1985 Handsworth riots 1500 police officers drafted into the area, about 45 shops looted and burnt, and a trail of damage running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As well as racial tension, unemployment was seen as a major factor in the riots; by the time of the riots, fewer than 5% of the black population to have left school that summer had found employment. The riots were the first of a series of similar riots across the country during the autumn of 1985, notably the Broadwater Farm riot in London which also resulted in a fatality (the murder of policeman Keith Blakelock).
Old Park Farm Old Park Farm Old Park Farm is a residential area of Dudley, West Midlands (formerly Worcestershire and Staffordshire), England. It was developed in the early 1950s by Dudley County Borough council as a council housing estate in the extreme west of the town near the border with Sedgley (which the land on the estate had been part of until 1926) on rural land next to the Wren's Nest estate that had been built in the 1930s. Several private houses were built on the estate as well. The estate consists of 'The Greens' (which consists of many roads named after types