You can feel the tension as you walk the streets of Brixton, a run-down, one-square-mile neighborhood south of the Thames where rows of closely built, rapidly deteriorating, Victorian-style houses serve as tenements for poor black families. Outside the ramshackle Apple Restaurant, a gang of gaudy but poorly clad teenagers hangs about looking for something, anything to do.

Farther down the street the soulful sound of reggae music booms out over the sidewalk from a record shop, adding a beautiful sound to an ugly and scarred landscape. Around the corner, train tracks run overhead, their heavy cargo drowning out the noise of the busy open-air market below. On the corner, a group of militant black and white Marxists bombards passers-by with pamphlets arguing the "class nature of the oppression of blacks on all fronts--economic, political and cultural."

But to Gerry, his "big apple" cap hanging to one side of his head, life in the ghetto is decidedly unideological. "We got nothing to do, maaan. There's no good telling me about jobs. I don't want any of them shitty jobs. I steal what I want and I'm going to keep on stealing."

It is this undirected anger that has most observers of black Britain worried. "I am quite concerned that the violence that is sure to come will do harm to blacks because it will be undirected," says Gilbert Brown, a Brixton community worker. For the most part there are no national black leaders, and the young take as their heroes Afro-American leaders like Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The black community center in Manchester proudly bears the title "The George Jackson Center."

There is a feeling of powerlessness among Britain's blacks. "In every arena where it is important to be, blacks are absent," notes one West Indian observer. There are no blacks in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, and only a handful of black elected officials.

There are several community political groups--the Black Panthers, the British Freedom and Unity Party, the West Indian Standing Conference--but none clearly has a leadership role. Many local groups have tried to discipline the frustrated young by offering classes in self-defense and athletics, but the young black British are without ideology. They have transcended, however, thinking of themselves as "Jamaicans" or "Antiguans" or "Bahamians"--divisions that stopped their parents from effectively organizing protest--and instead see themselves as "black" and pitted against "white" Britain.

Black Britons are also beginning to bridge the gap between themselves and Britain's other "coloreds"--the English catchall term applied to blacks of West Indian or African origin, Asians, and even Britons of Cypriot ancestry. Like blacks, Britain's other "coloreds" face substantial discrimination. Asian immigrants live in scandalously poor conditions, and if they are found to have entered Britain illegally, they are sometimes repatriated immediately without their families even being notified.

Britain's non-European population currently stands at more than 2 million, only 3 per cent of the total population. But the Third World community tends to congregate in large urban centers, and in London fully 10 per cent of the residents are now non-white, a potentially powerful political force.

But resentment in the large "colored" ghettos has yet to explode, perhaps because the fear of expulsion is a very real one. Now, however, one-third of Britain's blacks are British born and bred. Vocally and militantly they are insisting that discrimination must come to an end. But they face the major problem that many of their white fellow countrymen insist there is no problem at all.

British government officials are given to self-righteous declarations that Britain remains the classic bastion of tolerance and racial acceptance. "There can be few countries which have absorbed this great mixture of nationalities with so much tension and so little friction," Home Secretary Robert Carr told Parliament in June. "I do not believe that the British people react well to being constantly hectored and criticized over admitted failures when their record of tolerance is so basically good."

Many, however, don't share Carr's optimistic assessment. "Whites don't seem to be aware of the seriousness of the situation," says Ann Dumett, author of A Portrait of English Racism. "There seems to be the idea that we don't have to live in a society that's racially mixed, that somehow we can get rid of them."

Increasingly, whites are making no pretense of racial tolerance, and right-wing politicians like Enoch Powell are capitalizing on fanning the flames of prejudice. And his techniques seem to be spreading.

In recent elections, a new National Front Party has made its bid for political power through a platform calling for the compulsory expulsion of every non-white in Britain. "We are out to preserve the integrity of the British people," claims Martin Webster, party head. "The multiracial experiment hasn't worked elsewhere and Britain is not going to be any more successful than anyone else has been. We're going to end up with a bastardized, polyglot nation with none of our culture left, and we refuse to let this happen."

Some steps have been made towards easing the tension. The government has established a Race Relations Board, and most cities have community relations commissions, but these half-hearted efforts have met with little success.

One survey indicates that half the non-white population has no confidence in the Race Relation Board's ability to redress their complaints, and the board is self-admittedly powerless to actively pursue and root out discrimination in an effective manner.

A similar situation exists with the community relations councils. As a member of one council explains, "The only thing we can do is make positive noises and hope somebody listens. Don't forget we're talking to a government which is Tory-controlled and sensitive to its own right wing."

Whether or not the government's failure to redress the grievances of its growing black population, coupled with growing black anger, will result in massive rioting remains to be seen, but the potential is there and growing. One thing is sure: Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

'The blacks born in Britain are growing up, and they will not stand for their society's oppresion," warns onw author and community realions worker. 'Unless something is done to improve race relations in this country it will lead to unrest and riots.'