All the areas suffered from poor housing (mostly dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries), high unemployment and particular problems with racial tensions.
According to the subsequently commissioned Scarman report the riots were a spontaneous outburst of built-up resentment sparked by particular incidents.
Lord Scarman stated that "complex political, social and economic factors" created a "disposition towards violent protest".
However the relocation of industry, rising popularity of homes on new private housing estates since the 1930s, poor connections and the influx of migrant workers had led to a downfall in their fortunes and the large Victorian terraces and villas were often divided up into low-rent bedsits, and many of those still existing as houses had been bought by landlords who let them to tenants.
The First Thatcher ministry (Conservative Party) elected in May 1979 had instituted new powers for the police under the Vagrancy Act 1824 to stop and search people based on only a "reasonable suspicion" that an offence had been committed[citation needed] – hence their common name of "sus laws".
This level of unemployment, not seen since the 1930s (Great Depression in the United Kingdom), had led to mass discontent in the working-class areas of Britain most affected by the recession.
[9] On 18 January 1981, thirteen Black youths died in the New Cross Fire in London when a house was reportedly petrol bombed.
The police quickly dismissed a racial motive for the apparent arson attack;[10] and the local Black community were dismayed by the indifference shown in the press towards the deaths.
15,000 people marched demanding action to Central London, in the largest Black issue demonstration seen in the UK.
On 28 March 1981, Enoch Powell — by then an Ulster Unionist MP, but still an influence on the Conservative Party — gave a speech in which he warned of the dangers of a "racial civil war" in Britain.
Powell had been dismissed from the shadow cabinet in 1968 by the then Tory leader Edward Heath following his controversial Rivers of Blood speech in which he predicted mass civil unrest if Commonwealth immigration continued.
The terms of reference for the enquiry were "to inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10–12 April 1981 and to report, with the power to make recommendations".
He concluded that it was essential that "people are encouraged to secure a stake in, feel a pride in, and have a sense of responsibility for their own area".
The riots were reportedly sparked by the arrest of a man near the Acapulco Cafe, Lozells and a police raid on the Villa Cross public house in the same area.
[18] The Merseyside police force had, at the time, a poor reputation within the Black community for stopping and searching young Black men in the area, under the "sus" laws, and the perceived heavy-handed arrest of Leroy Alphonse Cooper on Friday 3 July, watched by an angry crowd, led to a disturbance in which three policemen were injured.
Disturbances in the districts of Southall and Battersea resulted in fire stations being targeted by rioters and ultimately evacuated for the safety of staff.
There was also rioting in Bradford, Halifax, Blackburn, Preston, Birkenhead, Ellesmere Port, Chester, Stoke, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, High Wycombe, Southampton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Knaresborough, Leeds, Hull, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Stockport, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Luton, Maidstone, Aldershot and Portsmouth.