The American Experience That the Politicians Chose To Ignore

The riots we have so far witnessed in Britain are pale by comparison to many of those experienced by the United States; today (11th August) marks to the day the start of the Watts riots of 1965, and provides a timely reminder of where multiracial Britain is heading. 

Like many other similar episodes, the spark that ignited a six-day race riot that left 34 dead, more than 1,000 injured and 3,500 arrested, started out as just another mundane piece of policing.

Before the Second World War the Los Angeles district of Watts was a largely mixed race area of working-class whites, blacks and Hispanics.

However during the 1940s, the demography of the area began to undergo a major change as blacks from the still segregated southern states flocked to the non-segregated boom-state of California.

As the blacks moved in whites moved out to the city suburbs, along with much of the business and commercial sector.

By the early 1960s, Watts was an almost entirely black district with an unenviable reputation for high levels of crime, poverty and unemployment.

On the morning of the 11th August a white California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer pulled over a car driven by a black man on account of his erratic driving.

The driver failed to pass the standard sobriety tests of the time, which including walking in a straight line and touching the nose.

The CHP officer, understandably, refused to allow the driver to continue in control of the vehicle.

At some point the passenger in the car, the driver’s brother, offered to drive the car instead.

However the patrolman declined the offer as he suspected the passenger of also being intoxicated.

As the police officer radioed in to arrange for the vehicle to be impounded a black mob began to assemble, including the men’s mother and a girl friend.

The mother is said to have “scolded” her intoxicated driver son, who, in turn, became very agitated and threatening, and, encouraged by the mob, began to resist arrest.

By this time the black mob had grown to over two hundred strong and police support had arrived on the scene.

The situation rapidly turned ugly and rocks, in addition to abuse, were hurled at the police in attendance – which led to both brothers and the mother being arrested and taken away.

After the police and the arrested departed, the story rapidly spread throughout Watts that police had not only assaulted the two brothers but their mother and a pregnant girlfriend as well.

They whole district erupted in an orgy of violence that saw cars driven by whites stopped and their occupants dragged out, beaten and robbed, and white-owned stores looted and burned.

As whole blocks went up in flames thousands of rioters fought police and prevented firemen from the Los Angeles Fire Department from attending the blazing buildings.

In an act of folly, that did little to placate the rioters, the head of the Los Angeles Police Department was subsequently widely reported in the media as described them as “monkeys in a zoo”.

The riot continued for six days and was only brought under control through the deployment of thousands of police officers and the National Guard.

Overall, an estimated $40 million in damage was caused as hundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed by the rampaging black rioters.

Most of the physical damage was confined to white-owned premises, reflecting the naked anti-white racism of the perpetrators.

According to the State of California’s official investigation into the riots: “In the ugliest interval, which lasted from Thursday through Saturday, perhaps as many as 10,000 Negroes took to the streets in marauding bands. They looted stores, set fires, beat up white passersby whom they hauled from stopped cars, many of which were turned upside down and burned, exchanged shots with law enforcement officers, and stoned and shot at firemen.”

By the time order was restored on Sunday, Aug. 15, 34 people were known to have died, over 1,000 had been injured and more than 600 buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire and looting.

The Watts race riot was by no means either the first or worse the US has experienced.

In the previous year, 1964, there had been no fewer than seven serious race riots, resulting in 5 deaths and 940 injuries.

Perhaps the worse year for racial violence was 1967, when 125 US cities experienced race riots of varying severity during its “long hot summer”.

In actual fact the two largest riots of that year occurred less than two weeks apart in July.

In Newark, New Jersey, a six day long riot left 26 dead and over 1,000 injured, and in Detroit, Michigan, a five day riot claimed 40 lives with hundreds injured.

In both cases the damage to property ran into ten of millions of dollars.

The following year in Britain, 1968, Enoch Powell made his prophetic “Rivers of Blood” speech – a speech that if acted upon then, in the light of the American experience, would not only have averted the civil unrest we have witnessed over the last week but also the tragic and bloody inter-communal violence that will inevitably arise from the “Balkanisation” of our country in the years ahead.

Enoch was right – but even now the political pygmies who infest Westminster dare not admit it and continue to heap up this nation’s funeral pyre.