It’s Tuesday morning, August 9, 2011. Last night my girlfriend and I stayed in our Balham flat, listening to sirens on the streets and police helicopters overhead, and following news channels and Twitter to find out if the violence that has erupted across London for the last three nights would spread to our area.
And it did. But when you can say that ‘we got off lightly’ with only a few shops smashed in and looted, something has gone very wrong.
The scenes from Clapham Junction, just down the road from us, were horrifying and devastating.
And all of this, seemingly, carried out by idiotic teenagers and young people with no agenda other than “I’m going to fill my boots and smash some stuff up”.
The riots were sparked initially following a protest in Tottenham over a man, Mark Duggan, who had been shot by Police last week. But whatever political dimensions may have been present at the very earliest moments of the trouble were forgotten amidst an orgy of bloody-minded and pointless destruction and sheer consumerist greed.
Mindless and selfish
The copycat attacks across London and spreading to Birmingham and other parts of the UK were mindless and selfish.
Frustration. Poverty. Feelings of victimisation and powerlessness. Greed and opportunism.
These might all be reasons, but there are no excuses.
Peoples’ lives have been put at risk for the sake of mindless violence and theft, and Police resources have been stretched to their limits.
The security industry has already been instrumental in providing Police with CCTV images of rioting and looting, and it must do all it can to provide whatever assistance is required by Police in the coming days – firstly in proactively offering intelligence on potential flashpoints today and tonight, and then in providing all the footage and evidence they can to help Police bring those responsible to justice once the immediate threat has diminished.
This is not the London that I have lived in for 10 years. It feels like some other place, ripped out of the pages of a dystopian novel. It can’t go on.
