In January 1981, Margaret Thatcher had been prime minister for nearly two years, John Lennon's Imagine was at the top of the charts, and Britain was a long way from the visibly multicultural society it is today. The youngest son of George and Tina Francis had been asked to DJ for a friend's birthday party. "Gerry loved music," says George Francis. "He lived for his music - he couldn't wait for that night." His wife Tina remembers Gerry practising his DJ skills at their home in south east London. He was 17 and had ambitions to work in the music industry.
The party was to celebrate the 16th birthday of Yvonne Ruddock at her home in Deptford. It was a Saturday night - January 17. More than a hundred of her friends had been invited, including Robert McKenzie, who was a friend of her brother. Like the hosts and most of the guests, Robert was a black teenager who was into soul music and the latest designer fashions. "It was a great night," he remembers. "We were all friends, enjoying the music, enjoying the atmosphere. It was a happy occasion - like being part of one big family."
But in the early hours of the morning the family celebration turned to tragedy. "I remember lots of smoke, people pushing to get out of the windows." says McKenzie. "I managed to push my girlfriend and followed her."
For the Francis family, the bad news was broken by a phone call on Sunday morning. "I picked up the phone," says George, "and heard this voice saying Gerry is dead."
Thirteen of the people in the house died - including the birthday girl, Yvonne Ruddock, and her brother. One of the survivors was so traumatised that he committed suicide two years later.
To this day the cause of the fire has not been established. But detectives investigating the fire now say they have fresh evidences that could lead to a new inquest. Spurred by the £50,000 the Met has put up for information about the incident, police officers are hopeful that 20 years later they can find out what really happened.
At the start of the original investigation, police believed it was a racist attack - that a firebomb was thrown through a downstairs window. The first officers on the scene said as much to people who had escaped from the house. But after studying scientific evidence, they concluded the fire had started inside the house - either by accident or on purpose. Officers came up with the theory that a fight had broken out between a group of boys at the party - and that the boys involved held the key to their inquiry.
McKenzie was one of the boys called in for questioning. "They refused to listen to me when I told them that there wasn't a fight," he says. "They had their version of events and I felt I had to go along with them. In the end I caved in and told them what I thought they wanted."
Eight boys who had been at the party made statements to the police, testifying that a fight had taken place. The local community, who remained convinced that the fire had been a racist attack, were angered and hurt by the turn the investigation had taken - a hurt compounded by public indifference and media hostility.
Ros Howells - now a Baroness - and then a Deptford community-worker remembers the tone of newspaper articles concerning the case. "There was an assumption that something illegal had been going on at the party," she says. "They didn't believe it could just be a group of children enjoying themselves. It was at that point that the black community started to believe that the lives of their children were worthless - we felt the view was 'What's 13 dead? Let's have a few more'."
Six weeks after the fire, more than 10,000 people angered by alleged police brutality and incompetence took part in a protest march. The cause of the fire was never established. Later that year, a wave of riots took place in cities across Britain, most famously in Brixton. Later Lord Scarman described the relationship between the police and the black community as "a tale of failure".
Today the police are trying to put the bitterness of the past to one side. Detective Superintendant Mike Parks has led the new investigation. He believes in some ways they have been helped by the passage of time - due to advances in forensic science they have been able to pin-point the exact location of the fire when it started (by an armchair in the front room) and the exact time the it broke out - 5.40am.
A team of officers have gone through all the original paperwork. But does it hold any clues as to why the original investigation failed to come up with any answers? Choosing his words carefully, Mike Parks says: "I can't answer for what happened in the past, but I have looked into this thoroughly and I think it was a competent investigation." However, the police have submitted documents to the coroner which they believe contain grounds to support an application for another inquest.
Robert McKenzie remembers the police interrogating him like he was a criminal. His terrifying experience escaping from the party was made worse by his experience at the hands of the police. "They gave me no respect and I felt like I had been arrested - not asked to share information. They didn't want to listen to the truth."
Mike Parks considers this carefully. "The officers were investigating an extremely serious, tragic incident. They had to ask tough questions, they had to explore every option. Unfortunately, people often feel this way when they are questioned by the police."
Three months after the fire, at the beginning of May 1981 - before the police had come to any conclusions - an inquest took place at County Hall in London. Helen Shaw, from the pressure group Inquest, is shocked by the speed of events. "Today," she says, "if police were investigating a controversial, serious case like this it would take up to two years, or even longer, before an inquest would be called. To me it seems as though the authorities just wanted to hurry things up so the whole issue could be shut away and forgotten about."
The man in charge of the inquest was the most experienced coroner in the country - Dr Arthur Gordon Davies. Now retired, he remembers the case vividly. "It was a very volatile, highly charged event," he says. "My concern was to stop blood on the streets. We'd had one riot already - I wanted to do everything possible to prevent another one."
The New Cross Massacre Action Committee, which has been set up by the black community to support the bereaved families, maintained a presence outside the building. The families were represented by leading human rights lawyers, including Michael Mansfield and Rock Tansey.
"These people were there using my court as a theatre to play out their own political beliefs." says Dr Davies. "They wanted to have a go at the establishment - and to them I represented the establishment."
In an inquest, a coroner has complete control over what evidence is put before the court and is the only person who can sum up to the jury. Dr Davies spent a third of his summing up discussing the theory that a fight had broken out at the party - even though every one of the statements supporting that idea was retraced in the court.
"I saw no evidence that the police had applied pressure onto these young men," he says. "Other outside influences had put pressure on them to say things, but not the police."
The jury returned an open verdict. Families bereaved by the fire were appalled. "It was a farce," says George Francis. Helen Shaw of Inquest says: "Everything that could go wrong for families in the criminal justice system went wrong for these families."
Police officers involved in the new investigation say they have completely ruled out the idea that a fight broke out at the party. They have also ruled out the idea of an attack from someone outside. But campaigners say that by wasting time pursuing the so-called fight theory, the police lost crucial evidence and any credibility.
The recording artist and poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is one of the founding members of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. Twenty years on he is deeply cynical about the Met's new investigation. "Over the years they've had various theories," he says. "Now they are going on about forensic science. Forensic science can say anything the police want it to say. The one theory they're refusing to investigate is whether it was a firebomb thrown in a racist attack. Politically it would be too difficult for them to say if that were the case."
Most of the families bereaved by the tragedy now accept that the fire was started by someone inside the house. But given the history of the investigation, doubts will inevitably remain about the police's version of events.
Rock Tansey QC, who represented some of the families at the original inquest, believes that a public inquiry is needed so the events of the past can be properly examined. "Public inquiries are expensive," he says, "but they are by far the best way to find out the facts of a case. I think the government owes it to these families - and all sections of the community - to do this."
"I'll never give up," says Tina, the mother of Gerry Francis - now in her 70s. "I love my son far too much. I don't think I can die before I find out what really happened to him."