Money Cultural here, just remembering ten years ago.
It’s now been ten years since the England riots happened. It’s been a decade since the chaos erupted in the streets of London and everywhere else around the country. I still remember vigorously of the carnage and the destruction I saw when the Londoners destroying stores, shops, setting cars on fire, taking on the police and so on. And this was happening during the recession and that was a horrible time with the job losses, people losing their business, etc.
It all happened when on 4th August 2011 on my 30th birthday; Mark Duggan was shot and killed by armed police at Tottenham Hale, North London. Intelligence suspected that he has a firearm on him. The protest was peaceful when they were outside the police station in Tottenham but then things got extremely chaotic in the evening time when rioters starting taking on the police, throwing things at the cops, breaking into shops, setting cars on fire, I saw a double decker bus on fire, yo people, it was just anarchy.
My best friend text me about the riot. I was at a church that time and please don’t ask me why. He told me on the phone that there was a riot because a police officer shot and killed an unarmed man. I wasn’t surprised a riot broke out if a police officer shot dead a black man who was unarmed and Mark Duggan is mixed with Irish and Caribbean. Me and him meant to go and watch an international football match between England and Holland at Wembley but that got called off.
Madness in Woolwich, South East London
Not only it happened in Tottenham but it also happened in Hackney, Brixton, Walthamstow, Peckham, Enfield, Battersea, Croydon, Ealing, Barking, Woolwich, Lewisham and East Ham. And from August 8th to 11th there where riots happening in Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton but they were copy cat violence with social media playing that role. After the end of the riots, they were over three thousand arrests and with more then thousands criminal charges issued across England. Five people died when the riots happened and two hundred and five people was injured and most of them where police officers.
It was tragic what happened to Mark Duggan but it was also wrong that people were looting shops and setting cars on fire, even burning down businesses on fire as well. They were destroying their own community, they’re own neighbourhood but the thing is that they were just sending a message. The government weren’t listening. Talking wasn’t working anymore. People in England were completely frustrated of what’s going on in Britain at that time. Something needs to happen. Something really needed to change.
When the riots was over, I went to Ealing, West London and I saw door windows of HMV damaged and then I went to Croydon, South London and I saw the damages of a store. My mind went “Damn!” All this happened because of one man was shot dead by an armed police officer from the Metropolitan police. There was an African man who saw the damage of the store and he said that “This is recession here!” And I agree with the guy. Recession is definitely here. When the riots happened, the police couldn’t even control it. The coppers had no clue what to do. They just couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t handle things.
The England riots will forever be on my mind. I have never seen chaos like that in my life. I remember the Brixton riot in 1995 after a black man named Wayne Douglas who died in police custody. The police said that he died from heart failure but in the inquest of his death that he been held face down and his hands was cuffed from behind in four occasions. The post mortem said that he suffered from heart disease. I was watching the mayhem in South West London on the news and then over fifteen years later I saw the England riots. Even though the chaotic violence end quickly as it started, I will remember the England riots as one of the most violent explosions I have ever seen in this country.
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