09/27/2026
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21-year-old Colin Roach died of a gunshot wound in Stoke Newington Police Station in January 1983.
Police ruled it a su***de amidst suspicions of a cover-up, and the story became a tipping point for protests against police brutality in the U.K. Roach was mentioned in the lyrics of songs like “Bright Lights” by the Specials and “License Fi Kill” by Linton Kwesi Johnson. I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, the 1990 album that launched Irish singer Sinead O’Connor to superstardom, was released with a photo on the inner sleeve of Roach’s family protesting his death, with the caption “God’s place is the world, but the world is not God’s place.”
“England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses / It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds,” O’Connor sang on the album’s fifth track, reserving some of the song’s harshest words for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. O’Connor’s most controversial gestures of activism, including ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992, were still ahead of her, but she was already aware of the backlash she courted by speaking out against injustice. “These are dangerous days / To say what you feel is to dig your own grave,” she sang on “Black Boys on Mopeds.”
Welsh musician Karl Wallinger began working with Sinead O’Connor in the mid-’80s, around the time he left the Waterboys and formed his own band, World Party, and he was credited as an arranger on “Black Boys on Mopeds.” Wallinger died in 2024, just eight months after O’Connor’s passing. The American band Chevelle covered “Black Boys” in 2002, and the Irish band Fontaines D.C. covered it earlier this year for War Child’s charity compilation Help(2).
Three bonus Sinead O'Connor essential deep cuts:
- "Drink Before the War"
- "Emma's Song"
- "Your Green Jacket"