Anarchy in the UK

An eyewitness account of London burning even as the flames are spreading because of too little policemen and too many rioters

Anarchy in the UK

An eyewitness account of London burning even as the flames are spreading because of too little policemen and too many rioters

It so happens that back in 1985 I was in Broadwater Farm in Tottenham, north London, on the night of October 6 when there was a pitched battle between police and black youths in which a constable, Keith Blakelock, was hacked to death with a machete.

Riot police tackle a mob after a number of cars were set
alight in Hackney, north London on August 8, 2011

That has been regarded as the low point in community relations but what has been happening during two successive nights of rioting is unprecedented in Britain.

Last night when returning home from a family outing to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in 3-D at the Max Cinema in Waterloo, which boasts the largest screen in Britain tickets have been hard to come by the BlackBerry had to be consulted to discover which roads were open.

Parts of London seemed like a ghost town as people were clearly staying indoors. Streets were eerily empty. As the cinema emptied, the conversation was about which underground stations were open and which were not
the list of the latter almost seemed longer.
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Buses had been pulled from many major routes in London to make it difficult for would be looters to get to the trouble spots.

A sense of fear has descended across London.

What is different from past riots is this time the troublemakersu00a0 mostly black youths but with more than a sprinkling of whites have followed the Egyptian example, much lauded, ironically, by the British government, and relied on social networking to get to their targets.

BlackBerries and other mobile phone devices have also helped them to dodge the police.

A damaged police vehicle in Enfield, north London,
following a second night of disturbances in London

The logistical problem tackling these riots is easy to understand: too many rioters and, comparatively, too few policemen, as the flames have spread across the country.

What began last week with an incident in which a black man, Mark Duggan, 29, was shot dead by police it is alleged he fired first at police trailing him, whereupon he was killed by a marksman has now escalated to a challenge to law and order probably never before witnessed in quite this way ever before.

Britain's prime minister David Cameron, cut short his Italian holiday and returned on Monday to take personal charge of the crisis. Parliament is being recalled as well.

The questions are: Who are the rioters? Why are they rioting? Why has it spread apparently organically across the country?

Why have the police been unable to contain the violence? And if the troubles do not die down and the violence feeds on itself, what happens next? No one quite knows.

Of course, the grim economic climate and the very high levels of unemployment among the young provide the background against which the riots are taking place.
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But the rioters do seem to be enjoying taking on the police. They also know which shops to loot, betraying a weakness for electronic goods and designer gear.

Members of the public survey the damage to shops on the
Tottenham Hale Retail Park caused by looters on the
previous night in Tottenham, North London

Cameron calls it "criminality"; the rioters, meanwhile, secure in the knowledge that the army will not be called out to shoot looters, as would happen in many other countries, are having the time of their lives.

Acrossu00a0London
Someu00a0ofu00a0the worst affected areas were Croydon, Peckham, Ealing and Clapham. A young man shot in his car during last night's "unprecedented" rioting died yesterday.

A murder hunt was launched as police announced that the 26-year-old victim had died after being admitted to hospital. He was discovered in a car suffering from gunshot wounds at about 9.15pm on Monday.

Croydon, in south London, also witnessed ugly scenes, with a string of cars and buildings set alight by gangs of youths.

In Peckham, 500 youths gathered in Peckham High Street, vandalising shops, lighting fires and targeting officers with missiles.
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Teams of riot police were seen charging at fleeing rioters after a major fire was started at a shop adjoining a Greggs bakery. A hooded gang gutted a Tesco Metro in East Dulwich Road near Peckham last night.

The Met used armoured vehicles known as "Jankels" to push back rioters in Ealing, west London, and Clapham Junction, south London, and warned that it would use the tactic again if needed.

In Clapham, youths raided a Debenhams store and a number of shops in Lavender Hill, while some broke into a fancy dress store near Clapham Junction, stealing masks to conceal their identities.

Scotland Yard said armoured police vehicles were used in Lavender Hill to push back more than 150 people in the area.

A large blaze at a Sony distribution centre near Enfield, north London, also sent plumes of thick smoke across the sky.
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Sony said the blaze at its 20,000 sq m (215,000 sq ft) Enfield distribution centre, which is used to store CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and the UMD discs used for PlayStation Portable games, was still "smouldering" and so no one was allowed to enter the building.

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