A double decker bus burns in Tottenham (LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images)
Ten years ago to the day, I saw a part of my world go up in flames. Two days after the shooting of Tottenham resident, convicted criminal and suspected gang member Mark Duggan on August 4, 2011, a crowd of 300 people marched in peaceful protest from the Broadwater Farm estate to the nearby Tottenham Police station.
Nobody really knows what happened next. Nobody ever does in these situations. But the trigger is always the same: someone is pushed or punched; something is thrown or kicked; a fire is lit and a riot starts.
Having grown up in Walthamstow, Tottenham’s East End neighbour, I know the area intimately. I’ve been a member of London’s “black community” all my life; and when the community sneezes, the capital catches a cold. Watching the wall-to-wall coverage of the riots, I only had to glimpse at the predominantly black faces of those caught up in the melee for my jaw to drop, my stomach to churn. Familiar landmarks, streets and memories burned beyond recognition. Within three days, the same scenes were being played out in towns and cities across England.
The country soon became gripped by a desperate need to discover the “truth” behind the riots. Pantomime historian David Starkey appeared, shamelessly, on BBC2’s Newsnight claiming that “the problem is that the whites have become black”, evoking Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech with incendiary glee. “His prophecy was absolutely right in one sense,” Starkey waxed. “The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent. They wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham.”
On the other side, those who had lived in the shadow of bigotry, structural inequality and what they described as the “institutionally racist” Metropolitan Police saw the riots — or “uprisings”, as the Marxist fringes put it — as yet more evidence of a Britain broken by racism and class war.
At the time, the official line was straightforward. On August 4, 29-year-old Duggan was shot dead by police officers from Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police unit charged with investigating gun crime in London’s black communities. Trident had mounted an operation to apprehend Duggan, who they suspected of being in possession of a firearm, without informing the local police.
Make no mistake: Mark Duggan was no saint. In fact, he wasn’t even “no saint” in the George Floyd sense of the term. Duggan wasn’t choked to death on the street, unarmed and seemingly of little threat. He was shot dead while trying to escape on foot, in possession of a firearm he’d bought 15 minutes earlier. As one former officer who was attached to the unit that killed Duggan told me: “If you don’t want to be shot and killed by someone like me, don’t go out on to the streets of Britain with a gun or a deadly weapon.”
As a Fellow of the Design Against Crime Research Centre at the University of the Arts, it is my job to examine criminal behaviour through a creative lens. So when I look back at the Tottenham riots, what I see is a theatrical, operatic event — albeit a dark one triggered by those addicted to daily drama and a need to be heard. As one old Caribbean saying goes, which is generally applied to getting a good hiding: “Those who don’t hear must feel.”
In a similar manner, a riot gives the voiceless, especially those with low dopamine levels, an opportunity to get caught up in the rush, the excitement and the drama of anarchy. A riot is like Glastonbury for sociopaths. Antagonists see fires burning, smoke billowing, shouting, screams and sirens and they get high. Somewhere between the peaceful demonstration and the five deaths, hundreds of arrests and damages estimated to be as much as £300 million, someone made a critical error of judgement — and then the rioting started.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all is that it could have been avoided. Even police experts have conceded the anarchy was preventable. “There was a disgraceful absence of visible leadership, and that should be shaming for the Metropolitan Police,” was the verdict of retired Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner David Gilbertson at the time. “With rank comes responsibility, and part of the responsibility is visible command… It’s blindingly obvious to say that you [should] push them away from target-rich environments; a shopping area, a retail park — all of the places that were trashed by the rioters.”
At the time, Tottenham MP David Lammy told me he knew the riots were coming. Unlike most MPs, he was born and raised in the constituency he represents; but like many of his constituents — like me, in fact — he comes from an immigrant, working-class family, too many of whose relatives have had negative encounters with the police. He understood the existential problem between black people and those tasked with protecting them.
But many of us predicted a riot. Tottenham was always going to erupt. Even today, despite now being home to a gleaming £1 billion football stadium, recent deprivation figures show that Tottenham remains one of the top 6% most deprived neighbourhoods in England. Beyond the escalating property prices and significant high crime “powder keg hotspots”, volatile Tottenham — and its surrounding boroughs of Hackney, Waltham Forest and Islington — has long been home to rabbit warren council estates that look like open prisons where an absence of “boots on the ground” policing, partly due to falling or reprioritised police resources, allows gangs to act with impunity. The atomisation, alienation and cynicism — on all sides in such human Petri dishes — means the business of predicting riots is an exercise of “when” not “if”.
After all, we’ve been here before. In 1985, the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham erupted. Fuelled by racism, social exclusion, police brutality and poverty, youths took to the streets. Duggan lived on that estate; PC Keith Blakelock died on it. The anger of the rioters, and indeed many pacifists, was articulated graphically by Bernie Grant, Lammy’s predecessor, who infamously remarked: “The police got a bloody good hiding.” Grant’s words were strong — too strong given that an officer had just been murdered in the line of duty. But those words became the tagline of the 1985 riot. Something political had happened.
On the other hand, the 2011 riots were, as Lammy later wrote, “an explosion of hedonism and nihilism”. In Out of the Ashes, he suggests that lack of education, ineffective parental guidance, poor role models, ill-discipline, unemployment and a host of social and developmental ills created the perfect storm for a riot.
Yes, the rioters’ behaviour was criminal. Yes, they should be held to account. But go to Tottenham, says Lammy, and witness the conditions people are living under. For him, the finger was there to be pointed at the mindless criminals at the heart of the riot, and indeed failed police tactics and leadership. But it was also there to be pointed at Cameron, Blair and Brown too. This trio had arguably mortgaged British society, economically and morally in the run up to 2011, just as Thatcher had previously done with the resultant miners’ strikes, poll tax riots and previous Tottenham, Toxteth and Brixton disturbances.
Of course, plenty of black people have died at the hands of police in Britain. But barely a handful have led to serious rioting in the 73 years since the arrival of the Windrush. So why Mark Duggan?
To some extent, people rioted over his death because “his people” were able to mobilise a demonstration outside of Tottenham police station, which then got out of hand — not because he was a galvanising figure like Rodney King or George Floyd or Cynthia Jarrett, whose death sparked the first Tottenham riot in 1985, but because the moment presented itself.
Perhaps that’s why we’ll never be able to explain what happened ten years ago. The chaos was already there. Duggan’s death was merely the trigger. And as communities in Tottenham and beyond continue to rot, I suspect it won’t the last.
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SubscribeI was born and raised in Walthamstow, long before you. I don’t recall people trashing their own community. Neither do I recall a lack of education, ineffective parental guidance, poor role models, ill-discipline, unemployment and a host of social and developmental ills as being ills inflicted on me by uncaring outsiders and pantomime villains who refuse to acknowledge their culpability. In fact, Walthamstow was a pretty decent place in which working class families could raise their children – Because those families made it so. How do you think I feel when I look round the social wreckage of my home town? Perhaps I am expected to feel guilty – Along with David Starkey.
I too was brought up in Edmonton in the 1950s and 60sand new both areas, Edmonton and Tottenham well. Murders and stabbings were unknown and a woman had her head cut off around 10 years ago, about 100 yards from where I used to live. This would have been unbelievable in my time there and also the fact that Edmonton became the murder capital of London, if not England a few years back. The old Victorian, Edmonton Green was demolished in the late 60s and replaced by an ugly, modernist concrete eyesore. My last visit to both Edmonton and Tottenham was in the mid-70s when the general atmosphere had turned into an unsavoury atmosphere of unwelcome and threat. Things have changed radically since that time and one can only fear for the future.
They rioted because a coddled generation is faced with the choice of taking responsibility or wallowing in past grievances; encouraged by collectivist, identity politics they chose the easy option, like our footballers who will continue taking the knee before playing in slave built Qatar’s world cup.
Why do not the Chinese community riot? Is it because, like most Asians, they are too busy making a success of their lives?
Unherd does very well indeed to get four new pieces like this together every day, but this isn’t one of the better ones and the above quote shows why.
In 2011 we had just come to the end of 13 years of Labour firehosing other people’s money at anyone whose votes it thought it could buy. It is simply laughable to say this had anything to do with a coalition government that had been in power a year.
I don’t recall any mines being closed in Tottenham, Toxteth and Brixton to excuse any riots, and those riots likewise took place less than 2 years into her period of office after mostly Labour rule foe the previous 13 years.
The blame for rioting over the death of a criminal lies 100% with the rioters.
It’s always “the system”, isn’t it? Just fix “the system”, or better yet, replace it with a brand new, state of the art, complete-with-six-months-free-wifi “system” and happiness and contentment will roll over the people as the fresh, cleansing rain.
It was notable at the time, that amidst all the looting on Tottenham High Street – there was only one shop that remained completely intact and free of looters: Waterstones Book Shop.
Glad I wasn’t the only one to think this piece is a load of hogwash.
No leadership from the police? What about the lack of leadership from community leaders and activists?
“lack of education, ineffective parental guidance, poor role models, ill-discipline, unemployment and a host of social and developmental ills” There are many, many white neighbourhoods that are exactly like this, especially in the North, that don’t end up in riots. To blame wanton violence on outside sources is wrong, it only lies with the rioter themselves and is used as a cop-out to justify their violence which is exactly what the Irish do whenever they decide they want to riot next Tuesday. We have mass inequality all across the country but it’s always the “black community” who think they’re special and believe they’re the sole victims of inequality and people are rightfully getting annoyed by it.
That is somewhat overstating it. It is to say that those factors, or crowd psychology, have no influence at all. Of course all studies show that riots aren’t simply a matter of individual bad people. If do, why does their frequency vary so greatly?
Policing was no doubt in the past racially biased, but now the main legacy is a narrative of grievance and simplistic zero sum political analysis, endlessly propagated by Labour politicians and ‘community leaders’ and Left wing academics (Left wing totally redundant in that sentence!).
Brilliant! Thank you!
Thank you for this piece. It’s a testament to Unherd’s commitment to differing voices that an alternative point like this can be eloquently argued.
While I find the points worth raising, I do disagree with the fundamental assumption that oppression is the cause of rioting. It is a popular idea in the West and appears to be the de rigour explanation for unrest in most places. It is a tempting explanation but, I believe, wrong.
If it were valid we would expect countries like China, Zimbabwe and North Korea to be hotbeds of never ending protest.
But there is no rioting, much less protests, in these countries.
My hypothesis is that it is freedom and absence of consequence that underpin rioting, rather than anger towards oppression.
In Zimbabwe, for example, there were only demonstrations against the government during the recent coup when the military made it known that they would back protestors. Only then did people take to the streets. As soon as Mnangagwa was in power, the army reversed its statement, shot a few people, and we predictably enough returned to stability.
I therefore find it more plausible that the riots in the UK were more to do with the absence of consequences for rioting, and the perceived gains from crime, than they were to do with the blunt notion of systemic oppression.
Any country that is genuinely oppressive kills would-be rioters long before they riot.
“Thank you for this piece. It’s a testament to Unherd’s commitment to differing voices that an alternative point like this can be eloquently argued.”
Agreed. Thanks for saying that.
to paraphrase your post: ‘In discussion of the Globe it is needed to bring in a flat earther to provide alternative voices.’
This is good:
It’s pretty clear from any number of demonstrations that there are a core of violent people who will seize any opportunity to turn it into a riot. And there is a wider number who will exploit the chaos for looting, vandalism, settling scores or pushing political agendas.
The idea that riots are simply an expression of community anger is laughable, but always indulged by the commentariat.
… Meanwhile, in California, Larry Elder, formerly estranged son of a poor toilet bowl cleaner, is running for Governor … Need proof & inspiration? Read/listen to his story of ‘standing up’ …
What I would really welcome from someone with knowledge and experience is actual detail about the motivation and behaviour of those who rioted. What prompts people to feel so angry, inflamed and out of control that violence is the result?
I’ve never felt like that and want to understand what is going on at a personal level. I don’t think bashing and blaming the state for all society’s ills is realistic or helpful.
Until we get under the surface of the issues and identify the thoughts, feelings and triggers that are experienced in that moment, really we are simply repeating mistakes from the past.
An interesting article, but as always, it contains the message; it’s everyone’s fault, Blair, Brown, Cameron, police, you, me. They (we) poured the fuel on the floor, and then dropped the match.
And another thing I’d like to say; I’ve met many policemen, and all seemed normal, so although I can believe that relations between police and public in Tottenham may not be good, because of a cultural and normal ‘home’ and ‘away’ team division, I do not see why the whole responsibility for the problem should be pinned solely on the police. Do the police in Jamaica, Nigeria, or a hundred other such places where both police and public are black have better relations? For a start, UK police are only armed in special circumstances.
Middle class white boy wants to be cool. A Wigger, as we used to refer to you.
PS: It is what black folk of my acquaintance called you as well.
Surely 1/2 a reverse Oreo as this Duggan guy only 1/2 black? Also i think it important to point out that in ’85 as now N15-17 postcodes have a large mix of ethnicities. This means they exhibit the full range of human skin tones, something which seems to be important to you.
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“[A] riot gives the voiceless, especially those with low dopamine levels, an opportunity to get caught up in the rush, the excitement and the drama of anarchy…
… But many of us predicted a riot. Tottenham was always going to erupt.”
So, yes. We can always “connect the dots” and illuminate proximate causes. But, perhaps a more useful way of thinking of things is that processes are less deterministic and more stochastic. The likelihood that a riot occurs on any given day might be like a coin flip. It’s a just a matter of when, in which case our prediction is more like an estimate of a “hazard rate” in a duration model. To borrow a not uncommon phrase from Tolstoy, “something happened.”
Wise words – there are too many factors in the riot/non riot indices to make time based prediction impossible. Complex unstable systems make their own entropy level compared to controlled environments. This is one of the big issues with AI, behavoural simulations etc. We need to get so distant a perspective before prediction is possible the knoweldge gained becomes a platitude: “So if you treat people like poo and deny them access to the benefits of the society they are part of they will kick off”. Its probably easier to predict HOW they will kick off; BLM style smash up the local assets, or Castro style take over the ship and then after brief improvement crash backwards to the Old Boss set up etc. What’s not debatable IMO is that peacetime incremental gains will always better “rip up and re-try” ones.
I suspect all the commentators on here are white, so we don’t understand how humiliating it could be to to be endlessly stopped by the police.
I think we are being remarkably obtuse if we deny that policing was often in the past racially biased, and sometimes the comments on here go so far as to deny any racism, anywhere, ever, in our society. (The Chinese aren’t here in such concentrated numbers, don’t interact with the police much, don’t smoke weed etc. Of course there is a lot of racial antagonism against the Chinese in some other societies). It is complex, but saying it is all down to individual bad people doesn’t explain much.
However I do agree with most of the comments on here the main legacy now is a (political) narrative of grievance and simplistic zero-sum political analysis, endlessly propagated by Labour politicians, academics and learned by rote by ‘community leaders’ and people at large. As an illustration of this, Dawn Butler MP and many in the Black Community are blaming racism for the murders of two sisters in a park in Brent a year ago. They have absolutely no idea who the race of the perpetrator is.
There is also a complete failure to address family breakdown in the Caribbean community. In the past David Lammy MP did go onto this territory, but he now just seems to have retreated to his Left wing comfort zone and cry ‘racism’ at every turn.
As an American (old) I find David Matthew’s essay extremely insightful. It appears “eyes wide open” fair and balanced.
My analogy is “ A match is lit and dropped on the floor. The room blows up.” What caused the room to blow? The dropped lit match or the fact that the floor was covered by gasoline fumes and littered with TNT? Obviously if you take either away the room doesn’t blow. Accidents happen but the floor condition is not an accident. It happened over time and is easily seen by anyone who cares to look. Now, how to prevent the floor condition is complicated and requires a lot of work by many smart people over time.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan “The answer IS simple but it’s not easy”
The first looting in a nearby retail park started while the demonstration outside Tottenham police station was still peaceful. The looters knew that there would be no police coming to protect the shopkeepers.
Subsequent looting elsewhere occurred because of the ineffective policing. Was this down to poor leadership? Or had police leadership decided on allowing some looting and rioting to occur in order to gain leverage with the Government over police payroll and budget? The police got their act together once there was talk of bringing the army onto the streets of our major cities.
Mark Duggan had two convictions for minor crimes: possession of cannabis and receiving stolen goods. He had no convictions for any type of violence or drug dealing. The main evidence for Duggan to have benefitted from crime is circumstantial: Duggan had had children by three women and had no legal source of income with which to support them. The proof that Duggan had a weapon with him was also circumstantial: Kevin Hutchinson-Foster admitted supplying him with a gun and he was convicted for doing so. The police claimed to have intelligence that showed Duggan to be a violent criminal involved in drug dealing. The police may wish for good reason to protect informers and that is the reason why proof of Duggan’s claimed criminality has not been made public. However, there is another possible explanation: police criminality and corruption.
You would think people on a supposedly libertarian right leaning website would agree that corrupt and violent police are even worse than the civilian version as they claim to operate for the good of the community on behalf of the state. Criminals often get away with it and we will never know if it was police corruption (linked to the drug trade) or negligence (loss of temper, racism, effects of steriods/uppers etc) that caused them to shoot Duggan and then make up a load of stories afterwards.
That’s all a bit desperate; so it was the police who were violent criminals, and not Duggan?
It’s also ridiculous to suggest that rioting was allowed because of Machiavellian plans of ‘the police’ (what, the Chief Constable, a secret cabal, the Police Federation?).
I can wholly believe that police decision-making was of bad quality. This is primarily because the average policeman works his/her way up the ranks, and will never have been exposed to the kind of situation at that moment. I can see a parallel with decision-making at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire. Senior management were at fault, but understandably.
The police, and probably the fire service too, have always resisted learning from the armed forces, which naturally need to train to handle events never experienced at a major level. (The idea policemen should obtain a degree is utterly stupid, although making barriers to those with such capabilities equally so.)
Rare emergencies shouldn’t be made worse by default. Perhaps there’s a place for computer simulation.
I was in Tottenham by chance during the Broadwater Farm riots – staying with friends on Seven Sisters Rd. Talking to locals in the days after it was clear that the killing of Cynthia Jarrett by state actors lit the tinder which had piled up for years. This riot had its acquisitive and sociopathic free riders but IMO was mainly a misdirected raging for justice. Same with Duggan. In the Jarrett case the police&state saw no need to equivocate around their killing of a middle aged and unhealthy woman. When they killed Duggan they made up some story about him being “enroute to rob Columbian drug dealers”. In a mini-cab? Such nonsense would be funny if it wasn’t used to cover up a murder. If there is any point to be made about British society from this its not about immigration, fatherhood or skin colour. Its that an increasingly arrogant and corrupt state and its hired muscle think they can endlessly extract goods – money, opportunity and justice from the rest of us. Rioting will not stop this, but there are many other ways to do so. Education helps but ultimately the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with one.
Normally i ignore this sort of thing but as i have some free time i’d be interested to see if i can detect the spark of reason in my antagonist: Education helps because less people will reach for firearms if they can use thinking skills instead. However not everyone will do this, especially cops or young would be gangsters. Both are often roiling on steriods, pub dust and Lord knows what else. Such “hardcore” recidivists could be left to their gunplay or stopped. A regulated equal force operating with community consent as part of a social contract may stop them – not easy but it’s do-able.