UK UK Newswire Archive
Anarchists respond to the London riots - Solidarity Federation
10-08-2011 11:44
With media sources blaming “anarchy” for the unfolding violence in London and across England, the North London Solidarity Federation has released the following statement as a response from an anarchist organisation active in the capital.Community pulls together, your help asked
10-08-2011 10:55
Tottenham Green Leisure Centre has become a community drop in centre for people who lost everything they have during Saturday night's riots. Volunteers are donating clothes and food to those who need them.
Individuals there include those made homeless by the rioters and those robbed in the streets during the riots. They currently need small toys and games for the children. Clothes for adults and children (some families have lost literely everything and have only the clothes they were wearing. Nappies for babies are also welcome.
This is nothing to do with the council but is a community initative by local people for the local people.
For those wanting to come by and help out
Address
Tottenham Green Leisure Centre
1 Philip Lane
Tottenham
N15 4JA
Transport
Bus The following buses serve bus stops on Tottenham High Road, within a five-minute walk of the Leisure Centre: 41 / 76 / 123 / 149 / 230 / 243 / 259 / 279 / 318 / 341 / 349 / 476 / W4.
Train Tottenham Hale
Tube Seven Sisters Tube station on the Victoria Line is about five minutes walk away. After leaving the station at the 'High Road' exit, walk up the hill in the direction of Enfield, and Tottenham Hotspurs' ground, and away from Stamford Hill, keeping on the left-hand pavement. After passing College of North East London, turn left into Town Hall Approach Road until you reach the Leisure Centre.
Riots spread to Nottingham
10-08-2011 09:55
The disturbances which have swept London following the shooting of Mark Duggan by armed police on Thursday, has spread to Nottingham. According to Notts Police five of their police stations were attacked by groups of rioters last night, armed with ‘homemade incendiary devices’. Over 100 arrests have been made including a group of 10 who climbed on the roof of Nottingham High School. On Monday night there was serious disruption in and around St Anns, including an attempt to break into JD Sport in the Victoria Centre and a firebomb attack on the police station.
On the newswire: Five police stations attacked in Nottingham | Canning Circus police station firebombed | Rioting spreads to New Basford? | St Anns police station firebombed
Elsewhere: Manchester | Birmingham | London | Bristol
This is not the first time that disorder has begun in London and spread to Nottingham. In 1981, rioting in Brixton and Toxteth, Liverpool was replicated in Nottingham, centred around the Hyson Green flats (now replaced by an Asda supermarket). Indeed, the current wave of disorder has also seen incidents in Liverpool, including in Toxteth.
Monday
St Anns police station attacked with petrol bomb.
Group of youths attempt to break into shops in city centre.
Vehicles set on fire and windows smashed in St Anns.
Tuesday
Bulwell police station attacked with stones.
Arson at Clarendon College.
Golden Fleece pub on Mansfield road attacked.
Group climb on the roof of Nottingham High School.
Canning Circus police station attacked with petrol bomb.
Police car set on fire outside Meadows police station.
Looting attempts in city centre thwarted by heavy police presence.
Widespread arson, criminal damage and disorder in Basford, Clifton, Meadows and St Anns.
Five police stations attacked in Nottingham
10-08-2011 08:55
Rioting flared up again last night in Nottingham as five police stations were attacked with homemade incendiary devices (i.e. petrol bombs). Canning Circus, The Meadows, Oxclose Lane, Bulwell and St Ann's police stations were targeted by rioters. A police car outside the station in the Meadows was also torched.
Notts police are saying that they have arrested over 80 people in connection with the disturbances and expect this to go up to over 100. 10 were arrested at an incident where youths climbed on the roof of Nottingham High School near the Forest.
However the middle-class man-in-the-pub pundits spin this as the work of benefit-scrounging darkies engaging in 'recreational looting' the fact of the matter is that the police were the primary target of this uprising. The only other significant target, the Nottingham High School, is a symbol of elite wealth and opportunity: a fee paying school with grand buildings and extensive grounds, a short walk from the working class neighbourhoods of the Arboretum, Radford and Forest Fields.
I don't doubt that there were incidents of opportunism and vandalism of working class houses and vehicles, but the main targets were the people who hold down the poor estates - the cops who brutalise and criminalise and the schools that exclude the 'riff raff'.
New Radical Book By One 'Le Gavroche'
10-08-2011 08:41
Known to be the most dangerous orphan in times of revolution, Le Gavroche has taken a break from sleeping inside elephants to write a book analyzing the dialectical process creating what he calls 'Super-Tyranny'.Police Dog Savages Bystander
10-08-2011 02:53
BBC Radio Manchester phone in: a guy called Steven has phoned in to describe how a police officer set his dog on him and let it maul his leg so badly that he he needs surgery.Darcus Howe names the 2011 riots an 'inssuerction' on the BBC
10-08-2011 00:48
Darcus Howe, writer and broadcaster names the 2011 riots an insurrection on the BBC. In this important turn in the discourse on the 2011 riots, Darcus Howe also links these events with those in Greece Syria and other parts of the world.Canning Circus police station firebombed
09-08-2011 22:55
Canning Circus police station was firebombed by a group of 40 males at around 10pm. 8 arrests made. The rest have got away for now.
Earlier this evening 10 were arrested after a group of youths climbed on the roof of the elite private school, Nottingham High School. There were also two arrests after rocks were thrown at Bulwell police station.
Latest reports suggest the Golden Fleece has been attacked. Student residences on Peel Street also being attacked. Reports of disturbances on Mansfield Road.
Riots in Manchester
09-08-2011 22:29
The BBC news channel has just been showing live coverage of rioting and looting in the centre of Manchester.Too far: A site to identify and incriminate rioters
09-08-2011 20:25
Going too far: Someone has created a web site to incriminate any people photographed in the London riots.Calm down! Cameron has everything under control! (by Latuff)
09-08-2011 20:02
A riot of as a sign of desperation
09-08-2011 19:55
When the youth of a nation is disenfranchised from political expression, their last recourse and most basic form of expression is violence. When the politicial parties use spin and blatant lies to claim the vote of the impoverished and vulnerable persons of a nation, and then stab them in the back once in power, the poor have no other way to express their frustration and indignation than wreaking misery on others. When justice evades those who only have that to cling to, the result is a deeply emotional reaction to this misplaced trust in authority and to those who are still winning in the system. This is the story of the UK riots.
The question on everyone else's lips (if they are ever allowed to overcome their own anger) would be why so many young people smashed so much of London in just three days of destruction.
For this impoverished class who like everyone else aims for satisfaction, respect and hope, the final splinter that held them intact was removed from them.
Maybe we should be reminded of what their world looks like. The advertising flashed into their minds keeps reminding them of the need to consume and as the jobs dry up their inability to fulfil this need with new objects to maintain them distracted emotionally staggers them to the monotony of facing up to their brokenness, their emptiness. Then comes the moment when the reality that even in death they will not receive justice, as happened in the alleged murder of Mark Duggan. It is then, inflamed by the police's customary disregard for emotional expression and desire to protect its own (especially when also under attack themselves from recent reviews of the service) that they react in the only way they can.
Frustration is common to all, especially in these economically unstable times, but most have ways of expressing it, and it is unlikely anyone will help the least favoured of society in that way, especially as that bridge to this underclass, social welfare, is gradually diminished by a Tory government hell-bent on neo-liberal, market-driven politics.
It is clear that when the authorities totally dismiss the basic rights of this section of the population, this group will want to vent their anger into some form of response. When crime is an everyday part of survival and the police are the common enemy, prison is no longer feared and to get their own back at those who curtail their enjoyment, they serve their own justice on the police and the propertied class.
The looting is just a mere realisation once the anger is vented, that they must live another day and they need those objects to make themselves feel content throughout the long winter as an alternative to drugs or more violence.
The press only represent their readers and never represent the poor's true hopes, desires and outcries, stereotyping them as criminals and destroying their ability to function healthily in a society ruled by the commodities they cannot afford.
Such is the fate of this underclass of British society, many who are black, because of the imperialistic, colonialist policies of the British for hundreds of years whose racist, jingoist past rarely lifts these people past the roles of the slaves of the white supremacist. Their is no respect for their different culture or of the pain that is ongoing within their families because of this rejection as they try to prove themselves to be worthy partners in the building of this country. Their humility and humanity far outweighs the proud middle class, whose conservative, egocentric views see only profit and property as the only denonimators on which to judge people.
Maybe this moment of disbelief should be used to re-evaluate what a multi-cultural society really means, and not to think that the poor will ever have the same opportunities or starting point as the white middle class who participates in business and politics and therefore have avenues for expression. If they do not, as I suspect will happen, the only recourse of the middle class will be more repression, which only leads to more violence, a spiral that will only stop when the prisons are full to overflowing or the last shop has been broken.
Gravesend kent
09-08-2011 18:56
Following a facebook call about a riot in Gravesend todayAnarchist Guidebook to Post-Civilization
09-08-2011 18:40
A guidebook to post-civilized culture, including what it might entail and how we will survive. The book will contain a large amount of practical knowledge for survival including how we can build sustainable housing and grow food in a regenerative way.Full article | 1 addition | 5 comments
Oxford riots 'misinformation' update
09-08-2011 18:08
Myself and various friends have received all sorts of misinformation today regarding the apparent rioting in Oxford, including riots in Cowley, riots on the Cowley Road, riots in Headington. This isn't quite the story so far as I can see.Birmingham, West Brom, Salford
09-08-2011 16:21
Bethnal Green Road - Monday & Tuesday
09-08-2011 15:55
Reports on incidents on Behtnal Green Road
Didn't see this reported elsewhere, so thought I 'd post here. There were some incidents involving rioters and police yesterday evening on Bethnal Green Road. I was there at around 19:30, and witnessed a group of maybe 200 people there on the streets, and some police presence, including riot police and a police horse van turned up at some point.
I didn't stay that long ; the situation was tense, with stand-offs with short bursts of confrontation. Today I saw that there were some broken windows, though the damage was clearly targeted : local businesses (apart from a pub) were left intact, and banks (barclays, halifax) and chains (tescos) had some windows broken. Something was burning yesterday though I couldn't see what it was - from the remains today I guess it was a bin.
Today the tension on Bethnal Green Road is palpable. Just walked there, at around 4pm. Some shops have gone for pre-emptive boarding (a gambling shop) ; others have emptied their stocks (a shoe-shop). A lot of shops are closed that would otherwise be open. Tension is in the air, though I don't see any evidence of people gathering or anything ready to happen.
peoples assembly has been called for tomorrow (wednesday) 5pm Parliament Square
09-08-2011 15:17
peoples assembly has been called for tomorrow (wednesday) 5pm Parliament SquareCorporations and the London Riots
09-08-2011 15:13
The rioting and looting which followed the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police has been called an 'outrage' and an 'atrocity', terms usually reserved for murder and genocide rather than the burning of department stores.
