"the guns of brixton" predates the riots that took place in the 1980s in brixton, but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent in the area because of the heavy-handedness of the police, the recession and other problems at the time. the lyrics refer to a brixton-born son of jamaican immigrants who "feel[s] like ivan...at the end of "the harder they come"", referring to ivanhoe martin's death in the 1972 film "the harder they come". simonon was originally doubtful about the song's lyrics, which discuss an individual's paranoid outlook on life, but was encouraged to continue working on it by joe strummer.