Linton Kwesi Johnson’s imagined letter from Brixton Prison to his mother back in Jamaica, describing how a young black man was fitted up and beaten by the British police, is so heartbreaking I still find it hard to listen without weeping.

Taken from his first book of poetry (I think) and recorded, with Dennis Bovell providing the music, for his second album Forces Of Victory (1979), it comes from a time of great racial discrimination and police brutality in England’s inner cities.

The National Front (and later the British Movement) were a prominent, if not popular, force on the streets and the police often behaved like their henchmen, routinely stopping and searching – and beating, and arresting – black men under the controversial ‘Sus’ law.

On the other side of the fence was the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, in which LKJ – alongside punk bands like The Clash and reggae bands like Steel Pulse – was a key figure in the fight against this discrimination, his poems opening many eyes to these injustices, which may have gone unnoticed to those living outside the inner cities.

Back in the mid-to-late Seventies, LKJ was a familar sight and sound for me, supporting punk bands with his poetry – sometimes, like this, backed by dubwise grooves concocted by Dennis Bovell, sometimes a capella – in his trademark suit and pork pie hat.

Creating a link between the familiar toasting of Jamaican DJs on the B-side of reggae singles and the hip-hop revolution that would fuse poetry and music into the new form of rap, he opened the eyes of many young people, including me, to the injustices going on among the Afro-Caribbean community, especially in the inner cities.

Johnson was from Brixton (via his birthplace of Jamaica) and I lived in Hackney, as I still do – at that time the poorest borough in Britain. Every day I would see police routinely stopping and harassing young black men, using that notorious ‘Sus’ law, which came into the spotlight, leading to its eventual abolition, after the death of a teacher, Blair Peach, killed by police on a protest march in Southall in 1979.

LKJ made a poem for him too (Reggae Fi Peach). He’s still performing today.