麻豆社

Olga says...I was at work. In the afternoon, I realised that something wasn't quite right, just by the movement of people up and down Railton and Atlantic Roads.

We heard that somebody had been stabbed and somehow the police were involved.

I was trying to finish off what I was doing to get to the venue. But that brought me down to a real low thinking oh, my gosh, what's going to happen now?

I heard that David was stopped by the police. His best man called me to say we're trying to get him out. They were going on his stag do. He was almost arrested, which, thank goodness, his best man had the presence of mind to divert him away from.

There was loads of police activity going on; it was there every few steps you took. You’d see the police vans drive up Brixton Road or Railton Road. Then you'd see the doors swing open and the police coming out. They’d get boys in the van. And we heard stories that some of them were beaten up in those vans.

There were a lot of rumours going around. It was tense.

I was nervous and I just wanted everything to be perfect. But it wasn't that way.

On the day of the wedding, the church was on Brixton Road, not too far from the police station. David got me a Rolls Royce, one of those vintage, open top ones. My dad and myself drove into Brixton, it was very quiet. Normally you would see people milling around shopping, but I didn't see any of that.

At the time, I just put it down to nerves. But when the ceremony finished and we went outside, that's when I realised that, no, it wasn't me being nervous. There was something happening. We could hear police sirens going up and down, up and down.

We were lining up for photographs when the photographer called a halt. You could see how nervous he was.

We started driving towards the venue, but the police stopped us. They wanted to cordon off the area because there was a disturbance going on.

We remonstrated, and said it's just literally minutes up the road. One of the police officers said, let them go. And as we inched along, all we could hear was somebody just got married, somebody just got married, somebody just got married. And everything just stopped. And the crowd parted and we went up Brixton Road. And then they carried on doing what they were doing.

It was a really surreal moment.

When we arrived, our master of ceremonies asked us to go and greet our guests and thank them for coming and do whatever it is that brides and grooms do. Then the D.J. was supposed to put on Etta James’ ‘At Last’.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, somebody shouted fire and we had to corral the people out and get them down safely because it was two flights of steps to get out of the building.

So instead of dancing and doing what newlyweds do, we were there trying to get to grips with the fact that we just got married and there's a riot going on.

David and I went home. We changed and walked back to Brixton just to see what was happening.

And it was utter devastation.

We could see the damage that was done to the shops, the mannequins that were strewn all over the streets. At that stage, we were thinking, is this going to be our legacy now? What could we do to start married life on a proper footing? And yet we couldn't because we knew the community was in pain.

Martin Luther King said that a riot is the language of the unheard.

And we had been unheard for a long time.

Olga and David went on to have twin daughters – Susan and Sarah.

Olga says...My daughters’ experience has been different to mine. They haven't faced any overt discrimination. But Michael has been stopped by the police a few times.

Society has changed. Racism is more subtle. Things haven’t progressed as we would have liked them to.

For me, it's a shame that Black Lives Matter has to exist. I would have hoped that within my lifetime things would have changed and we would all be treated equally. I hope I'm alive to see it.

As told to Ben Robinson.

In April 1981, Brixton suffered particularly high rates of unemployment, poor housing, and crime. Swamp 81, a plainclothes police operation to reduce crime in Brixton, was launched in the area ten days before the riots. Its use of stop and search raised tensions with the community, who felt young black men were being harassed.

The Metropolitan Police say that, over the years, the force has undergone enormous change, and it is a different force to the one it was 40 years ago. Their current commissioner says that racism will not be tolerated.

Brixton: Flames on the Frontline is a new 8-part episode podcast launching on 麻豆社 Sounds on April 9th.