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Remembering the Broadwater Farm riots: 40 years on

Hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science and LSE Students' Union

In-person and online public event (LSE campus, venue tbc to ticketholders)

Speakers

Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka

Kate Osamor MP

Dr Roxana Willis

Chair

Professor Coretta Phillips

Four decades after the Broadwater Farm uprising, the events of October 1985 continue to resonate in the ongoing struggle against systemic racism.

Throughout the 1980s, radical community-led co-ops and organisations emerged within London's housing estates to challenge their labelling as 'symbolic locations' – a highly racialised term used by the Metropolitan Police to categorise densely Black populated areas. On 6 October 1985, the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham became the site of one of the most significant moments of civil disobedience in British history. Three men, known as the Tottenham 3, were wrongly convicted and later acquitted for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock after a long campaign for justice.

This event explores legal, political and community-based racial justice work that emerged from these events, examining methods of resistance that continue to address present-day questions of race, racism and social inequality.

Meet our speakers and chair 

Clive Chijioke Nwonka (@CJNwonka) is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society within UCL’s Faculty of the Arts and Humanities, and a faculty associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Redmond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. He is a senior visiting fellow at the LSE III and Professor in Practice at the British Film Institute (BFI).

Kate Osamor (@KateOsamor) is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Edmonton and Winchmore Hill, having served as the MP solely for Edmonton from 2015-2024 before boundary changes. Kate is the Government’s Trade Envoy for east Africa where she is working to boost the UK’s trade connections with countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Kate also serves as the Chair of the UK branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, where she uses her role to foster relations with Commonwealth countries.

Roxana Willis is Assistant Professor in Law at LSE. Her research investigates the legal system through the prism of structural inequality, with a focus on class and race. In addition to conducting long-term ethnographic research, Roxana teaches criminal law and two optional courses on decolonization, abolitionism, and law.

Coretta Phillips is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy. She joined the Department of Social Policy in 2001, and her research interests lie in the field of race, ethnicity, crime, criminal justice and social policy. Since 2022, her major research efforts have focused on a multi-disciplinary ESRC project providing the first systematic, comprehensive and historically grounded account of the crime and criminal justice experiences of Gypsies and Travellers in England since the 1960s.

More about this event

This event celebrates Black History Month and is hosted in partnership with the London School of Economics Students' Union (@lsesu).

The event is supported by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (@AFSEE_LSE), the International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) and the LSE Law School (@LSELaw).

Join us on campus or register to watch the event online at LSE Live. LSE Live is the home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

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This public event is free and open to all. This event will be a hybrid event, with an in-person audience and an online audience.

For the in person event: You can request one ticket via the online ticket request form, which will open after 12noon on Monday 8 September. The ticket line will stay open until all tickets have been allocated. 

For the online event: Registration for this event will open in early September.

For any queries email events@lse.ac.uk.

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