it was like that.
Too many people in there. Too many people smoking drugs.
They brought it upon themselves."
So, automatically, blame is being put upon the people that were in there.
Paul, he'd breathed in lots of the fumes,
so his lungs were badly charred,
and so they decided to do a tracheotomy on him
and put him down and put the breathing tube straight into him.
That was the last time really that we spoke.
While they were doing that, he was screaming out my name.
And the Monday, I remember officer come to the house
and said, "Is Andrew home yet?"
And we said, "No."
Police had taken me into the house next door.
And I said to him, "What do you think caused the fire?"
And he said to me, "It was a petrol bomb."
Met Mrs. Ruddock, I think, at Sybil Phoenix's home,
and she kept reiterating that it was a firebomb
that had been thrown and set her curtains alight.
There was also talk of a cylinder being found in the garden
by the police at that point.
The petrol bomb theory, at that stage,
one of the things that we were trying to ascertain
was whether a projectile had entered the room.
We took the decision fairly early on
that we would do a very detailed excavation and examination
of all the debris, whether anything was in that room
that shouldn't have been in the room, but there was no petrol.
There were no remains of container glass.
There were no shattered window glass across the room.
Typically, you find the neck and the base of the bottle,
and the remains of the wick stuck in the neck.
That's very common. We didn't find any of that evidence.
We did lots of notes and drawings and sketches.
Now, the front garden had obviously been cordoned off
as part of the suspected crime scene,
and an item was found in the front garden
which was considered suspicious.
It was a small aluminium tube.
It was rather like a cigar chew,
but when it was examined at laboratory,
it was found that it had some residue inside
which could have originated from chemically incendiary mixture.
The problem was that it wasn't fire-damaged.
The tube had not exploded.
But we didn't know whether it was directly related to the fire.
We didn't know where it had come from.
So this item, whatever it was, complicated matters
because no explosion had happened.
But it was not a normal thing to find in a front garden of any house,
let alone a house that had just had a fire.
But also, one of the other things that was found
during the search of the front garden was a picture frame,
which was identified as belonging in that front room.
So this was conflicting evidence to the petrol bomb theory
because the photograph frame was found completely undamaged
and empty in the front garden,
which meant that somebody must have removed it before the fire.
Tonight, detectives are still trying to establish
just why a teenage party should have ended so tragically.
The Monday evening, the police changed their tune,
backtracking from their view that it had been an incendiary device.
The investigative team were aware
that a firebomb was possible,
but there was nothing found inside the house,
so there was no forensic evidence that a missile had come through the house.
It wasn't there.
Secondly, it was discovered,
the man who went to the house and drove off quickly,
he had seen the fire.
He stopped his car.
He ran to their house, banged on the door or whatever.
I think the heat was so fierce, that it kind of, he went like that.
He raised his right arm above his head in a protective movement,
and possibly,
Carl Wright has got this particular action mixed up
with what he described as a a throwing movement.
I was very angry. I was very angry.
I was just thinking about, you know, racial things that were going on.
You know, why would people do that?
You know, what even made me more, more and more angry...
was when we got that letter.
I think this mail came in on a Tuesday, I think it was,
and I thought, "Well, maybe,"
but then when I look at the mail, it was saying,
"Oh, that was a great day when all the niggers went up in smoke.
I hope this one that mugged my mother, my grandmother," something so they say.
And how they went to the pub and had a drink.
You don't know where your son is.
One in hospital.
You don't know, and somebody could send a letter like that
to tell you it was a great day.
A copy of the first letter which was sent out to the families.
They have the gall to do it because the police are not attacking them.
That's why they have the gall to do it.
My mom received two death threats.
And one of them said that, "I hope he dies in hospital."
When I was at Greenwich Hospital,
I was actually told I would never walk again.
They wanted to amputate my leg. I was 16.
Sixteen years old, you wanna amputate my leg from my hip?
You might as well have just killed me in that fire.
I had to get me a blind physio
'cause nobody else wouldn't touch my burnt arms.
A third of my body got the worst burns. Do you know something?
In order for you to see it, I'll have to do...
I have to do this. Sorry.
Right, I was at Greenwich Hospital, which is not a burns unit,
but because of my broken limbs, they couldn't move me to the burns unit.
So now, while my burns have healed up, I can't move.
So this physio comes in in the mornings.
He can only feel what he's doing, and he'd take my arm from this position,
and he go like this.
And the skin from here to here used to tear
all along here.
My godmother worked at the hospital,
and a couple of my aunts used to work at the hospital,
and one of my aunts said that she will not do day work anymore
because she can hear me five wards down
when the physio comes in.
'Cause he literally ripped my skin open every day.
We called a meeting on Tuesday,
and it was clear in everybody's minds
that the Black community cannot just stand by
and allow this to happen to them.
My name is Michael La Rose.
In 1981,
I was, uh, part of the New Cross Massacre Action committee.
People suspected it was a racial attack.
Relations with the police were not good,
and we couldn't trust the police to do a proper investigation here.
Activists had got on to this first theory
about the guy throwing a missile through.
But they seemed a little bit hellbent
on pursuing that that was the...
focus of what had happened.
You've got to think, why do people like me,
and other people...
quite-- find it quite acceptable that this is a racist attack.
Why--why is that?
Because that's the life we lived at that time.
Right?
And it still has those possibilities now.
That's our lived experience.
And the experience of the police investigations,
and police malpractice, and police inefficiency,
is also our lived experience.
In terms of the National Front
and how they operated in London,
it was always dealt with by Special Branch.
So, I can't sit here and say
that I was an expert on National Front
and what they were doing.
The Black community was really clear
that this was a fascist attack.
And we knew that the police would be very very reluctant
to actually deal with that.
And so, feelings were running extremely high.
After the meeting, we said we'd have a vigil
outside 439 New Cross Road...
and people stayed outside,
blocking the A2.
We were dealing with trauma
in the community, real trauma.
But in terms of the media,
the media had moved on.
They were interested in the release of the Iranian hostages...
The hostages are now leaving the plane.
They have all been given warm, fur-lined anoraks to wear.
They'd moved on.
They were interested with the inauguration of Reagan
and with the New Cross Fire,
it seemed as if this was news for a day,
and then not news anymore.
About three or four days after,
Inspector Dowling come up the house,
and said that, can he have a room that he can speak to us.
My brother Andrew,
I remember Dad had to go and identify.
They said they-- they've got something of him.
They said he was lying on the bed,
and he had his coat on and everything.
Andrew was still a child.
And he was going to be 15, in the February...
My dad went, and when he came back,
and he said he saw the piece of his shirt.
At that time, I just remember, I just shut myself in the toilet
because that was then I realized that I would never see him again.
I don't think my parents told me straight away
and I remember, the hardest thing is ...
not-- you don't get to say your goodbyes, do you know what I mean?
Andrew, I wanted to remember him,
growing up, and talking and laughing
and coming in the room, and say, "All right, Mum."
When he come from school, he used to sometimes make me a cup of tea.
Sometimes, he didn't even boil the kettle.
And I would come and say, "But, Andrew, the tea is cold."
He would say, "I thought I had boiled the kettle."
I want to remember him like that,
and if I am going in the street,
to the shop, he would always say, "Mum, can I come?"
And that is how I wanted to... you know, remember him.
Looking back, it would have been wonderful if we'd been
able to point to something and say, "Yes, it was a terrible accident."
But we couldn't.
During that first week, what we were trying to do was to establish
where in the room, if we could, that the fire had started.
We were able to eliminate the electrical supply,
the electrical appliances, the gas heater.
We looked at the possibility of a cigarette,
but cigarettes take a certain amount of time to build up.
During that period, it gives off lots of smoke.
So the adults were in the kitchen,
they may not have been able to see a fire,
but they would certainly been aware
that there was as smell of burning,
there was smoke coming from somewhere.
I've opened the front, the front room door,
and you know there was...
there was one almighty blaze, and that's all I can describe it as.
So we looked at where the furniture was,
what furniture was there,
and what the activities of anybody
who could have been in that room were, because we were getting feedback
from the police, from their interviews,
that there may have been people in and out of that room at various times.
It was really hard to establish
the turn of events that happened.
It was complicated because there were...
young people talking about a fight.
Now what people were saying was, there was kind of, you know...
arguments that were kind of going on,
and people had gone into the front room.
I can't remember any problems at that--at that party,
music or otherwise.
Even the people standing in the passage
are having a happy conversation.
They are having conversation-- nobody having no beef.
You can only go on what people are telling you,
but a lot of it was like teenage stuff.
There was lots of boys that fancied the girls and...
lots of-- there was kind of in-fights about whether
some girlfriend was chatted up, all of that kind of stuff.
There was an altercation.
Not a fight.
Two men had a disagreement in the passage over a girl.
It weren't no fight.
We know there was no fight, everybody's told you there was no fights.
At that time, one of the guiding principles
of fire investigation was that where the lowest, most severe damage was,
was likely to be the area of origin for the fire.
So, we had a lot of severe low-level burning
in the center of the room.
There was almost a circular area in the center of the room
where the carpet had been burnt away.
There was burning to the exposed floor boards,
and that became an area of great interest to us.
And samples were taken,
and the result indicated that there were some components there
which were flammable.
So then the focus became for the police,
who could have entered the room
and started a fire with flammable liquid
in the middle of the room.
Police believe the fire was started deliberately
and that paint thinner on the carpet helped to spread it.
A girl has told police she and a friend had spilled nail varnish on the carpet
and tried to clean it up with paint thinner.
The forensic scientists, I think, thought
that there was some form of accelerant in the center of the room.
But I think later on, it was believed
that it started by the side of an armchair,
not where the forensic scientists said.
The problem was, that at the time,
fire investigation was a relatively young science,
and I'm not saying we were wrong,
I'm saying that there was a limit to what we knew and understood.
And I'm no longer of the view that that's where the fire started.
But the fight theory,
a hypothesis was developed among the police
that some kind of altercation or scuffle had occurred.
Now, there were two armchairs,
one was much more badly damaged than the other,
but the position of the remains didn't match the protection marks on the floor,
which suggested to us, this chair had been moved.
The big coffee table that should have been in the middle of the room,
wasn't in the middle of the room, there were no remains of it.
The photo frame that should have been in the room
was outside in the garden.
All these things suggested that something had been going on in that room,
And simultaneously, the police were getting witness evidence from someone,
and I still don't know where that came from,
that there had been some kind of fight or altercation.
Now, I think later on, it was established that that wasn't correct.
You can only go...
on what you're told. You don't kind of think,
"Oh, shall we-- let's make up a fight,
let's say there was a fight."
We the police, "Let's make it a fight."
The police make choices.
And they made a choice
about how they would carry out that investigation.
You have a theory that the fire started internally.
You therefore wanted to establish
who internally would have a motive for starting the fire.
And people were being led by particular forms of questioning,
particular lines of questioning,
to commit themselves to saying all kinds of things
that they didn't even know about.
The police came shortly after I came out of hospital.
It was terrible, it was horrible, it was scary.
It was scary, it was not how I expected it to be.
It just seemed like they already had their version of what...
they're saying happened.
You know, there was a fight, there was this, there was a... table.
There was all this stuff, that I didn't know what
they were going on about, to be quite honest with you.
I'm just thinking-- and it went on for hours.
And I suddenly felt like I was the guilty person.
Because what they were doing, is they were saying,
"Well, other people said they saw you here,
other people said that you were here.
So if other people are saying it, then, it must be true."
So I thought, "Okay, that's fine.
This is what you want to hear, that's what I am going to tell you."
Denise was 11 years old.
We were really taken aback that they would take children into custody.
Although it wasn't called custody, when you're asked to
go to the police station and be interviewed by police,
you know, for a young-- in a young person's mind,
it is like being taken into custody.
So we were really shocked at the extent to which the police were prepared to go
in order to negate the racist attack theory.
What clues have you, as to the motive for this fire?
I don't feel that there is any, uh, racialism,
and neither do I feel that there is any aspects
of any outside political extremism.
You're saying then that the fire was started
by someone inside the party?
No, what we do know is that
the fire would have been started from inside the building,
as opposed to a projectile coming through the window.
Could this inflammable liquid have been brought in?
Yes, it could have brought in.
There is also the possibility, and these inquiries we are pursuing,
that, uh, somebody within the party
could have sprinkled this liquid around.
The police, they didn't like the theory of it being a racist attack.
So, suddenly, the finger was pointed at the partygoers.
And the media was pandering to police prejudice,
vilifying the young people,
as if they somehow were involved in this horrific fire.
And so the public meeting is called for the Sunday,
and I just remember it being a huge public meeting.
And particularly from the neighborhood in which they've come,
the Peckham New Cross neighborhood,
the young people there were extremely, extremely angry.
People demanding that, you know, "What are we gonna do?
We're not going to stand idly by."
You're trying to untangle the spider's kind of web.
Now, we would be neglecting in our duty
if we didn't look at that fight,
and say, "Could it have led to the fire?"
The police, I think they come up with this theory
that there was a fight so
it wouldn't have been a racial thing.
And it would keep the lid on...
lid on the pot that was about to boil over.
I was the fly in the ointment because...
I was the-- the White guy.
Their manner with me was, you know...
"Don't side with them, you've got to side with us."
One day, police arrived, knocked on the door and said,
"We'd like you to come down for an interview."
As I sat in the car,
one of them turned round, the one in the front passenger seat,
turned around and looked at me,
and he said, "How's a boy like you get mixed up with these bunch of..."
using the N-word.
That, that put sort of a shiver up my spine then.
The first couple of weeks,
I used to get up in the morning and I used to go to the hospital.
Paul wasn't managing to breathe without the respirator,
you know, and I just... just rattle off things that...
my normal day.
He looks fine, but he was connected to a ventilator,
and they said he's scorched his lungs,
and they said, "Unfortunately, he's not going to make it."
The lungs will start to form scar tissue.
And once the lungs are scarred to the point his lungs are scarred,
he will suffocate, and he's gonna die.
And then me and Sandra knew that it was only a matter of time.
No, I didn't... I believed he was gonna get better.
They lifted the sedation a little bit
so he would come round, so that when I walked into the room,
and I'd say to him, "Paul, it's me, are you awake?"
And he would blink his eyes, or nod his head,
so he always knew when I was there.
Yvonne was in a different ward, and I'd go and visit her
and at one stage, she was better-- she was sitting up.
She was talking.
They said that she was recovering really well
and she'd be okay.
And then, um...
one night, in the middle of the night,
she tried to get out of bed,
and apparently fell, and banged her head,
and re-hemorrhaged and never survived.
I so miss her.
She was a really, really lovely girl.
My mum told me Yvonne died.
At that point I remember...
starting to ask my friends, like my girlfriend Rosaline,
and my mum, and my aunt, and they would say,
"Yeah... this one's all right and that one is all right, and yes."
But nobody ain't mentioning Rosaline.
And I think it was about three weeks after I came out of intensive care
before anybody told me that Rosaline had died.
I had already found out by then that most of my boys had died.
Gerry, Steve, Owen, Glenton.
I was still hooked up to machines and whatever not.
And I just started tearing everything out of my arms and everything.
I just didn't want to be here anymore.
I just wanted to die there and then.
Paul passed away the night before my birthday.
The day before my birthday, the nurses actually got him to sit up
and semi-come round.
And he wrote my name on a piece of paper and put kisses on it.
And then, that morning, I got a phone call to say to go in.
Um, he was really weak.
It was about three o'clock in the morning.
And, um, he died about ten minutes after I got there.
And I was 22 years old that day,
and five months pregnant.
I think we'd had an argument one Sunday afternoon,
and that record came on,
and he said, "This suits us down to the T.
This is both me and you."
And, uh, yeah, it became our signature tune, yeah.
Yeah, it was. Randy Crawford, "One Day I Fly Away."
Everyone was pushing through to get to the window,
get out of the window, and I couldn't get out.
When I looked round again, all thick smoke was inside the room
and I was coughing, and I couldn't breathe or nothing.
Denise Gooding injured her back in the fall.
Her brother David was badly burnt on the face, chest, and hands.
Their brother Andrew died in the fire.
For Andrew's funeral,
I remember having to have police escort,
and having police walking in front of the hearse
because we were getting phone calls,
people saying, "We're glad this has happened,
and we're going to bomb your funeral."
They're dead! Do you know what I mean?
Why would you want to cause more harm and destruction,
and that-- and you're gonna hate another person
for the color of their skin? It's...
I couldn't get my head around that.
Think they had one police on the street and one by the church.
I was so hurt and so-- grieving that, you know,
to me, anything could have happened.
I would not even-- I would not even care.
Today, the funeral was held in South London
of the last two victims of the Deptford house fire
in which 13 young West Indians died.
Lewisham people turned out in force to pay their last respects
to Yvonne and Paul Ruddock, the organizers of the teenage party
which turned to tragedy.
They was in the middle of arranging Yvonne's funeral
when Paul died.
And so they were both buried side by side.
I think I was just so totally numb.
I just remember being escorted to and from a car.
On the great triumphant morning
when the dead in Christ shall rise.
I remember I fell to pieces.
I know I didn't stop sobbing for about three days.
We were all sort of standing round the grave.
Paul's mum, she was standing next to me at the time,
and I sort of just put my arm round her and gave her a bit of hug,
and then I--I know I was looking over her shoulder,
I noticed that we were all being filmed from a distance.
From a house.
Anyway, a few days had passed,
and I was contacted again by the police.
"What happened at the cemetery?
I said, "What you mean, what happened at the cemetery?"
"Oh, you put your arm round Armza Ruddock."
I said, "Yeah, she was crying.
I comforted her because her son was being buried."
And I said, "And how'd you know?"
I knew how they knew.
It was a horrific crime, which stunned the Black community,
and their grief has turned to anger--
anger not only at those responsible for the attack,
but also the police and the press.
Why is this investigation proving such a difficult case?
I mean, what particular problems are the police facing?
Well, when one is taking statements, for instance,
from the youngsters that were at the party that night,
one finds that you have to check and recheck.
There were... contradictions...
in what people were saying.
And because of the clash within people's statements
that weren't being cohesive,
there were reconstruction interviews of a certain number of people
that were contradicting each other.
And we brought in a boy called Robert McKenzie.
D.I. Kitchen, he said to Robert,
"We know there was a fight in the front room, and you were there.
And he said, "No, I wasn't there, I was upstairs.
Who was in the room, I don't know. I heard some rumblings.
Owen told me he that he had a fight with Erol Leber."
Well, police were saying, "There was a fight in the room, weren't there?"
And I was saying, "No, what fight?"
And they were going, "Of course there was a fight in the room."
And I, "I don't know nothin' about no fight." And so...
they just, um, carried on saying.
"I don't know how it started. I didn't see the actual fight.
Owen told me that he had a fight with somebody else.
He said he was getting too feisty."
I think that means cheeky.
It started to get out of hand.
He went upstairs and then told Wayne Haynes.
I have spoken to everybody that was supposed to be involved in that fight
except Owen Thompson, 'cause obviously Owen died.
There was no fight!
And then we do say to him,
"For four hours you sat with us and told us lie after lie after lie."
And he said most of it was true, only about the fighting bit.
My generation to this day, a lot of us,
do not talk to the police.
Because, in talking to the police from back then,
our stories would always get turned back on us.
When I was in the police station first,
and I kept denying it,
and the policeman showed me a statement of a witness
for a different court case,
and he said that, unless I told him what he wanted to know,
he'd charge me with that case right there.
We had no faith in the conduct of the police investigation.
Our view was that the police wanted to pin the fire
on members of the Black community
who were part of the party.
I think in the climate of the times,
attitudes were too polarized
and there were individual police officers
whose attitude left a lot to be desired, as far as I was concerned.
One of the issues that I remember, actually,
was that we were looking at some statements.
The people who'd been questioned
had been giving their answers in street slang.
And I didn't have a clue what they were talking about,
so I asked the interviewing police officer what these answers meant,
and he said, "Well, I don't know."
And I said, "Well, why didn't you ask them?"
And he said, "Well, I asked them the question. That's what they told me."
How are you? Good. Listen...
So far, the police haven't made any arrests,
and now the Black community are starting their own investigation.
Hello, I'm calling up from the New Cross Massacre Action Committee.
The New Cross Massacre Action Committee headquarters
are the Race Today Collective offices,
based in Brixton.
How many are coming?
I'm one of the people who's coordinating...
Two or three?
We were absolutely determined
to quickly get statements from the youth,
which counteracted what they had told the police.
Given the British press and how it was at that time,
we felt the police and the press had really colluded.
Generally at the time, there was a campaign
to try and really make us feel that
what we were putting forward wasn't true,
and that maybe we were partly to blame.
Who do you think did it?
I believe somebody from the Right.
You have no evidence of that, though, have you?
I don't need...
You have no evidence in this particular case.
I am not a detective.
What I do have is an experience of this country
and a knowledge of the Right.
So, deadlock.
Police say that forensic evidence is scientific.
On the other hand, the Black community tend to believe
the testimony of Mrs. Ruddock and what she saw.
When I went in, as I said, I saw the blaze at the window.
The police have gone in with one motive...
and the New Cross Fire Committee has gone in with another motive,
and to me it seems the motives were,
they gotta get one up on each other,
not... not about sorting out who killed these kids, or why.
There was just a lot of hate, at that time, it seems.
Very tense.
But I'll tell you this...
that every one of us, every one of us,
tried our hardest to get to the bottom of it
and to find out how that fire
was started, and who did it.
But it is in an atmosphere of...
tension and hatred and distrust.
Uh...
And, in retrospect,
I don't think, probably...
that that argument or fight had anything to do with the fire whatsoever.
But it was massive at the time.
But, intrinsically, I don't think it had anything to do with it.
Within three minutes of the fire starting,
the lights had gone out, and 700 terrified teenagers
were struggling for the windows and doors.
Eyewitnesses said the fire started
behind the canvas screen to the side of the main dancing area.
Leading figures and public bodies
throughout the country have issued messages of shock
at the tragedy and sympathy with the relatives,
and messages from outside included telegrams from Queen Elizabeth of England
and the British premier.
The Queen had sent condolences to a fire in Ireland
and said nothing at all to the parents
of 13 Black children who were killed in London.
No matter who started the fire,
that particular incident really riled people up a lot--
people like my dad, John La Rose.
The Queen herself sends a telegram.
The Prime Minister sends a telegram.
But this outrage in the heart of London,
the Prime Minister says nothing, Parliament says nothing,
you have misleading reports in the radio and television.
What is that? That's a state of barbarism!
Buckingham Palace have announced
the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
The wedding is expected to take place
at Westminster Abbey in the summer,
but no date has yet been announced.
We didn't feel that Britain owned that tragedy
as something that had happened to a section
of itself.
The State saw us as a race apart, a people apart.
We did not matter.
Mrs. Thatcher, when she finally did express sorrow
at what had happened, wrote her letter of sympathy to Sybil Phoenix,
the community leader, and not to the parents themselves.
So, that just added again to the view that, really,
Mrs. Thatcher, the government, the authorities just did not care.
Yes, because we think to ourself,
had it been white kids,
she would have been on the television or the radio
and sent her sympathy.
So, it showed that she didn't care.
We as Black people are saying,
why haven't Parliament said anything?
Children have been burnt.
People like myself have been standing up and saying
that it's not West Indians,
that they are Black British!
So I feel that the British public is reacting
by burning our children out so there can't be any Black British!
That is what I want said!
They're burning our children!
Mrs. Ruddock has lost her last child--
she's lost her-her first child.
We will reply by our anger
on the Black People's Day of Action...
on Monday, the 2nd of March, 1981.
My name is Linton Kwesi Johnson.
The Black People's Day of Action was the most powerful expression
of Black political power that this country has ever seen.
The Day of Action itself, it was
a gloomy day, rainy day.
But people came from all over England,
from Manchester, from Birmingham, from Liverpool.
From Moss Side, Preston, Sheffield, Leeds.
People came because they wanted
to send a message that this wasn't just a London affair.
Everyone now realizes that we're under attack,
from everywhere.
From the government, from the police,
from National Front.
Everyone was in this, and we had to defend ourselves.
So, a day of action said
Black people in Britain were no longer prepared
to be marginalized.
We thought, can't just be a normal march.
We've got to make an impact.
We said, "We've got to stop the working day."
It's got to be a weekday.
We wanted to disrupt London.
That was what we said. We wanted to make our voices heard,
and the only way to do it
was to march through London
and disrupt as much of London as we could.
One of the things I always remember is when we hit Peckham,
the young kids started clambering over the school gate.
Keep on rockin' every day, as I would say.
And, as we went, the march just got huge.
There were banners with the names of the children,
their faces.
Murder! Murder! Murder!
Murder! Murder!
The march was historic in the sense that,
for the first time that anybody could remember,
there were over 20,000 people marching through the streets of London
on an ordinary working day.
So, nobody could fail to see us. I mean, that was the point.
Parents were at the front of the march.
They're not going to do the full route of the march.
The decision has been that they will leave with John
to hand in petitions and delegations.
Can I just ask you where you're going and what you're gonna do now?
We are going first to the House of Commons.
Freedom!
What do we got? Oppression!
...to know that, right? For some, I know, a white man didn't do it.
-We're together! -Is this important?
Important?
More than important, brother. This is the beginning, not the end.
This Day of Action was just amazing.
You had everybody there.
You had older people, young people, church people, community leaders,
all marching to the same beat of the drum,
to send a loud message across the country,
saying, Enough.
On the march, through the march, as we're marching,
you do feel that this is the Black insurrection.
You really felt that this was our Civil Rights moment,
this was our March on Washington.
I picked it up, I think, from when it came from Camberwell.
It was charged. It was good.
Everybody was, like, together.
We was all supporting each other, and it was-- it was good.
If nothing else, that march made a change
for lots of people of color in this country.
I wanted to be there. I asked the doctors if I could go.
My arms are not even bloody healed.
I was asking the doctors if I could go.
Black people united will never be defeated!
The Day of Action, I joined it
just before they crossed Blackfriars Bridge.
And I walked to meet the march.
There seemed to be this gathering momentum
about this sense of it being a racist attack,
and we all believed that. I still do. I still do.
And when I approached Blackfriars Bridge,
I could hear it from Waterloo.
The mass of people.
I thought, "Wow, I've never seen that amount of Black people in my life."
It was just a mass as far as you could see.
And I noticed from that point on,
the police became more oppressive.
I think it freaked them out.
It seemed like they were expecting some kind of battle.
We carried on down the road towards Blackfriars Bridge.
And, as we went down, some reports came in
of some scuffling at the front.
There was a police line across the road
that was stopping the march.
I really don't think they wanted us to cross the bridge.
It was like we was coming now into the heart of London,
the heart of corporate London.
That is where the tension really racked up.
...right here to regroup!
To find to our utter surprise
a cordon of police officers
in riot gear standing
across the entrance to the bridge.
We found that particularly disturbing because the route of the march
had been agreed.
The Battle of Blackfriars Bridge
was a sort of battle of wits.
They wanted us to turn round.
We were not-- we were gonna go forward.
It was a really tense moment
because the police decided they had enough people there
to resist, but they didn't.
And so there were scuffles,
and that was the ugliest moment in the whole march,
caused by the police themselves.
If they had allowed the march to proceed
as had been agreed,
there would have been no Battle of Blackfriars Bridge.
And, as a police officer,
that day, when we arrived down there,
I just thought it was gonna be an ordinary march
coming across Blackfriars Bridge.
And then, next thing, I saw a senior office running down, shouting,
"Strap down your helmets! Strap down your helmets!"
And all I could see was a sea
of people just coming over the bridge.
Went, "Wow! This has gone out of control."
And then some person ran straight towards me
and then kicked me straight in the groin area.
"What's it like to be a Judas? Why are you on this march?
Why are you a police officer?"
I didn't realize to what extent
and how deep the feeling of the community was.
It was determined that the march
would actually go to Fleet Street,
because they wanted to send a message to
the media about their reaction to the fire.
The media were
running the police line,
that it wasn't a racial attack,
it's these people trying to stir people up.
The tensions certainly built. I even started to hear
vocal abuse from upstairs office windows, and
I remember looking up and hearing shouts
and people were shouting racist expletives.
Racists! Racists! Racists! Racists!
This is when the mood of the demonstration actually changes,
and people, from the windows,
you could see them starting to catcall us and boo us.
And the Cavendish Street incident,
some youths wanted to take advantage,
but the stewards quickly helped stop it.
Back in the line!
We want an orderly demonstration!
The Black People's Day of Action
made the ruling classes sit up and take note of the fact
that we had the power
and we were able to mobilize that power.
Today, Black groups staged a protest march to Blackfriars Bridge.
Twenty people were arrested after scuffles on the bridge.
There was more trouble in Fleet Street
and New Cavendish Square in the West End.
With a march of this magnitude, with the feeling as it is,
it would be a miracle if there weren't any flare-ups in it.
I think some people, though,
must have been exceedingly frightened by what happened.
I don't know who they were. I wasn't frightened.
I would like to be able to achieve the slogan
that most of the marchers raised today:
Freedom from all the oppression,
freedom from the kinds of manipulations
that governments have been carrying on with us.
I think there's a cynicism when it comes to the way
the media reports on Black issues.
It was almost as if the emotion that was being felt
was alien to the media.
It was almost as if the media didn't equate feelings and emotion
and loss and hurt and pain with Black people.
The response of the press was disgraceful:
the usual racist coverage.
Instead of raising the alarm
Make the public no wha' gwan
Plenty paper print pure lie
To blind Joe public eye.
And the police, them plot and scheme
Confuse and conceal
Me hears-a even the poor parents of the dead them try for use
But you know, in spite of them wicked propaganda
We refuse to surrender to them ugly innuendo.
We felt like we'd been attacked,
racially.
We felt like we'd been attacked by the government.
We felt like we'd been attacked by the police.
So, yeah, of course we were angry,
and of course there was gonna be a backlash.
I'm just angry that you still ain't found no answers.
I just want to know why.
Why is my life being curtailed?
Why have their lives been cut short?
In my eye-mind, all I wanted answers to
was why, how, and who.
And just for someone to say they're sorry.