Posts Tagged ‘riots’

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan

Friday, August 4th, 2023

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan: Sunday 4th August 2017 was the sixth anniversary of the killing by Metropolitan police officers of Mark Duggan which had led to widespread unrest in Tottenham and other areas. I went to photograph a march from Broadwater Farm to a rally outside Tottenham police station on the anniversary, arriving very early and taking a walk around the estate and the adjoining large park before the march.


Broadwater Farm Estate – Tottenham

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan
The Moselle goes underground as it approaches Broadwater Farm

Broadwater Farm Estate became notorious in the 1970s and 80s when poor maintenance and crime in poorly lit ‘deck level’ walkways made it into a sink estate after problems with damp, infestation and electrical faults led to half of its original residents moving out.

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan

The estate was built over the River Moselle which flows above ground through the adjoining 20 acres of public park, the Lordship Recreation Ground, and the area had remained as open land because of the flood risk until the estate was built in the 1960s. And though building the housing in blocks above ground floor open car parks solved the flooding problem it created large areas of largely empty and rather intimidating covered space.

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan

Things came to a head on the estate in October 1985 after police came to search the home of Cynthia Jarett whose son had been falsely arrested and charged with theft and assault. She died of a heart attack during the search, according to her daughter after being pushed by a police officer. Feelings in the Black community in London were already running high following the shooting in Brixton of Cherry Groce the week earlier during a police search in Brixton which left her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Broadwater Farm & Mark Duggan

The death on the estate provoked a protest at Tottenham Police Station and various incidents on the estate which blew up into a riot as more and more police came into the estate with firefighters who put out a small fire. Faced by increasing attacks from residents the police withdrew, but two officers failed to escape. PC Richard Coombes was seriously injured and PC Keith Blakelock was beaten and hacked to death.

In the following years there was an intensive regeneration programme which greatly altered the estate, removing the deck level almost completely and making both structural and environmental changes. Some shops were converted into light industrial units to provide local employment and a local team was set up to manage the estate. As I wrote in 2017, “By the 2000s the estate had a long waiting list and had one of the lowest crime rates in London, though it still retains a powerful and blinkering presence in the Met’s demonology.”

More pictures Broadwater Farm Estate.


Tottenham remembers Mark Duggan

People met on Broadwater Farm where Mark Duggan had grown up on the sixth anniversary of his killing to march to a rally at Tottenham Police Station.

As well as the killing of Duggan, the march also protested the police killings of other members of the Tottenham community – Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner, Roger Sylvester and Jermaine Baker as well as the recent deaths in London of Rashan Charles, Darren Cumberbatch and Edson Da Costa.

After Duggan’s death there were various misleading stories put out by the media including the BBC who reported police lies about the event, in particular that Duggan had shot at police first. He hadn’t fired a gun at all, and had almost certainly left it in the cab. The police involved refused to be interviewed in the IPCC investigation and gave conflicting testimonies. Almost certainly the most reliable account of the shooting came from the driver of the cab Duggan was in who said that Duggan got out of the taxi to run away and was immediately shot by police, he “only got 2-3ft from my car when he was shot.” It remains hard to understand the eventual inquest verdict of lawful killing.

At the front of the march was Tottenham community activist Stafford Scott who was also one of the speakers at the rally. At the police station we listen to a local poet and there was a minute of silence to remember those who had been killed.

As well as speeches from members of bereaved families and local activists, there were also speeched from Becky Shah from the Hillsborough campaign and a speaker from the Justice for Grenfell campaign.

Among those present was Myrna Simpson, the mother of Joy Gardner who died after being restrained by police who raided her home. Three officers were tried for her manslaughter but acquitted.

The crowd spread out into the street with a large group of mainly young men on the opposite side of the street.

More pictures and captions on My London Diary at Tottenham remembers Mark Duggan.


Reclaim Brixton 2015

Sunday, April 25th, 2021

Brixton has been in the news again recently, with various analyses published on the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Brixton uprising (aka Brixton riots) which began on 10th April. Official reports put the 3 days of unrest which caused £7.5m of damage and left almost three hundred police (and an impossible to estimate number of the local community) injured down to poor housing, unemployment, and police harassment.

It was largely the actions of the police that led to the events. Their failure to effectively investigate the arson attack on a party in New Cross which killed 13 young black people in January 1981 scandalised much of the nation and the racist reaction of the mass media to a protest march about this raised tension, exacerbated by the police arrests of the march organisers who were charged with riot – and later acquitted. But the final straw was when police at the beginning of April began ‘Operation Swamp 81’ with large numbers of officers coming into Brixton and stopping an searching almost a thousand people – almost entirely African-Caribbean – under the ‘Sus law’, the 1824 Vagrancy Act which allowed police to stop and search anyone they believed was acting suspiciously.

Little changed after the official reports came out, and it was only 19 years later, following another scandalous police failure to properly investigate the murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 that the Macpherson report found that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. Although some changes have been made, there are still plenty of signs that this continues to be deeply embedded in the ethos of the force.

The publication of ‘The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities’ on 31st March this year (2021) came at perhaps a particularly insensitive time for a report that is widely seen as a whitewash by a commission set up to reflect particular views. Set up in opposition to the protests by the Black Lives Matter movement over the death of George Floyd (and three weeks before the trial of his killer ended in three guilty verdicts) it evoked fury from many experts in the field as well as the millions who still experience discrimination.

More recently is has been condemned in remarkably forthright terms by the independent experts of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council who state “In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent” and call on the British government to categorically reject its findings.

Brixton has changed since 1981 and some of those changes are very much for the worse for the local population. There were further riots, and there have been deaths at the hands of police – such as those of Ricky Bishop in 2001 and Sean Rigg in 2008 – but the main threat facing the local communities is gentrification as Brixton is changing from a working class area home particularly to migrant communities to a trendy up-market suburb. Its a change which is in part inspired by the vibrant communities which it is displacing, but also driven by the excellent transport links the area enjoys.

25 April 2015 saw Reclaim Brixton, a day long protest against gentrification which saw several thousands gathering at various events in what is still so far as I’m aware the largest protest of its kind. One major blow to local people has been the decision by Network Rail, backed by Lambeth Council to redevelop the railway arches in the centre of the town, home for many years to some of Brixton’s best loved – and cheapest – businesses. The current tenants, one of which came here in 1932 – are being evicted and after renovation the rents will be triple and their places largely taken by the same chains and franchises that we see in so many other high streets.

Soon after I left Brixton – in what seemed like a quiet period and I thought things had probably ended, activists took direct action against some of the major players they hold responsible for gentrification, breaking a large window Soon after I left Brixton – in what seemed like a quiet period and I thought things had probably ended, activists took direct action against some of the major players they hold responsible for gentrification, breaking a large window at Foxton’s estate agents, going into Brixton Village with their banners and briefly occupying Lambeth Town Hall.

More at:
London Black Revs ‘Reclaim Brixton ‘march
Reclaim Brixton celebrates Brixton
Take Back Brixton against gentrification
Brixton Arches tenants protest eviction