ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE.

Stop, think. Ask, are we doing fine?
Hold on a minute and listen to the line

By 1981 - Ju-ly it was bubbling hot
These days we all nearly forgot

Grove Street, a pitter patter of feet
Red Duster, a crowd begins to muster

Once dormant, the people start to rumble
Who'd thought buildings would fall and tumble

Those days in the July - pure fireworks in the sky
A peoples eruption, a volcano fighting against corruption

A riot, an engine - pistons firing
Milk floats taken for hotwi-ring

Rows and rows each one with a shield
But, like flowing lava, it they could not yield

Racquet Club and Rialto burnt to the ground
But, while evacuating the home there wasn't a sound

Stanley House - it was back then just the home of a mouse Caribbean centre, a place only some come enter

Parliament Street the main battle ground
With plenty bricks there to be found

Blacks and whites - who were the looters?
Don't know
Innocents shot by tear gas shooters

Milk bottles boiling with rage
A ghetto with bars like a cage

The incidents what started the fuss
The good old days
.................Of the friendly SUS.



Copyright © Black Out Productions | Patrick Graham
October 2005