Documentarians Ken Fero (ULTRAVIOLENCE) and Tariq Mehmood have created an important, compelling, but problematic film retelling the story of the Bradford 12 - a group of British-Asians tried for creating Molotov cocktails to defend their community from violent racist thugs.
The film does a superb job in situating us back in late 70s and early 80s Britain, complete with the rise of the violent far-right and a police force that could be just as racist. 1981 was a particularly bad summer of riots, with the memory of Southall fresh in everyone's memory. So, when the violence came to Bradford, a group of activists realised that they would have to defend themselves. They were arrested for being in possession of petrol bombs, but got off largely because a) the weapons hadn't been used and b) because the police manifestly lied about the threat level to the local community. Nonetheless, it was a radical judgment because it basically confirmed that immigrant communities could not rely on police protection.
This film benefits enormously from having so many surviving members of the 12, as well as the wider activist community, able to recall the events in their own voices, whether in archive news footage or in present day interviews. This makes the film an incredibly important historical document. The conviction, passion but also nuance with which they make their case is impressive.
Where the film falls down is in how it chooses to give or withhold context, and when it chooses or fails to interrogate the larger narrative of goodies versus baddies. The first jarring example of this is showing the PLFP terrorist Leila Khaled as just another talking head in support of anti-racist activists everywhere. Not only is this disingenuous, it's also dangerous, because it undermines a key part of the argument of the 12 about how they were not actually radical terrorists at all.
The second jarring example is of how the film-makers choose to handle the 12 admiring the IRA terrorist and hunger-striker Bobby Sands, even debating whether they should follow his example. You have to get to the end credits to see that some of the original funders of the 12's legal defence were Sinn Fein too. Again, I find it really bizarre not to more critically examine the links between criminal funding of terrorism flowing into the 12's defence. And I also find it weird that we never interrogate where the line is between defending yourself from street thugs and waging an actual war of terrorism on innocent civilians. Maybe the film-makers don't see one, but I suspect the 12 might have done.
The third example of taking a rather crude political stance and then not really interrogating it, is the way in which Margaret Thatcher is depicted: cursory footage and a voiceover from actress Taj Atwal, saying that Thatcher is "cold, monstrous" and inciting racial violence. That's not actually what this footage shows. It actually shows Thatcher saying that immigration may well provoke resentment, which is manifestly what did happen then, and is happening now. That doesn't mean SHE is resentful or racist or inciting racism. The documentarians would have been on more solid ground to find footage or speak to the introduction of extra powers of Stop and Search, which did indeed inflame tensions between the immigrant community and the police.
Finally, I found the prologue of the film, which attempts to draw a straight line between the early 80s riots and the current pro-Gaza activist movement cursory and ill-developed.
All of which is to say that I found the construction and choices made by the directors questionable and alienating, and I say that as a second-gen Asian immigrant whose parents lived through exactly the racial abuse that this documentary depicts. That said, the core content of the film - the all-important archive footage and contemporary interviews - remain powerful and important.
REBELLION has a running time of 80 minutes. It does not yet have a commercial release date. Both BFI London Film Festival screenings are sold out.
