Europe Street Wars

By John Moody.

The ingredients for violence were similar: angry crowds of young people, edgy police officers determined to enforce the law, sensitive social issues with no easy answers. In both Britain and West Germany last week, those volatile components ignited into bloody street rioting. The violence revealed an appetite for lawlessness among young people convinced they live in societies unresponsive to their problems.

In both countries, high unemployment among youth was cited as a contributing factor. In Britain, angry crowds of blacks gave vent to feelings of injustice. In West Germany, where thousands of youths rampaged in 16 cities, the instigators seemed to be experienced rabble-rousers in search of an arena for their violence. They found it in Frankfurt, where a branch of the right-wing National Democratic Party had scheduled a weekend meeting. Because the N.D.P. is regarded by many as a haven for neo-Nazis, its gatherings inevitably bring protests. After demonstrators held a peaceful rally, several hundred hooligans, mostly young, some wearing hoods and black leather jackets, began hurling bottles and stones. In response, the police brought out a water-cannon truck. As it sped to the scene, the vehicle ran over a protester, killing him.

Chanting "Police murderers!" and "Fascists!" the crowd smashed windows, looted shops and burned cars. Similar outbreaks occurred in Stuttgart, West Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and other major cities. After five days of violence, dozens of people had been injured and about 500 detained. Police believe many of the rioters were left-wing provocateurs affiliated with terrorist groups. Frankfurt's police spokesman called the troublemakers in his city "professional rowdies who enjoy destruction under some pretext of political motivation."

The violence in Britain began in Brixton, a south London district with a predominantly black West Indian population. In two nights of arson and looting, 74 people were injured and more than 200 arrested. Brixton was especially hard hit by race riots in 1981, and the wounds they left had only just begun to heal.

! The trigger for the violence was an early-morning raid on a house by nine police officers searching for a teenager who was suspected of possessing a sawed-off shotgun. The youth's mother confronted the police after they had battered down her front door. Apparently fearing that the armed youth was inside, a police inspector fired a .38-cal. pistol. The shot struck the woman, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. As word of the shooting spread, crowds gathered outside the Brixton Road police station and began throwing gasoline bombs and bricks. Rampaging youths, some as young as 13, looted businesses, set fire to cars and poured oil on roadways. Reporters who arrived to cover the rioting were beaten. Two white women were raped. Later in the week, rioting broke out in the port city of Liverpool's Toxteth district, also the scene of racial disturbances in 1981.

British authorities refused to blame blacks as a group for causing the riots. Police Commander Alex Marnoch, whose district includes Brixton, charged that "the criminal and hooligan element took advantage of the situation for their own ends." That sober assessment might be applied to the authors of senseless violence in both countries.

With reporting by Steven Holmes/London and Rhea Schoenthal/Bonn