Pupils from two primary schools held a memorial service at the site of the New Cross fire to mark the tragedy’s 40th anniversary. On January 18, 1981, a blaze ripped gutted a small, terraced house on New Cross Road, killing 13 young black people who gathered for a birthday party. Frustration at the failure of authorities to properly investigate the incident and the perceived indifference of the government to the suffering of the black community culminated in protests, as 20,000 marched through London under the slogan “13 dead, nothing said.” Children from Lucas Vale and Grinling Gibbons Primary schools held a short memorial service at the site of the New Cross Fire and at the nearby memorial in Fordham Park on Monday.
To improve the performance of our website, show the most relevant news products and targeted advertising, we collect technical impersonal information about you, including through the tools of our partners. You can find a detailed description of how we use your data in our Privacy Policy. For a detailed description of the technologies, please see the Cookie and Automatic Logging Policy.
By clicking on the Accept & Close button, you provide your explicit consent to the processing of your data to achieve the above goal.
You can withdraw your consent using the method specified in the Privacy Policy.
Accept & Close
Sputnik International
Sun 17 Jan 2021 06.00 EST
Although it happened before I was born, the New Cross fire in 1981 and the National Black People’s Day of Action that followed are landmarks in my identity; growing up in a Caribbean family in the 1980s, they are part of our collective memory. New Cross is fundamental because it contains all the features of racism that black people in Britain have long suffered: the racial violence, police abuse, neglect by the state; in turn, it tells us of the community’s resistance. Forty years on, recalling the events seems vital, especially in this moment of renewed optimism after the Black Lives Matter protests, because the legacies of New Cross still resonate.