The London riots, what do you remember 10 years on?

[54321nought]

I was teaching in London then. Mostly I remember the drip drip drip drip as days and weeks and months later, students were arrested and charged, and some never returned to school. The crime rate went down, it was the safest it had ever been locally for a long time. I also remember the smell of smoke that lasted weeks

I can’t remember if this happened at the time of the riots but I think it did;
A boy from Malaysia had his jaw broken then his rucksack robbed by someone who claimed to be ‘helping’ him.
A really appalling event and someone started a fund raiser for him which quickly reached £12,000 before it closed down.
I can’t remember what position Boris had in government then but I remember him taking or arranging for the boy to be taken to some sports championships.
So I don’t suppose that lad will be returning to these shores anytime soon.

Andante

They caught the scam who did that, and IIRC there was a crowdfunder which rapidly exceeded target to replace the things that had been taken.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17380072

I can’t remember what position Boris had in government then

None.

He was Mayor of London

I remember that poor lad. It was shocking.

Worked as a support worker for adults with learning disabilities then, one of our youngest residents came downstairs to the office to tell us there was going to be a riot that night. Colleague called her teenage son to tell her and he said he knew already (why we didn't think to call the police I don't know, I don't think we actually believed it was going to happen). Couldn't get hold of niece who was around 14 I think, my mum was annoyed but I was worried and didn't say. Turned out she was on a bus which had been ransacked and her phone stolen. Went to Morrisons and they were shutting early because of the news. What really annoyed me was Woolwich was really badly damaged, an entire shop had been burnt down and the high Street looked like a war zone but it wasn't really well documented. There was a load of people in the high street with brooms and I remember a middle aged man shouting at a young boy who had come to look at the wreckage, I don't know if he had been one of the rioters but the older man appeared to know him. The clean up crew were sent away because of health and safety. We were sent home early from work the next day on police advice and it was all a bit scary!

We were living in zone 2 south London and went on holiday in the middle of it. We expected to come back to find our house burned to the ground but luckily it was ok.

That the BBC reported the London riots, even though the riots spread to Birmingham the day afterwards, and then the BBC began reporting the Manchester riots... Ignoring Birmingham almost entirely.

(To the extent that my husband, who worked in Phones4U at the time was moved five times between branches, and that my colleagues from the suburbs had no idea how dangerous it was for me to commute to and from the centre.)

I lived in Holloway then, and I remember walking home from work that evening and watching him horror as about 20 kids steamed into a beautiful bike shop and absolutely stripped it in minutes. Some didn’t have cranks or pedals and I remember bikes being carried away or kids just scooting off on them.

I was managing a summer school and one evening the school appeared on the telly as there were thugs on the roof chucking things at passersby. Following that we were told to evacuate the kids down into the central town square one day as a crowd of yobs were coming towards the school.

I lost a friendship over the riots- someone going on about how the rioters had been driven to it because of lack of opportunity.
Fuck that. Thugs are gonna thug and bandwagons are going to be jumped on while political ideals are going to be used as a shield to be a twat.

Sitting in my flat in Germany, with Army DH back in the UK, wondering what the heck i had bought my newborn DD into.

I still don't understand exactly what happened. Obviously the police mishandling of the arrest leading to the shooting originally... but the rioting and the looting that followed. Seemed to be an excuse not a reason.

@NiceGerbil

I remember a black kid getting a really harsh punishment for nicking a bottle of water while a white kid got sod all for nicking something worth £££

I think I remember that too, she was a pretty white middle class girl who was about to go to university. I think there was a bit of outrage about it but I don't know if that affected her sentencing. One of the most iconic pictures for me was a young black man carrying a huge sack of Tesco value rice. I remember at the time laughing about why people would steal cheap rice as opposed to high value items, not really thinking about the fact that he may have been in food poverty (not justifying stealing just now thinking of why he may have made that choice).

@Andante57

I can’t remember if this happened at the time of the riots but I think it did; A boy from Malaysia had his jaw broken then his rucksack robbed by someone who claimed to be ‘helping’ him. A really appalling event and someone started a fund raiser for him which quickly reached £12,000 before it closed down. I can’t remember what position Boris had in government then but I remember him taking or arranging for the boy to be taken to some sports championships. So I don’t suppose that lad will be returning to these shores anytime soon.

Yes, I remember that too.

Working 21 days without a break. Taking turns to sleep in a colleagues car in a basement ion central London . Having every single rest day cancelled until the end of September. Holding the line on a street in North London whilst being bombarded with bricks , bottles of petrol , bottles of urine , anything they could throw at us , and a colleague next to me taking a lump of concrete to the head . Broken jaw , fractured skull , he had . Finally walking to the tube station to get home about 15 days in , and looking at the steps of the bridge at Vauxhall cross thinking I just can't do this I'm so tired . And a little old man who must have been about 80 giving me his arm and saying come on love I'll give you a hand

I remember being scared to go out in the evening because our area was flooded with EDL spoiling for a fight. I remember the scenes on the news and thinking that their anger was mostly misdirected as they were targeting local places within their community instead of sticking it to the man

DS had just been born. I couldn't buy some baby bits at the big Boots as it was shut due to worries about rioting, although we were the other side of North London in a 'leafy suburb' that was not likely to get hit. Nonetheless DH was slightly worried some violence would reach the area and we might have to defend the house somehow!

I lived in Ealing at the time just off the Uxbridge Road, which was unusual as I've lived (born and bred) in a very specific part of London nearly all my life. The rioters went past the end of our road, which we could just about seem we felt relatively safe as we were in an attic flat in a large Victorian town house so felt quite safe up in the eaves. But I'd never seen anything like it, and thankfully have not since. The next day I remember there were Greater Manchester police on the streets, I'd never seen so many police on the beat and certainly not from another city. Due to the job I was doing at the I'd also been to some meetings about police preparedness and having a sense I needed to get home before anything happened. It was a very strange time. Can't believe it was ten years ago.

I remember the news about a business that was set fire to, there were flats over the business and the residents all lost their home and one family also lost their two cats in the fire

I lived on a city further north which also had riots at the time - I was at work getting the news that shops were being boarded up in the city and further trouble was expected. We lived in an inner city area atvthe time and I was so worried about our home and cats that I had to leave work to make sure I was there to protect them.

There was a fire set over the road from us, and residents in another local area had their cars damaged. A police station also suffered damage. Sports Direct was looted and the jewellery shops next to it were untouched

@NiceGerbil

I remember a black kid getting a really harsh punishment for nicking a bottle of water while a white kid got sod all for nicking something worth £££

well I can assure you all our students who had been involved in the looting, or in handling stolen goods after were all treated equally severely.

@Auntienumber8

I remember this woman telling rioters off, I thought she was brave.

I flew to Chicago the day after and it was interesting to see how it was reported in the US press.

How was it reported in the US?

Shut up! This was only about five years ago surely!

I was living on Green Lanes, I remember the Turkish shopkeepers banding together to keep the rioters out.

I lived in a tiny town nowhere near any of the cities, and a few days in they staggered our leaving times at work as we usually all finished at the same time and they didn’t want passers by to panic at the sight of a crowd of people

My wedding. I got married that weekend.

I remember Croydon burning.

My sister calling me from Clapham High St crying as she was walking to work and the high street was being looted, and she was saying ‘it’s kids, just kids…taking tellies out of Curry’s and ransacking the corner shop…this is so sad!’

The unleashed anger of some of the young people I worked with in Hackney. They’d had a dispersal order on their estate for weeks, meaning kids couldn’t hang about in groups, it was summer, none of them had gardens, they were like ‘Miss, it’s a pisstake, they treat us like animals, now we are taking back our area’.

I live on a main thoroughfare in to London and there was a constant stream of police cars screeching down the road, sirens blaring, day and night.

It was a very strange and unsettling time.

I remember that it didn't just happen in London....