The Specials Ghost Town

July 1981. Riots have broken out around Britain. Charles and Diana are about to marry. And backstage at Top of The Pops, The Specials are falling apart.

It was that rarest of things, a song dealing with subjects found in The Economist while the band were on the cover of Smash Hits. It was about Glasgow and Liverpool and Newcastle. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence." It was about the north." In 1981, when speaking to the New York Times, he insisted: "We were talking about riots in Bristol and Brixton. It was about the recession and three million people on the dole. It was a track which bottled the discord, racial tensions and societal breakdown happening in the UK that summer. "It was bizarre. But it was a great way to bow out." These were sparked by tensions between police and the local community in Liverpool. It was all over the place. Police were said to have mounted a campaign of harassment against the black community in south London.