Reflections on the 2011 Tottenham Riots # 42 10/08/2021
Reflection on the 2011 Tottenham Riots.
(I would like to thank Keith Jackson, minister of the Broadwater Farm Anglican Church for help with this article).
At about 4.30pm on Saturday 6th August 2011 my wife and I were on a bus going down Tottenham High Road. There was a small crowd gathered outside the police station, which I realised was the peaceful protest called for by Mark Duggan’s family over his death at the hands of the police the precious Thursday.
Coming back at about 9.30pm our bus ride was terminated at Tottenham High Cross by a tense looking young policeman. We could see smoke and a burning car further down the road, so we walked home through untroubled side streets. We saw a brief reference to it on the Ten O’Clock News; but I only discovered the seriousness of what happened during the night when a friend, who had come over the previous day to visit the Spurs memorabilia shop, rang at about 8am to see if we were all right. So, what had happened and what went wrong? Here are my personal impressions
Why?
* Police mishandling.
The reason for the peaceful demonstration stems from the fact that the police failed to explain the death to the Duggan family. The failure to provide a family liason officer to speak with the family and at least give some information about Mark’s death was very distressing to the family.
* Revenge.
There were several young people who sympathised with the Duggan family and believed that the killing of Mark was unjustified. Others found it the perfect opportunity to pay back the police for the many black youngsters who were mistreated or for those who died at the hand of the police without redress. Whereas the rioting that spread across London and then the nation over the next few days was mostly an opportunity for young people to cause mayhem and to loot, the original rioters were older with the original intention to wreak havoc on the police in revenge for the death of ‘one of their own’. There was no way that the death of Mark Duggan – an important figure amongst those who saw themselves as lawless – could be quietly accepted without a response.
* Low profile policing.
The initial protest – intended by the family to be peaceful – had low police supervision. Presumably in the hope of not inflaming a tense situation. This back-fired when the protest was high-jacked by people intent on trouble, and the police quickly lost control of the situation.
* Opportunities for looting.
With police forces stretched, areas vulnerable to large scale looting were quickly identified, plus the rapid expansion of social media meant there was a quick way to gather young people with a low ethical threshold against stealing to gather and ransack shops. The common assertion that these were multi-ethnic groups is too simple – they were overwhelmingly white and black young criminals, with little south or east Asian presence.
* It was unpredictable.
After the event explanations were given as to why the riot happened, such as the declining availability of youth facilities. But for discontent amongst young people to boil over into outright violence there needs to be a trigger – in this case an under-policed demonstration that was taken advantage of, and then the unparalleled use of social media to gather mobs. Had the police presence on the evening of August 6th been stronger, Britain’s worst riots in almost three decades may well not have happened.
The death of Mark Duggan.
* The police’s original response was to lie.
The immediate version by the police was that Duggan shot at a policeman, who only survived because the bullet hit his radio. (Compare to similar lies told immediately after the killing of the Brazilian Charles de Menezes as an alleged terrorist suspect). Putting out such stories initially, which inevitably come to be seen as false, merely damages trust in the police. This fabrication was seen by many as proof that the police wilfully killed Duggan and that crucial evidence was being hidden.
* The gun Duggan was carrying would have been used.
His cousin had recently been murdered by a gang from east London. Had he not been intercepted, then a few days later there probably would have been another murder (possibly with innocent bystanders) and the police blamed for not being in control of the situation.
* The police’s attempt to arrest Duggan was badly handled.
Whilst the subsequent Enquiry didn’t charge the police, the fact that an unarmed man was shot dead and the gun he was alleged to be carrying found at some distance from his minicab suggests serious real-time misjudgements by the police. The claim of Duggan’s family that he was deliberately assassinated hangs over the case.
* There has been remarkably little come-back.
Given the high profile of the original demonstration and the weaknesses of the police’s explanations, it is interesting that Duggan’s death has subsequently been so uncontentious. The publication of the results of the inquiry into his death received little protest. The tenth anniversary has had very little impact. The ‘community’, in other words, has not been concerned. The overwhelming majority of all ethnic backgrounds have no sympathy either for Duggan, or for the rioters who caused such extensive and costly damage in the area simply in order to engage in petty looting.
Today.
* The police are under-funded and over-stretched.
A youth club that our church’s pastor ran on the Broadwater Farm Estate had to be closed. A police presence to protect it from a ‘post-code’ attack from Wood Green or elsewhere, with the possible loss of life, was not possible. Staffing shortages mean that there are no longer police officers able to devote a significant length of time to become at home the local community. Stop and search tactics are used too indiscriminately, so that trust amongst all black young people plummets. The recent review by the all-party House of Commons Home Affairs Committee listed a series of problems over recruitment from ethnic minorities, training and the use of stop and search powers that lie behind declining confidence in the police.
* Lack of provision for young people.
The growing pressure on local authority budgets caused by government austerity policies has meant serious cuts in youth work, along with serious youth unemployment. The prospects for young people in the area are certainly no better than ten years ago, with many feeling that their address immediately puts them at a disadvantage in applying for jobs.
* Another spark?
As stated earlier I believe that riots are unpredictable, with causes that are in significant part local and circumstantial. But (to use an all too contemporary analogy) there is enough tinder around for an accidental spark to set off another fire.
Appendix – Ignorance and racism in academia.
Paul Collier is an Oxford Economics Professor. His book ‘Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism on the 21st Century’ (2013), was published by the prestigious OUP, and then Penguin, with front-cover recommendations from both the Guardian and the Sunday Times, and with a wide range of academic and journalistic accolades. Yet it covers the death of Mark Duggan and the subsequent response with a quite startling inaccuracy and ineptitude (pp 78-82).
1. Mark Duggan’s death.
Collier: ‘In the car taking him to the police station the criminal pulls gun; the police are also armed and shoot him dead’. This of course bears no relation to the truth. He was in a minicab that was certainly not going to the police station, and was shot when he emerged from the cab, almost certainly not holding a gun.
2. The riot.
Collier: ‘The social network of the criminal rushes to the police station and mounts a protest, several hundred strong against the police’. In fact it was two days later that Duggan’s family made an initially quiet, small and agreed protest at the police station (which, as I wrote above, I witnessed from the bus).
3. The ‘community’ response.
Collier: ‘The criminal, Mark Duggan, is posthumously turned into a community hero’. As noted above, apart from his immediate associates, the inhabitants of Tottenham of all ethnicities (the ‘community’?) have shown very little concern about Duggan or regret over his death. Other deaths of innocent black people at police hands have been memorialised. It won’t happen with Mark Duggan.
What is important here is not just the inaccuracy but that it is consistently slanted to give a demeaning and racist picture of black people. Duggan is accused of senseless violence against the police; the ‘social network’ becomes an insensate mob rushing maniacally to the police station; the (surely black) community en masse lack any moral perspective and side with one of their own despite his obvious guilt.
It is extraordinary that a book – about immigration! – should produce such an entirely inaccurate account of an event that only two years earlier had triggered the country’s most serious disturbances in thirty years; presumably produced by the author’s garbled memory without any attempt to check the facts.
Perhaps even more shocking is that the version got to print by a serious academic publisher without at any point being identified as nonsense, received plaudits from a wide range of opinion formers (based, one presumes, on them having read the book) and then made it into a paperback edition without anyone noticing how a very significant and well-publicised incident had been re-presented in racist terms that depicted the black people in Tottenham as foolish, hysterical and devoid of any moral balance.