Tottenham nine years on. Black Lives Still Matter. Racism still exists
Tottenham protest 8th August 2020
I was present at the Tottenham riot nine years ago on Saturday though accidentally. I lived then as I still do in central Tottenham but had been for a meal with my partner elsewhere in London. Alerted to events by a friend on twitter I hastened back. After all as Secretary of Haringey TUC in 2011 I thought it my duty to be there and see what was happening.
I was of course aware that some form of protest after the police shooting of Mark Duggan two days previously, not 5 minutes from my Tottenham flat, was likely and indeed quite justified. The precise form it took was a surprise to me, and I suspect to most. The reaction or perhaps more accurately the lack of action of the authorities did not help.
The death of Mr Duggan still remains an ultimately unexplained matter, perhaps particularly to those who were close to him.
Despite the Kaiser Chiefs record you can’t predict a riot. In 2016 The Guardian published a useful piece by one of those behind the important 2011 Reading the Riots project noting that conditions in Haringey had not get better and indeed some areas worse in the years since. That remains relevant.
As I noted in the Guardian in 2011 the general sense of pissed-off ness in the area was the background to the riot. It was not the motor. That was the failure of the police to relate properly to the shooting of Mark Duggan. It quite rightly enraged people.
Riots are chaotic situations and that night nine years ago was no exception. Fortunately I was able to return home- indeed buses were running to within a few hundred yards of the riot.
As I noted at the time, whether you think riots have a place or not is one thing but condemning what took place hardly helps. People were pissed off with a lack of opportunity, with overbearing policing, racism and much else. Nine years on many still are and the Black Lives Matters movement has given an important new voice to the fight for justice.
Nine years on Stand Up to Racism has been very active in the area, has have others, highlighting the explosion of police stop and search tactics against black people during lockdown and the unjustifiable police use of tasers against black people. The Windrush scandal and institutional racism frames the whole thing.
No Justice, No Peace was the mood nine years ago in Tottenham and it still is
Keith Flett is the former Secretary of Haringey TUC and Editor of the History of Riots (CSP 2015)
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