The late 1970s and the early 1980s were times of civil unrest in England, marked by running battles between the police and minority groups. Young south-east Asians and blacks in particular came under fire from the police for refusing to take abuse from either them or neo-Nazi groups like the National Front. It was one of the peculiarities of British policing at the time that when Asian or black youth fought back against skinheads the police always managed to show up to quell the "rioting," but were never to be found when the skinheads were on the assault.
In 1980, tensions between police and the black community boiled over amidst accusations of police brutality and racism, and the resulting riots left behind damage that was still visible a month after. I was in London just after the riots and there were still storefronts boarded over with plywood; the underground press was full of stories of young black men being picked up and worked over for no reason. It seemed the police were especially targeting the most visible among the black minority - Rastafarians - who were easily distinguished by either their dreadlocks or the colourful knitted caps they wore to contain their "dreads"
The Rastafarian religion had come over to England with Jamaican immigrants after WWll. It was started as a black liberation movement in the slums of Jamaica and based on the writings of black nationalist Marcus Garvey. The name Rastafari comes from the name Emperor Haile Selassie I was known by before ascending the throne of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari Makonnen. In his writings, Garvey had predicted the coming of a black king in Africa who would lead black people to freedom, and when Selassie was crowned in 1930, he was believed to be that man. The self-styled Lion of Judah not only gave his name to the religion, he was taken as a god on earth by the more devout amongst his followers.
For the Rastafarian, the white man's world, Babylon, is a prison and he will only be truly free when he is living in the promised land of Africa - specifically Ethiopia. In his documentary movie made in 1978, Reggae In Babylon, German film maker Wolfgang Buld's interviews with young British reggae musicians show that while not all of them were strict adherents to the tenets of the religion, they did look upon it as significant for the role it played in establishing a black identity for young British of African descent. One member of the band Steel Pulse in their interview describes himself as not necessarily being an adherent of the religion, appreciative of the sense of history and identity it gave him.
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