'Big John' Buchanan folded himself into a cream mini outside the Empress Hotel around 10.15. For the last half hour he had strutted around the street like something out of Softly Softly accompanied by fifteen of his henchmen — eleven of them uniformed.

To the blacks of Sydney's deprived suburb of Redfern, this Saturday night was no different from an other, and Buchanan was no different from any other racist pig, except that he was the boss, the Inspector in charge of the Redfern district, the man who directed one of the most vicious police forces in Australia.

'Big John' drove off and the rest of the thugs clambered into their assembled vehicles — five in all. Two paddy wagons, a police mini and two plain minis. I overheard one say 'No arrests tonight'. 'No matter' said his mate, 'there will be plenty of other chances.'

The 'Empress' looks like a typical Sydney pub. It stands like a porcelain urinal among a number of shops. The bar is only a few feet from the street, the walls are tile and the floor plaster. A squirt with a hose and the whole show's clean. There are no chairs, the bar is the bottle store and you are tipped out dead on ten. But one thing makes the Empress unique — its a Black Pub and while Blacks drink in other Redfern/Chippendale pubs, white are cautious before entering the Empress.

Earlier that day I had wandered around the suburb with one of the local white radicals. We didn't go into the pub then, we waited until 9.30 when we were with a Black women and a young Jewish lawyer who was working on behalf on the locals. To the stranger there didn't seem to be any reason to worry. No one bothered us, there were a few other whites in the bar and we got touched for a couple of bob. It was four beers later at 10.00 that I noticed the difference.

Buchanan's fifteen cops had arranged themselves over the footpath. No once [sic] could walk either way without having to zig zag to miss the pigs. Their whole posture and positioning was deliberately provocative, they were out for arrests.

But Friday and Saturday nights are no longer the sole preserve of the cops. A "pub patrol" of liberals, Catholics and radicals was there to watch the place. For some time now they have been patrolling, determined to record every incident and inhibit the pigs.

This night it worked.

The previous night it hadn't.