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 was scheduled for a day patient op at the Mayday hospital in Croydon the day after the riot. I phoned to see if I should still attend and they said yes, so we drove through streets that were blocked off and stank of smoke. When we got to the hospital the staff were really jumpy, as they had been told to expect a repeat performance that night. They advised my husband (who was waiting around to pick me up after the op) to get out of Croydon, and he ended up driving out to Shirley and hanging out there all day. My op ended up being the last one of the day and the staff were so keen to get me out, so they could go home before it got dark, that they didn't staple the wound properly. We got back home and the wound split open, so we had to go back out to A and E - fortunately things were much quieter by then!

I was 8 months pregnant and police officer DH got the call at midnight to kit up and report for duty. He was gone for 9 days and I had zero contact with him. He worked 20hr shifts and came back a stone lighter and bloody knackered. He was also covered in flea bites due to their terrible emergency accommodation.

@FrangipaniBlue

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

Nope. I was in Nottingham.

i remember the unity building of flats above the co-op in tottenham was burnt to the ground.
all those people suddenly homeless. not well-off people.
so i put together all the clothing and household items i could spare and took 3 buses across London to donate them for the homeless, at a leisure centre in tottenham.
then when most of it seemed to be over, from work in central London, we noticed a great black pall of smoke out to the north by north-east.
apparently it was a large gramaphone record factory that was burnt down, in enfield.
and on tv, a woman having to leap from a high flat above a shop set ablaze.
and the furniture shop, an old family business, in croydon, destroyed by fire.
why, just why. what good did it do anyone. and so many people, the small traders who were ruined, people who'd done no wrong to anyone, they were the ones who suffered. for mob rule.
how dispiriting. how shameful.
like that woman who upbraided them said.

I could smell smoke in my garden in Tooting, coming from Croydon.

My dd was working in Farringdon and was sent home early , it was very hot and she had loads to carry, I am still very grateful to the black cab driver who saw her walking and offered her a lift to Liverpool St for free as he was on his way home and passed that way.

I was abroad at the time. A Spanish taxi driver commented about it. I remember it being on the Spanish news on TVs in bars and Spanish people commenting. I was embarrassed to be British.

We live in Hackney, there was a lot of looting and violence close to us, but not on our street. Just down the road in Dalston, business owners, mostly Turkish, stood guard and stopped any attacks on their premises. I was quite impressed! We did feel nervous.

I live in Birmingham. We had riots here too.
I didn't think it was as bad as the media made out. DD was at her dads and my friend and I decided to jump on a bus into city centre to see what the fuss was about. We got on bus, got into the city centre when the bus driver of a little bus stopped at traffic lights. We then saw 20-30 people stop what they were doing and pointed to the bus. They started running towards us. Both my friend and I started screaming at the driver to drive. He went through a red light and drove as fast as the bus would go.
The lovely driver told us he would not drop us off at any stop and would drop us as close to home as his bus would physically go. I got dropped off at the end of my road and my friend dropped at her house.
Whenever I see the driver I always give him a bid smile and tell my children about the day Mummy was really naughty and how that driver may have saved me lots of injuries. They always say 'hello mr best bus driver'
Will I ever be that stupid again? Nope! That night could have been so much worse!

I remember looking out my daughters bedroom window to see the fires in Croydon. Wondering why the fuck people found it necessary to burn down a furniture store that had been there for years.

I then had to take someone to A&E and was waiting to be seen. Two teenagers came in one with a wound to their hand obviously been up to to no good. They were playing the big man and had a bag of what was obviously stolen property.

They saw a hospital security guard and jumped out a window thinking it was a policeman!

Lots of broken glass and boarded up shops.

Watching rioters running along the roof of cars parked on our road from our 2nd floor flat.

I was living near Clapham junction which was badly affected
The next day, an appeal went out on Twitter to help with the clean up, and hundreds of us turned up - nicknamed the broom army, and we swept up broken glass and picked up litter

A few days later, I was in one of my locals, and a local rugby team were also there as unofficial bouncers in case anyone tried to burst in. Thankfully no one did because I’m sure it would have ended badly for everyone

And I remember reading about the Ledbury restaurant in Notting hill
Looters had burst into the restaurant and started robbing watches, wallets and rings from the diners

When the chefs heard what was happening, they ran up from the kitchen armed with the metal baskets out of the fryers
From my time working in restaurants, there is no way I would want to come face to face with an angry chef

I remember the very surreal feeling of leaving work in central London and seeing the riots on the receptionist's TV. All the shutters were down and we were let out by the security guard. Thankfully didn't see anything between the office and train station.

Yes I remember the shopkeepers standing outside guarding their boarded up windows. I was travelling home by bus and it was a terrifying journey.

I can remember getting the train home from London Bridge at about 3 pm (to an area less than 2 miles away from the rioting). There was a palpable feeling of panic.

Hearing sirons all night long. Worrying about local businesses. Thinking somehow that all of it was inevitable.

@EmpressWitchDoesntBurn

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

I was in CID in North London at the time. We asked the kebab shop staff if they'd had any hassle. They laughed and pointedly looked at all their meat cleavers.

I am sure the riots originally started from a place of understandable frustration but that was quickly displaced by wanton destruction and opportunistic thieving. I watched CCTV of a woman (presumably the mum) and two young boys cheerfully picking the trainers they wanted from a looted sports shop like it was fucking Christmas day. My DH was a broken man by the time it calmed down.

On the day, going shopping with DD2 and realising there was a strange energy about the place, deciding to go home and walking past police standing outside all the expensive shops in the town centre from lunchtime, but not a single police officer, car or van anywhere near the less fancy shops. Their sole focus was the higher end shops in the town centre from around 1.30pm onwards.

A friend's Met Police XW called him at work around the same time to say he needed to take the afternoon off work and go home because there was 'stuff going to happen that night'.

Talking with an acquaintance online, helping him make an evacuation plan for him, his wife and three daughters. He was worried about being caught in a police roadblock - I could tell him that there wasn't a single one anywhere in my direction, which was an obvious in/out for the area, going by the way it was being used as a loading bay and break/rest area for looters.

The front door locked, the house in darkness, DD2 in her bedroom whilst I sat by the window with assorted gardening implements placed at strategic intervals up the stairs, listening through a crack in the window I'd opened up to all the white men in their 30s outside the window discussing what they'd got from the cycle shop and Richer Sounds and where their mates were heading after they'd 'done Croydon'. Including a discussion of the location of gun shops outside the area and where they could go after those. The smell of burning and the glow in the sky.

The constant noise of the SKYcopter overhead, advertising to all and sundry that it was a free for all in our area whilst not mentioning the other areas that were also being hit that night.

This is what annoys me most about it. The Police knew it was coming. But always insist that there was no idea. And it's always painted as black youths doing it all. It certainly wasn't
.

I remember being glad my Mum had died before it happened.

I was on holiday at the time and remember being extremely embarrassed to be British when it was being shown on TVs everywhere.

What a wonderful driver Idroppedthescrewinthetuna! I am afraid I didn't remember that the riots had happened elsewhere in the country but as I mentioned in my first post I was quite disappointed in how the news from my local area was shown perhaps it wasn't all that well publicised. It was such an odd time, I had heard about riots before and seen them on TV but they had never been so close to home.

I remember watching it on TV - horrified.

I felt for anyone living in that area.

And it was a stark reminder of the effects of not treating people fairly or disenfranchising groups of people slowly over years.

I remember hoping it would bring about positive change. But I don't think it did

I was watching on tv. My two best friends lived in London, dalston & Kensington. I was so worried about them and everyone.
But when I rang them.. the one in Kensington didn’t see anything and the one in Dalston said the shopkeepers fought off/protected their street.

I lived by Clapham Junction and remember marauding hordes of young men and vast looting - notably only Waterstones survived untouched. Funny that. It was scary to be in the midst.

The fear of not really knowing what was going on locally, apart from snatches on Twitter, but seeing the eerie red glow in the sky not far away.

We lived in Peckham. DH and I couldn't get home as the trains were suddenly not allowed to stop. The driver saying "this train will not stop at Peckham Rye due to...due to... Folks, it says rioting. Rioting in Peckham"
I can't remember how we did get home in the end. I think we walked from Denmark Hill.
Then a few days later my friend calling me saying her family's business had been looted and torched. That news hastened the deaths of both her parents.