Chairman Ralph's Ministry Of Truth

The opening line from my journal says it all: “I've just seen the real 'White Riot,' right in the West End...” (10 p.m. Sunday, 3/31/90)

As the cliché goes, I remember what I'd been doing when the riots broke out that Saturday. I'd gone out for lunch, done a little grocery shopping, and by 2 p.m.-ish, set about relaxing in my second-floor bedroom...going plunk, plunk, plunk on the old Magnum bass.

Normally, I spent a good portion of my Saturdays at Camden Market, but not this time – probably because I just wanted it quiet, for a change. I often went out to avoid the crowding in my hostel, where three people to a room was not unusual. Hardly anybody was around, so it made sense to capitalize, in this case.

Just then, one of my roommates came charging into the room – a born-again Christian who planned on pursuing a financial industry career, couldn't have been more different from yours truly – and told me what was happening just around the corner, on Tottenham Court Road.

Essentially, there'd been a big demonstration in Trafalgar Square. But things had gone horribly wrong, pitched battles were breaking out between cops and picketers, while looting and property damage were spiraling out of control.

I pondered this news for 30 seconds, grabbed my Pentax camera, and ran off downstairs, then outside, and right into the chaos. I was a journalism major, so what other response made sense? As I wrote later:

“All the words of the first Clash album were ringing in my head as I walked down Tottenham Court and Charing Cross Road to see if any hardcore protesters hadn't called it quits in Trafalgar Square.

“I was taking photos as I went, and I quickly realized hat my camera was a passport to safety, because the cops didn't bother me as I snapped photos of the all-encompassing chaos around...smashed shop fronts, overturned garbage bins, looted shops, and overturned, burned-out cars. Some sections near the West End theaters were completely cordoned off (unless you had a ticket, you couldn't get in).”

Making my way back onto Charing Cross Road, via a side street, I spotted two cars, “completely burned out and gutted, one overturned,” I wrote in my journal. “Another guy whose back windshield was smashed in kept waving people away from his car, saying, 'Haven't they done enough, mate? Haven't they?'”

Then it was off to London's favored protest site, to see what was happening – by now, it was around 4:30 p.m. Only a couple hours ago, between 180,000 and 250,000 people crammed Trafalgar' Square's confines, as part of a rally organized by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation. (Police estimates put the numbers at 200,000.)

The majority of protesters had departed, but several thousand remained on the scene, restless for some kind of action – of what sort, I couldn't immediately tell, until I saw movement stirring from the southern end of Trafalgar Square, and down Whitehall...towards the epicenter of Thatcher's power:

“I had one anxious moment when the Trafalgar Square throng, those [still] assembled, chanted: 'Downing Street! Downing Street!', and I walked a cautious distance behind them, while the assembled riot vans tore off in that direction.

“As I crossed the street, I saw a phalanx of riot shields already meeting the protestors, who overturned metal barricades. I ran, then stopped myself and managed to get ahead of the mob before the police cordoned off the streets.”

Actually, I found people lining up outside a small theater – of all the times to catch a show, I marveled – so I simply walked up the small flight of stairs, as if to join them. I watched the protesters run, with the cops hot on their heels, and – once they'd rumbled a safe distance away – retook my place on Charing Cross Road.

That was enough for me: I decided to get back home, before things got too heavy – with a couple of STUFF THE POLL TAX banners under my arm, and the various Militant print materials that I'd scooped up off the pavement.

I kept my distance from any large groups, though I made a couple of strategic detours on the long walk back home – such as a Renault showroom in Covent Garden, where every car sported a smashed-in window, panel, or headlight.

This is what I recorded at the scene: “I talked briefly with a man who said he'd supported Labourr, but called the violence obscene, as he shook his head no, and said, 'I detest Thatcher...but this just isn't the way.' I agreed, but I waved my camera around, to indicate my real reason for being out there.”

As I recall, it took a good hour to get back home on my own power – but, in the face of such a heavy police presence, I figured that public transport wasn't an option. Around 6-6:30 p.m., I finally made it back to Store Street. Most of the major action seemed to have wound down, though police versus protester clashes continued into 3 a.m., the newspapers stated.

My landlord could sense what had happened, saying, “This is the England you've always read about.” Ironically, the target of all the anger hadn't even been in the neighborhood; Thatcher had been attending a Conservative Party conference in Cheltenham, where the poll tax was expected to top the agenda.

Thatcher joined longtime Labour opponent, Neil Kinnock, and the media in condemning the riots, amid dismissive headlines of “Rent-A-Mob.” Needless to say, reactions among those who'd gone to Trafalgar Square – including my new circle of ULU friends, and coworkers – were rather different.

At St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Anglican church on Trafalgar's northeastern corner, I watched police officers lash out with nightsticks against people who were only carrying picket signs and banners – striking with windmilled fury, left and right, until the intended targets gave up, and crumpled to the ground.

Back at work Monday, the discussion ran hot and angry with anecdotes of police cars being driven into the crowd – and mounted cavalry charges, when people didn't clear out quickly enough for their liking – which undoubtedly triggered the scaffold poles, wooden staves and other debris hurled back in their general direction.

According to several coworkers who'd witnessed the day's events, many of the injured had been trying to get out of the demonstration, only to have their escape routes blocked by police cordons, mounted horses, and security barriers.

Many of these things happened before my arrival, but – judging by the police charge that I did observe, the one designed to sweep away the demonstrators from Thatcher's Downing Street residence – it's astonishing that the injury toll didn't climb even higher.

CODA
In the end, the greatest damage didn't occur to the property, but to Thatcher's own standing, as I recorded in my journal:

“I've never seen so much broken glass in one place...the face of people's anger is real, and when unleashed, its force is terrifying. Somehow, I tell myself, nobody felt the Chancellor [of the Exchequer, John Major, who replaced Thatcher as prime minister] had been nice to them, nor do they buy the line that their Labour cousins are overspending.

"By tomorrow morning, that face will effectively have been whitewashed, but somehow, I'm not sure it can help Thatcher too much. Unlike Reagan, her policies have made her personally unpopular.”

In April 1990, I returned home: my six-month stay was up, and I couldn't find a clever way of extending it. However, there was no mistaking that Thatcher's invincible aura had crumbled forever. The nonpayment campaigns had begun gathering steam, too; as more people burned payment books, demanded court hearings or dumped buckets of urine on collectors, it became obvious that the poll tax's days were numbered.

From the Conservatives' standpoint, the confrontational personality that had defined '80s Britain now amounted to a political liability. However, it took seven more months for Thatcher to fall, this time, due to another leadership challenge, from Michael Heseltine – whose show of support (152 votes) was sufficient to force a second ballot.

After vowing to fight for her job, Margaret Thatcher changed her mind, and withdrew into history – leaving Downing Street in tears, so the papers said, as John Major, the unassuming former Chancellor of the Exchequer, took over – an outcome that my coworkers never have imagined. How many times had I heard them say, “She can only be defeated in a general election”?

The government abandoned the poll tax in 1991. Britons would now pay a council tax that didn't take their income into account – but did consider their property's value, effectively restoring the old rates system under a different name. Unlike the poll tax, the taxpayer's ability to pay became part of the equation under the new measure

In the end, Thatcher fell prey to ego: like any leader who holds power for a long time, the Iron Lady had grown arrogant, remote and detached from the public that she claimed to love – yet remained bound and determined to cram an unpopular policy down her nation's collective throat, critics be damned.

As the Arab Spring of 2011 showed, leaders who take such tactics – whether they are elected, or not – do so at their own peril. How well that lesson sank in for the established political order remains debatable; over the years, other riots have scarred the British consciousness, and beyond, providing proof – if anybody truly needs it – of the old cliché that history repeats itself.

But for those who observed – or fought in – the disturbance known as “The Battle of Trafalgar Square” may have a bigger point in mind: when leaders stop listening to their nation, and turn a tin ear toward its collective suffering, the slope between loss of legitimacy, and inability to govern, is slippery indeed, and once that foothold is lost...it's impossible to climb back upward again.