Barrington

Barrington Brown

Audio Interview Monday 26th September 2023 

Location Sandringham Road, Dalston 

“I was born in Dalston around the corner from here. My mum and dad came here in from Jamaica in 1962 and even though they were together, they weren’t married and that alone in our culture was a big no no. My mum Muriel Brown was a Chinese migrant that ended up in Jamaica at a very young age as she was adopted. Her maiden name was Chin and then she married my dad her name became Brown. My dad Ralph Emmanuel Brown came to this country at a time when it was still war torn and bombed out. He came with the same view as everybody else, to work five years and go back to Jamaica. In those five years they had me and my brother and I also had a big sister back in Jamaica.” 

“My dad managed to buy a seven-bedroom house for £5000 on Stoke Newington Common. Anyone who used to come from Jamaica used to come and stay in my dad’s house. My sister who had been left with my grandmother in Jamaica tuned up when she was fourteen. We clicked straight away. She cut my hair and picked my spots. Her birth name is Joan but her pet name was Pearl. When my dad came to this area, he just came to work and save his money like everyone else. He got caught up, had kids, got married and bought a house. St Johns church right here on Sandringham Road was where he sent me every week to sing in the choir.”

“I got though the local schools around here and at sixteen I got my first job in the local chippy on Rectory Road. I used to manage the big chipper machine and was responsible for cleaning it and putting the potatoes into the machine. I ended up running that shop until I got a job with a record company on Osman Road and that’s where I met various music artists, reggae stars. They cut records in the space and I ended up being a supervisor and doing the graveyard shift from 11pm until 7am. That was the best shift for me because I could have a smoke. I thought I was doing really well but they sacked me, and I think it was because I smoked weed. I was devastated because that was one of the best jobs I ever had. They would press records by Eddie Grant and Gregory Issacs and loads of reggae singers. After losing that job I felt lost and did some stupid things that got me into trouble and a spell in prison. My dad caught me with a flick knife when I was a teenager. I had to think quickly so I said I used it to peel oranges. He told me that if I got caught with it I would probably end up going to jail. He was right.”

“We would all go the Rio Cinema in Dalston, on Friday nights to watch Kung Fu films and then head straight over to Sandringham Road where we could find a party. The road was black owned back then, and we all regulars at the barbers, ‘All Nations’ there, alongside Johnson’s café. There was an upstairs where people bought food and you could buy a big dumpling with meat inside for 50p. Downstairs people played cards, dominoes and you could get a bit of weed. It was Caribbean food that was affordable and sustainable and it was also a place of social gathering.”

“In the 80’s, Sandringham Road was a frontline which means no police came down here. The same guy that owned the café owned half of Sandringham Road and another black man owned most of the other properties. So two black people owned most of these houses and rented them out to black families. Property back then was easy to access and affordable as people did not want to live in Dalston. The Lord Stanley pub also on Sandringham Road is another place where the Caribbean community would congregate. We had lock in’s and after 2am you had to tap on the glass, and you would be let in. That’s where the community would have a good drink and enjoy themselves freely. We also had a centre around the corner known as ‘Little Jamaica’, where you could play table tennis and get food and weed. There was a police station just opposite and they would raid these houses along here and confiscate the weed. They would put half in the incinerator and burn it and the other half they would give to the boys to sell. The youth would end up selling police drugs. That was Stoke Newington Police, who are notorious. It was so vibrant along here back in the day, Sandringham Road never slept. It was twenty-four seven. There was a gambling house on this corner open twenty-four hours a day. Black people like to socialise together, and this includes sitting together, chat, laugh, moan, drink and eat.”

“All the houses would host parties and so if you went to one house and did not like it then you went on the next house along. Black communities hosting their own parties all started when I was a kid. My dad used to have his friends over and they would drink and play dominoes, and my mum would cook food like patties and curry goat. Then one of my uncles would start playing some music. And this is what it evolves from because there were no clubs for them to go to at that time. The Four Aces and All Nations did provide venues for black audiences, but there were not many. The parties on Sandringham kept going for years, changing the music genres as they developed and evolved. There would have been reggae, lovers rock, ska, blue beat and the other reggae would come later and was known as bashment. This had a totally different crowd, and the music seemed more violent.”

“My generation were different to our parents and if you deny a group of people basic rights then what happens. They riot. I remember the riots here in 1981 because I was on Mare Street and my sister rang me up and said, ‘where are you’? And I said, ‘I am outside the Hostel in Dalston’ and she said, ‘yes I can see you on the TV’. They had helicopter’s filming all around and she had spotted me in the middle of the riots. She told me ‘Go home’ which I did. When I came out again, I could just see burnt our cars long Sandringham Road. The police were standing on the corner watching it happen. When that happened, the powers that be told the police officers ‘do not engage’. So you come out here now and your car is burning down now, the police offices are standing around all on the corner doing nothing. The police looked frozen.”

“A lot of those boys that used to be in Johnson’s café listened to their parents, worked hard and got qualifications. But when they went to get a job and were interviewed, they were told ‘we will phone you later’. But the call never came. Their attitude was, ‘we sacrificed a lot, we went to school, and we got the grades and we still can’t get a job and we keep getting stopped by the police’. The Sus laws. They tried to do the right things like their parents did. My dad told me it was murder when he first came here. You see me and you walking along the road together. well back then it could not have worked. We were segregated and tensions were rising. Things were getting very sticky. That’s why they had the Notting Hill Carnival, to encourage people to dance together and talk. The carnival was an attempt to bring people together, from all different backgrounds.”