by Secretary
This past Sunday, I woke up in a different London to the one I know and love. On Saturday night, a peaceful protest about the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham had turned into a violent riot. The riots morphed into looting and violence, and it spread like a virus.
That Saturday, I’d been at two fellow SG member’s apartment in North London. We’d heard of the Tottenham riots, but had assumed it would die down once the police got there. Since we were also in the company of an SG member living in Germany, talk turned to what we loved about London. We talked about how it is truly a diverse city in every sense of the word; about how people from every walk of life live side by side, and about how this makes the city feel so alive.
Earlier in the day, I’d briefly dived through the Brixton Splash, an annual community street festival that’s a celebration of diversity in an area famed for past troubles and tensions. Free food was cooked and handed out, there was rap, reggae and people drinking and dancing in the streets under the blazing sunshine. It was happy and relaxed, and it had ended peacefully at around 7 PM.
As myself and SG member Vermin made our way back from North to South London that Saturday night, we passed again through Brixton. We had no idea that just two hours later a gang of 200 youths would descend on the place, looting businesses and starting huge fires as they rampaged down the high street
We awoke on Sunday morning to find shops had been broken into. The police had cordoned the affected area off, tube stations were closed, busses were diverted, and the air was thick with a shared sense of unease. Shops closed early and people hurried home in the daylight. Rumors started to spread, of looting and riots planned in other areas.
Nobody was quite prepared for just how out of hand it became.
