Throughout the eighties, with Margaret Thatcher in power, reoccuring events of police violence and brutality shocked Black England. Such experiences derived from institutionalized racism led to the riots of Brixton, Liverpoool or Handsworth.
In 1989, Sinead O’Connor recorded a song that reflected on this reality of a white supremacist England and set a counter-image to the glorious idea of Great Britain:
Steel Pulse are one of the most successful reggae bands–not just in the U.K. but in the world. Lead singer and founder David Hinds, the son of Jamaican immigrants, grew up in Handsworth, Birmingham. In this interview he remembers his youth as growing up in a time of racial tension, conflicting upon him at an early age what black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois or Paul Gilroy have conceived of as “double-consciousness”.
Listen to the interview here: Babylon Is Falling: David Hinds on the Early Years of Steel Pulse and His Youth in England on afropop.org
A famous song from their first record:
In 1982, Steel Pulse released another great album, True Democracy:
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