The New Cross Fire 1981 - Fourteen Young People, One Night, and the Silence That Followed
The Unrecorded: True CrimePlay episode
Show notes
On the 18th of January 1981, fourteen young Black people were killed in a fire at a birthday party in New Cross, South London. They were between the ages of 14 and 22. Most of them had grown up on the same streets. They knew each other.
What followed was one of the most significant, and most ignored, moments in Black British history.
The press barely covered it. The government said nothing. And so 20,000 people took to the streets of London in what became the Black People's Day of Action, the largest Black civil rights march Britain had ever seen.
The cause of the fire was never established in law. No one was ever charged. The inquest returned an open verdict. And the fourteen names have never been given the public recognition they deserve.
In this episode, I'm telling the story of the community that refused to be silent, even when the rest of the country was.
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