Where's the pistol?

I had only minutes before walked through my front door, a quarter of an hour away from Coldharbour Lane in Brixton, where I had spent the late afternoon and early evening with my mates. Flicking through the television menu, I encountered Ross Kemp's series on gangs from across the world. He was off to investigate south London gangs, following the spate of murders of black boys in the capital.

Shots of Coldharbour Lane and Peckham loomed in the opening shots. Kemp, wearing his bad boy pose, as we know him in EastEnders, drew his authenticity from the fact that he lived there as a student when street muggers infested both communities, "snatching the weekend shopping from the elderly". It was not as I remembered it, but I allowed for dramatic interpretation.

For an hour, Kemp could find very little by way of gangs. He introduced us to a former gang leader in Peckham and a handful of well-dressed teenagers, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. One braggart boasted that guns could be obtained in the community with relative ease, and they could be had just around the corner. When asked what make of guns are available he, with the help of the others, rattled off a series of brand names as if he were a gunsmith.

A youth worker claimed to have seen a ten-year-old armed with a MAC-10, and in the same breath informed viewers that this most vicious of handguns could be had for £3,000 to £5,000.

This extended report (not a documentary) sought to introduce us to the Crips, described as an international gang with appropriate colours. Half a dozen stragglers emerged from the dark in a Brixton back street to explain how vicious and violent they were. Instead, they came over as articulate young men who had put themselves forward to represent a non-existent reality. Again they tried to convince viewers that guns could be easily had, "just around the corner".

One expected to see at least a single pistol or hear a gunshot or two to bring London gangs in line with those from New York, LA or Brazil, where Ross Kemp had also filmed, and so convince us that these boasts are for real. But not a shot was heard, nor a pistol seen, quite different from the weapons on display in those other parts of the world where Kemp had been.

The only pistol on display in the entire programme was a toy gun bought at a sweet shop, where half a dozen noisy demonstrators against guns were hastily assembled for the camera.

The sole authentic voice in the film came from the lips of an officer from Operation Trident, who spoke of young men with knives who have no idea that someone would die if stabbed in certain parts of the body. Readers will remember that I once wrote in this column of my experience at a funeral of a 16-year-old youth. His friends explained death as follows: "Shoot him here through the heart and he appears around the corner as another person."

I recently came across a monograph I published when I edited Race Today. It contained two poems by Linton Kwesi Johnson, one entitled "Five Nights of Bleeding". In it, he brings his poetic sensibility to evoke moments which took place in Brixton:

Madness tight on the heads of the rebels

That was in 1973, a precursor to ten years of ceaseless revolt which outstripped the inter necine strife of those bitter nights. Will this process repeat itself in some other form?

We shall see.