THOUGH sensationalised out of all proportion, the recent relatively small-scale clashes with police on Oxford's Blackbird Leys estate do have some common features with inner- city uprisings of the 1980s.
Blackbird Leys is not an inner-city area, but it is isolated and socially deprived, a pool of poverty and unemployment, with families overcrowded in housing from which they can't afford to escape.
Only a small minority of the 10,000 residents of Blackbird Leys are black, but the estate is regarded as a kind of ghetto by the police, who display their innate racism by terming it 'the jungle in their radio messages.
Beaten in cells
A focal point in the escalation of the conflict came when police arrested a random vanload of black youth, and later beat them up in cells at the police station.
As in several inner-city rebellions, black and wnite youth joined forces to fight back against harassment, showing their hatred and contempt for the police and for a society that offers them no sense of purpose, hope or achievement.
Despite the threadbare list of council-tunded amenities on the estate, it offers no music or entertainment, and little but Worker boredom to most teenage youth, especially on hot summer evenings.
The joyriders produced a source of illicit excitement, and immediately became a focus of They are no politically enlightened vanguard: the young car thieves are among the best exponents of Thatcher's antisocial pronouncement that 'There is no such thing as society, just individuals and their families'.
Stunts
Having snatched a high-performance car, they thrash it in a series of reckless stunts in front of an audience, before frequently setting it ablaze. Their activities have left a trail of 'autocrime throughout Oxford, with at least 20 reported incidents each day.
For 18 months the police -unconcerned about a solidly working class estate - largely ignored these problems, making no errort to invesugate car thefts and publicly declaring they would not pursue joyriders for fear of accidents.
The joyriders' displays be came fully-fledged rallies, with two or more cars lined up to race, and hundreds turning out to witch. Often ordinary traffice could not get through the estate late at night - but still the police did nothing.
At the high point, Thatcherite entrepreneurial skills became more evident, with burger vans selling food and drink, and joyriders charging admission to the best places to watch - £l for locals, f2 for outsiders.
Eventually, under a barrage of complaints from residents over the noise and danger to life and limb, the police made a tentative effort to restrict the joyriders. The first police cars to do so were attacked with bricks and bottles, with the police driven off the estate.
They came back with reinforcements, and predictably their first victims were black youth, arrested and beaten up simply for being there.
As the crowds became bigger and angrier, with militant youth mingling with adults hostile to the police invasion, the police brought in riot gear. Again predictably their main fury was directed not against the joyriders but at the innocent onlookers.
Several people were arrested for the 'crime' of crossing the road for a Chinese takeaway. A pattern of victimisation and racism: police picking on black youth in London's glant Thamesmead estate: Others were beaten with batons where they stood or sat or in their own doorways.
Sensationalised press coverage reached saturation point when a woman - who has herself since been charged for an alleged stabbing - came off worst in a stabbing incident outside her house, and her boyfriend attacked.
Within a few days the police had gone from inactivity to create a riot, grabbing front page silly season press coverage, and offering the Tories some extra 'law and order' opagand nce then, heavy-booted pol ing has continued to provoke anger and hostility on the estate.
Labour's leaders have joined hands with the Tories to demand that youth be arrested wholesale and jailed.
Withdrawal
In contrast to this, the left must demand the immediate withdrawal of the riot squads they have primarily victimised the innocent.
There should be a full public inquiry into the police beatings of black youth which helped rigger the controntador The local community know who many of the joyriders and their key organisers are: it must be the community itself that organises to deal with them: but this must be organised in a way that gives no scope to racist would-be 'vigilantes' to blame the problems on black families.
Roy Hattersley's ignorant outbursts confirm that today's Labour Party has no time or space for working class youth, whose elemental, anti-social revolt is the result of a frustration and an unchallenged diet of Thatcherite individualism.
The big issue facing the left of the workers' movement is to find ways in which the instinc tive rebellion of these young people can be turned into more productive, concerted action the system that degrades us all.