It started with the fatal shooting of a 29-year-old North London father of four called Mark Duggan on August 4th, and a protest against his unexplained killing – allegedly the result of a gunfight with police – in his local area of Tottenham on August 6th.
But when police arrived to disperse the reportedly peaceful gathering, some members of the crowed turned violent, and sparked what would lead to (at current count) four days of rioting, vandalism, looting and arson across all points of London, and around the country.
Police and their vehicles have been attacked, retail stores – from grocery to clothing to electrical – smashed and looted, and commercial and residential properties destroyed by fire.
Events in Tottenham were rekindled on Sunday, and spread to Enfield, Islington and Oxford Circus. By the early hours of Monday, mobs had erupted in Walthamstow and Brixton. On Monday evening a new front formed in Hackney, with further outbreaks in Croydon, Clapham, Ealing and Enfield.
A furniture store in Croydon established in 1867 and run by five generations of the same family was burnt to the ground, while a warehouse blaze in Enfield destroyed the stock of many of the UK’s favourite independent record labels.
Meanwhile, copycat violence and destruction broke out in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool.
The genesis of the events was a call for justice for the Duggan family, but it evolved into an on-going series of senseless vandalism and theft, and various commentators have pondered why so many young people have been so willing to take to the streets purely to smash and grab.
While there can be no excuse for this behaviour, certain issues cannot be ignored: Young people today find themselves in the historically rare situation of having fewer prospects than the generation before them.
Couple that with a Government that has invested little in their interests – see: cuts to local services including youth centres, cuts to Sure Start and the Educational Maintenance Allowance, and a rise in tertiary tuition fees – and the result is a section of youth with no stake in society.
Without a sense of social or community solidarity, they have no respect for it, or the consequences of their actions; they feel they have nothing more to lose.
Prime Minister David Cameron cut his summer holiday short in order to return to the UK this morning to deal with the unrest, as did London Mayor Boris Johnson.
And while leaders and the authorities met and pledged to draft an additional 10,000 police officers to patrol the city tonight, the residents in areas affected by the events of the nights before came together to reclaim their streets.
Rallied by a group set up on social networks, Riot Clean Up, many more than had perpetrated the damage turned out to clean it up. Images spread online of crowds of helpers with brooms aloft, in a heartwarming display of community strength and cohesion.
At 5pm today Scotland Yard confirmed that 563 people had been arrested and 105 charged, and 111 officers and 5 dogs injured, in London since violence broke out on Saturday.
Also confirmed this evening was the finding of the Independent Police Complaints Commission that Mark Duggan did not shoot a gun at police.
Tonight, London is unusually quiet. Many shops closed early this evening and others boarded their windows in an effort to avoid damage, but so far there have been only minor disturbances in Canning Town. Elsewhere citizens were taking to the street in several areas to patrol and protect their neighbourhoods.
But outside the capital, major incidents of property damage and theft are ongoing tonight in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, and a police station in Nottingham has been fire-bombed.
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My account:
I live about one mile down the road from where the most intense action took place in Hackney on Monday night.
And while the evening was filled with the constant distant sound of sirens and the buzz of helicopters flying overhead, I remained calm and confident of my safety.
After all, the driving propensity of the rioters seemed to be looting – my house is in a residential area and the few shops nearby aren’t worth targeting.
But what I hadn’t taken into consideration was mob mentality – evident in the way the initial rioting had sporadically spread from one north London location, to handfuls of disconnected locations across the capital, and later, the country – and the idleness of youth.
And so it was, around midnight on August 8th, that the smell of smoke began to waft in through my kitchen window.
Outside, the skeleton of a building on a construction site across the road was on fire.
My first assumption was that it was started by one, or a group, of the local hoodlums who congregate on the street corners all hours of the day and night, with nothing better to do than roughhouse with, and yell at, each other. It might have been one of the boys I had seen earlier in the night, yelling towards the sky at the police helicopters flying over: “fuck you, pigs”.
While the fire was by no means a riot situation, it had clearly been inspired by the various pockets of violence, looting and arson which were sweeping not only the capital, but the whole country.
Remarkably, given the amount of unrest that night, the local fire brigade arrived in minutes and extinguished the blaze without any incident.
The home-owner in me was glad the fire didn’t spread, but the journalist in me secretly wished for more action; the clothes on me smelt of smoke.
Picture by Amy Freeborn
Tuesday, August 9th thankfully turned out to be the final night of rioting.
At the time of posting this comment, police across the country have made 1,600 arrests, and 796 people have appeared in court charged in connection with the riots.