Minority rights

Model answer

Many landlords refused to rent rooms to black people, putting up signs such as 'No coloured', which forced migrants into overcrowded housing with exploitative landlords. In employment a 'colour bar' kept many migrants out of jobs; for example, the Bristol Omnibus Company refused to employ black or Asian bus crews until 1963.

Model answer

Source A is useful because it identifies both the long-term and the short-term causes of the Brixton riots. The report saw the main cause as the anger and resentment of young black people against the police, and my knowledge supports this. In early April 1981 the Metropolitan Police's Operation Swamp 81 stopped nearly 1,000 people in less than a week, most of them young black men, and many had long resented the use of the 'sus' law against them. Anger had also grown after the New Cross fire in January 1981, in which 13 young black people died, when many felt the police and the press showed little concern. When a crowd clashed with police on 10 April, it led to serious rioting on 11 April. The report also points to deeper causes: racial disadvantage, high unemployment among young black people during the recession, and poor housing.

The provenance makes the source especially valuable. It was an official public inquiry led by Lord Scarman, a respected senior judge, who heard evidence from the police, local residents and community groups. This makes it more balanced than most newspaper accounts of the time, some of which blamed simple criminality.

However, the provenance also creates limits. The inquiry was set up by the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, and its purpose was to explain the riots and recommend reforms that would restore order and confidence. Scarman was cautious: he found that some officers were racially prejudiced but rejected the claim that the Metropolitan Police was racist as an institution. Many in the black community disagreed, and in 1999 the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded that the Met was institutionally racist. In addition, the report focuses on Brixton, while the riots that spread to Toxteth, Moss Side and Handsworth in July 1981 suggest that the causes were national as well as local.

Overall, Source A is very useful because it uses a wide range of evidence to explain both the long-term and immediate causes of the riots, but its cautious conclusion about police racism should be compared with other evidence.

Model answer

The Scarman Report was significant because it was the first official recognition that the way the police treated black communities, together with racial disadvantage, lay behind the riots of 1981. Lord Scarman, a senior judge appointed by the Home Secretary after the Brixton riots, concluded that the disorders were essentially an outburst of anger and resentment by young black people against the police. He found that racial disadvantage was a fact of British life, that young black people in Brixton suffered from high unemployment and poor housing, and that some officers had behaved in a racially prejudiced way. He criticised Operation Swamp 81. Many in the black community welcomed the fact that their grievances had been officially acknowledged.

The report was also significant because it led to concrete reforms. Scarman recommended recruiting more ethnic minority officers, improving training in community relations, making racially prejudiced behaviour a dismissal offence and setting up formal consultation between the police and local communities. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 made consultation a legal requirement and set rules for stop and search, requiring officers to have reasonable grounds and to keep records. The Police Complaints Authority, set up in 1985, added an independent element to investigating complaints, and lay visitors began to inspect police stations.

However, the report's significance was limited. Scarman rejected the claim that the Metropolitan Police was racist as an institution, and many felt that this let the police off too lightly. Progress in recruiting ethnic minority officers was slow, stop and search remained a major grievance, and there were further riots in Brixton and at Broadwater Farm in 1985.

In the long term, the report's significance has been judged in the light of later events. The murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the failures of the police investigation led to the Macpherson Report of 1999, which concluded that the Met was institutionally racist, going further than Scarman. The Scarman Report is therefore now seen as an important milestone that changed policing, but an incomplete one that did not tackle the deeper problems.

Model answer

War has been one of the most powerful forces changing the relationship between the people and the state in Britain, because wars forced rulers to ask for money, men and cooperation, and gave people leverage to demand rights in return. However, I do not think it has been the main factor overall. Many of the most important changes came in peacetime and were driven by economic change, new ideas, protest and government decisions.

In the Middle Ages war was central. King John's costly and unsuccessful wars in France, ending with defeat at Bouvines in 1214, led to the heavy taxes that drove the barons to force him to accept Magna Carta in 1215, which established that the king was under the law. The Barons' War against Henry III led to Simon de Montfort's Parliament of 1265, and Edward I's need for money for wars in Wales, Scotland and France made Parliaments including the Commons a regular part of government. The cost of the Hundred Years War led to the poll taxes that sparked the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. However, the decline of serfdom that followed was driven more by the economic effects of the Black Death than by war.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries war again brought dramatic change. The Civil War of 1642-49 ended with the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 and the abolition of the monarchy, and produced radical ideas such as the Levellers' belief that power came from the people. Although the monarchy was restored in 1660, the Bill of Rights of 1689 confirmed that the monarch must rule with Parliament. The debts of the Seven Years War led Britain to tax the American colonies, provoking the American Revolution, whose ideas of 'no taxation without representation' influenced British radicals. Yet these conflicts were themselves caused by other factors: religion, money and disputes over royal power in the 1640s, and ideas about representation in America.

In the nineteenth century most change came without war. Industrialisation and protest by the political unions led to the Great Reform Act of 1832, the Chartists kept the demand for democracy alive, and further Reform Acts in 1867 and 1884 resulted from party politics and pressure from below. The campaigns of the anti-slavery movement and the factory reformers changed the relationship between people and the state through ideas and public opinion. During the wars against revolutionary France, war actually brought repression rather than rights.

The two world wars transformed the relationship between people and state in the twentieth century. The First World War led directly to the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which gave the vote to all men over 21 and to women over 30. The Second World War led to Labour's landslide in 1945, the welfare state and the NHS in 1948, a new relationship in which the state took responsibility for people's welfare. It also created labour shortages that encouraged migration from the Commonwealth, beginning with the Windrush in 1948, which created a multi-racial society and raised new questions about rights. However, the rights of minorities were won mainly through protest, such as the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 and the Brixton riots of 1981, and through government action in the Race Relations Acts, not through war.

In conclusion, war has been the main factor at several turning points, especially 1215, the 1640s, 1918 and 1945. But across the whole period it was not the main factor. Many important changes, from the Great Reform Act to the Race Relations Acts and the Equal Pay Act, came in peacetime through economic change, new ideas, protest and the decisions of governments. War often speeded up or triggered change, but other factors more often determined its direction.