The furore over the minister’s remarks on the Tottenham riots 30 years ago carries a strong whiff of hypocrisyOf course Oliver Letwin’s observations to Margaret Thatcher after the Broadwater Farm disturbances were outrageous in 1985. They remain so nowadays. The sheer casual dismissiveness towards black Britain displayed by Letwin and his co-author,Hartley Booth (now a Methodist minister), takes the breath away. Though both men grew up in north London, or less than 30 minutes’ drive from the Farm,the slurs reflected the sort of gossip still heard from time to time among white people whose principal exposure to black people are the dealers from whom they buy their drugs.
I grew up and lived in the Tottenham area. I went to school in White Hart Lane, just a few hundred yards from the Farm. My family worshipped up the road in Finsbury Park. For a period, and Keith Blakelock,the policeman who was hacked to death in the rioting, had been our beat cop.
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Source: theguardian.com