But when the agitated radio commentator gasped that the tube station had been closed, It dawned with a tense shiver that these events were happening In Brixton – three miles away in south London – and what had cosily seemed for so long could never happen here, was happening and here.

I remember travelling around the country in the weeks that followed, sharing with the rest of the population a sense of disbelief and perverse excitement. The newspapers carried full page pics of smashed police cars and gutted buildings and made laughable predictions as to where the next riot would be. At one point I was on a London-to-Sheffield train which was delayed for several hours en route. The passengers mooted apprehensively that Sheffield must be under siege (in fact, there had been a signal failure).

Bristol's St Pauls, Brixton's Railton Road ('the front line') and Liverpool's Toxteth are now etched into the British national consciousness. With hindsight, the events which took place were inevitable. In areas that had endured years of neglect and deprivation and where the ethnic population were being subjected to an intensified police presence.

The notorious 'sus' law had been introduced (under which anybody could be stopped and searched merely on suspicion of having been involved in crime – used mostly against black youths), and was enforced with vigour and glee by the uniformed thugs of the newly created Special Patrol Group. The tension finally boiled over.

On a cold day in 1985 I walked down that same 'front line', still an evidently run-down area with a clogging greyness in the atmosphere, past a new estate entered by a road named Marcus Garvey Way, to meet Linton Kwesi Johnson in the modest offices of Race Today.

Linton Kwesi Johnson, 'reggae poet', made four albums between 1978 and 1980, Dread Beat'n'Blood, Forces Of Victory, Bass Culture and a dub set titled UK In Dub. While his written work had been published by Race Today since the mid-70s, he combined his words with music to find a wider audience that wouldn't normally come into contact with black poetry.

He describes what he has achieved as "something totally new in the fusing of poetry and music. Bob Marley's songs are poetry, but what I did was something different – and for the first time, combined words with music which related directly to the experience of blacks in Britain.

"The success of the records happened so quickly that I was getting carried along with it. I wanted to step back and think about what I was doing and what I wanted to do in the future. I never set out to be a professional recording artist".

He spent four unrecorded years making numerous live appearances around the globe, usually with a band, but sometimes unaided – just voice, word and emotion. He made a documentary for BBC TV on the Carifesta carnival in the Caribbean, a radio series on Jamaican pop music ("which gave me many headaches and sleepless nights, but with my research I was able to educate myself a little bit deeper into Jamaican culture and Caribbean, culture generally") and introduced the late Michael Smith to British audiences, co-producing his Mi Cyaan Believe It album.

Linton has recently released his own new album, Making History, which he describes as "my most accomplished record without doubt. I was able to bring to bear that body of experience I had built up over the years of working with words and music together. I think it is the best balance I've arrived at between words and music."

The title track and the preceding Di Great lnsohreckshan deal directly with the events of 1981 and celebrate their relevance for black people in Britain.

"The riots were presented as race riots. In the papers, when in fact they weren't. They represented massive insurrection against the excesses of the British police force, not only in London but in other parts of the country, and it was in the offing for a long time. I have often had to explain that young whites participated in the riots as well as young blacks, and in no case were there anti-white or anti-black riots. It was anti-police, anti-state rioting."

"It represented a turning point in the history of struggle of blacks in Britain against colonial oppression, and it showed clearly that we had moved from the stage of resistance to the stage of open rebellion."

And what was the effect on the white population outside the cities?

"Well, that is very difficult to guess, but I'm sure a lot were shocked by what was going on and the very scale of the thing. Nearly every major inner city in Britain eventually had uprisings. Even in places as far away as Cheshire, where there are no blacks and young whites were rioting – I dunno if they took their inspiration from... was it the Stranglers or one of them groups who wanted a White Riot?" (it was The Clash) "Well, I dunno if they were Inspired by The Clash or the action of the young blacks in Brixton but a lot of young whites did riot.

"And at that stage there was talk of the army being brought in and a lot of people must have been frightened by it, but I don't think it's anything new in the political culture of Britain. One only has to look at the history of this country, It's not a new element introduced by blacks. The British working class have always had that capacity to make the kind of mass action when their backs are up against the wall. Which has happened very, very frequently in the history of this country.

"And the miners now must have brought home to people who may have felt that kind of action was unjustified that the action is, in fact, justified, because they themselves have been subjected to the most horrendous acts of brutality by the police on the picket lines. I think the miners' strike has transformed the image of the old traditional British bobby (a cheerful, ample bellied PC Plod type character) in a lot of English people's minds. And I think the blacks have played a very important part In exposing the myth of the British bobby."

Linton's words are often so accurate, so spot-on and so snugly fitted to their musical accompaniment that I'm surprised when he tells me he still finds writing a very hard thing to do.

"I'm not a naturally gifted writer, y'know. Over the last 14 years or so I've been basically serving my apprenticeship as a poet. I've developed reggae poetry and taken it as far as it can go. It's now been described as 'dub poetry', a term I don't use to describe my work at all because it's far too nebulous and narrow in terms of poetry. I think I've taken that form as far as it can go and there are other people involved In it now: Mutabaruka, Oku Onoura and Poets In Writing, a group of poets based around the Jamaican School of Drama.

"I think a lot of dub poetry has been reduced to a formula, and people think if they string a few words together in a kind of sing-song fashion and make them rhyme or talk about Africa and revolution and all that, then that's dub poetry. I think there is more to it than that. It has to measure up to all the artistic standards of poetry, there must be some craft in it. A lot has been reduced to formula."

A few months ago, a chap called Smiley Culture graced the UK Top Ten with a record titled Police Officer, a bright and witty tale of being stopped in his car by the police, hiding his ganja in the glovebox and being let off by virtue of his fame as a singer. It fits into the DJ tradition but is delivered in the new 100 words-per-minute fast style. It was recorded and released by Fashion Records, a tiny studio and label up the road in Battersea.

"I think it's really refreshing to hear an intelligent D.J. chat intelligent lyrics, because a lot of DJ's just shout a load of nonsense. Smiley is a fellow who has a remarkable verbal agility, a very keen sense of rhythm and timing, and can entertain you with intelligent lyrics which are also very witty. I think he is very talented and will go far. Of course, the record is now in the charts and I don't know if he will be able to sustain that. For a lot of radio stations and a lot of pop people it is like a new gimmick, but as we know, the reggae DJ act has a history as old as the history of reggae itself.

"Him and the other fellow, Papa Levi, have brought about this new rapid style DJ which has caught on in Jamaica. The tables have turned in so far as the British DJs are now influencing the Jamaican D.J.s."

Much of Linton's energies are devoted to Creation For Liberation, the cultural arm of Race Today. Its origins date back to 1978 and a charity concert in Manchester given by Linton, PIL, John Cooper-Clarke and the now defunct reggae band, Merger.

"The idea behind Creation For Liberation stemmed from our conception of a need to provide a means for the development of artistic and cultural expression of the struggles of blacks and Asians in Britain. And to provide a forum for the clarification of intellectual ideas. It's necessary in a struggle. It's all based on the idea that cultural movement goes hand in hand with the political one."

Among numerous other events, Creation For Liberation has staged a forum with writers from the People's Theatre Of Kenya, arranged the first and second exhibition of black artists in Britain and is currently involved in an international festival of poetry.

For Linton, his undoubted organisational skills are just as important as his ability to create unique and captivating records. It's all part of the one struggle and the making of history.