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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 177 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 177, July/August 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Cop Killer
Don Gorgon
X Press Books £4.99
The black Hackney based publishing company X Press has enjoyed a meteoric rise since the publication of its first novel, the controversial Yardie by Victor Headley in 1992. Yardie, a tale of Jamaican drug running gangs in inner city London, has sold over 12,000 copies and helped explode the myth that working class blacks are either illiterate or disinterested in reading.
X Press attempts to provide accessible black fiction and this is reflected in its promotional techniques. By contrast with the wine and cheese parties which accompany ‘high brow’ book launches, X Press advertises its books by flyposting target areas such as Brixton and Stoke Newington and the books are often sold directly outside clubs.
The success of Yardie has enabled X Press to provide a launching pad for other black writers ‘who didn’t know they had a novel inside them’. Four of its most recent publications are Excess, Headley’s sequel to Yardie, Peter Kalu’s Lick Shot, Don Gorgon’s Cop Killer and Baby Father by Patrick Augustus.
The best of the quartet by far is Gorgon’s Cop Killer, a book no doubt partly inspired by Ice T’s controversial rap song of the same name. Like its musical equivalent, Cop Killer is a tale of fury and revenge against the victimisation, incarceration and violence that blacks suffer at the hands of police.
The plot may not be entirely convincing, but we can certainly empathise with Lloyd, the hero of the book. The police murder of his mother calls to mind the shootings of Cynthia Jarrett and Cherry Groce, but also acts as a wider comment on the contempt with which black people are treated. The shooting of an innocent black mother is covered up, whilst a £100,000 reward is offered for the capture of the cop killer.
The book also provides some perceptive insights into the reality of life in Britain for most blacks. At one point Lloyd and his brother discuss the meaning of the term ‘black British’. They discuss warmly how many black people seek to identify with their roots, speaking patois and wearing red, gold and green.
However, the conclusion is that there is no going back – ‘it would be like going to another world’. This then raises the question of how we deal with our oppression. Gorgon offers us a choice between organising campaigns, the preferred option of Lloyd’s brother, or Lloyd’s personal mission for revenge. The book’s subtitle ‘There ain’t no justice – just me’ shows where the author stands.
None of the other books compare with Cop Killer, despite the fact that they deal with matters such as the threat of Nazism and single parenthood which are central to the lives of many black people in Britain.
However, these issues are tackled from the standpoint of affluent blacks, a sharp suited black detective, successful ‘baby fathers’ and Jamaican drug barons – figures who are hardly representative of the majority of blacks. It would be depressing to think that these were the only avenues open to black people.
The great merit of these books is that they do attempt to root themselves in the squalid racist society which denies a decent life chance to millions of people. The new encouragement of black authors which X Press has kickstarted should be welcomed and hopefully the united black and white struggles which we build can provide them with fitting themes and subject matter.
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