Five days later

This was Foot Locker in Brixton on Wednesday morning, totally torched in the riots on Sunday night. There were a couple of crime scene investigators still at work on it, but by the end of the day it was being boarded up. Many of the shopfronts on the high street have their windows boarded up now, so you are faced with a cityscape of plywood when you walk down into town, but otherwise everything seems totally back to normal.

Everyone is sharing experiences - you overhear snatches of conversation in the market. We chatted with our upstairs neighbours, who were much more alert than us and started noticing via online forums that it was all kicking off in Brixton on Sunday night. One of them is a journalist and actually went out and had a wander around - he said that the mood was more like a carnival than anything particularly aggressive, but he was depressed about the fact that most of the kids doing the looting were young teens. The other neighbour said she had looked out of her front window at one point and seen kids running down our street laden with flat-screen TVs and other gear from Currys round the corner. She had heard, though, that these kids were subsequently mugged by older kids with guns - kind of worrying to have confirmed so baldly what you have always suspected about the neighbourhood but never really wanted to think about.

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On a lighter note... Because K was working at home today, we went and had lunch in Brixton Village, fulfilling our resolution to always have lunch in the market when we're around (more usually at the weekend).

View down 4th Avenue, with the quirky lampshade installation designed by local artist, Charlotte Squire, who has her studio in the market. Read more about the work here.

Last autumn I blogged about the total transformation of Brixton Village, but didn't know much about it at the time. I now know it's the amazingly successful result of a deliberate policy of regeneration, the brainchild of an agency called Spacemakers that hasn't been going for long but specialises in urban regeneration projects: you can read about their project for Brixton Village here. That part of the market was so rundown that parts of it were derelict, but they arranged with the council and the property managers to let out 20 market stalls rent-free for three months, and held an open evening to attract interest, which was massive. They allocated the stalls to independent small businesses run by local people or who would source their supplies, especially food, locally, and only agreed to projects which would not threaten the already-existing shops and stalls. And now it is totally buzzing!

We have been back many times since, and it seems like there are new places every time we go. We try to eat at a different place every time: we've tried Etta's Seafood, Cornercopia, though I must admit we have been three times to Kaosan, a really delicious little Thai place which was highly rated by the Observer's restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, also a local resident (we used to see him taking his kids to school when we lived on Brixton Hill). The first time we went it was empty - just us and a second table were occupied - but ever since his rave review, the place has been totally packed and you're lucky to get a table! (They do really gorgeous lemongrass tea)


Today we tried the Japanese place, Okan, which specialises in okonomiyaki, Japanese street food - which I had eaten in Japan and it tasted just as good and delicious here in Brixton. I love how all these restaurants have benches outside, and you can watch the market life going on around you. It's really nice to go on a Friday, when it is quieter anyway but feels like locals only, whereas on Saturdays now the market is full of people who come in from outside Brixton - we've even spotted some tourists! It's all great for the local economy (though I know some fear it heralds gentrification - though actually Brixton has always been pretty wealthy and gentrified, until the post-war years...) but it is also nice to feel you're a local there.

And supporting your local businesses and community seems like the right thing to do at the moment, after the trauma of the riots.

After the riots...

Pictures from a walk around Brixton after last night's rioting and looting...

Curry's on Effra Road - this is literally just around the corner from us. I took these pics with my phone so the quality isn't great but you might be able to make out that the glass front doors are both smashed in and there are piles of loot that I guess wasn't taken - and two of the shop managers standing around apparently totally lost about what to do. Next door is Halfords which didn't look too badly damaged, but the BBC journalist who reported on the looting live in the small hours of this morning said that bikes were being passed one by one out of the front door...

There were piles of stones and bits of broken up brick lying around on the pavement, presumably assembled for throwing at shop windows to break the glass. A low wall at the end of our street seemed to have been slightly dismantled, presumably to get at the bricks for ammunition.

Brixton was full of press. This reporter was being hassled by a drunk guy who the police had a stern word with...


The camera crew at the left were from Portuguese TV. I even saw a couple of Japanese journalists setting up their camera in the middle of Electric Avenue. This shows the view down Brixton Road, totally cordoned off with police tape, everyone standing around just looking though there wasn't much to look at apart from scenes of destruction.

The windows had been boarded up at KFC by the time I got there, around lunchtime. Though I couldn't get onto the high street to really see the extent of the damage, what seemed to be the case is that the banks were completely untouched, but places like KFC or MacDonalds or the gaming shop (you can just make out the smashed windows of the shop with the blue frontage)

or Foot Locker - all these places were targeted for smash and grab. It seems to have been gangs of youths out for whatever they could get. Someone made a half-hearted attempt to get into this jewellery shop

but the real targets seem to have been those places that stock goods that appeal to current youth culture - the mobile phone shops were particularly smashed up apparently. Though someone had also had a go at M&S for good measure.


This was one of the bus stops by the tube station (which was closed today) - totally smashed up.

The high street was closed and buses were diverted and there was pretty much total chaos on the traffic front - but I still managed to walk around the market, some of which was open, and do some shopping (I am on leave this week and needed some supplies as Rosa is coming round for dinner this evening). There was a weird feeling of business as usual, though subdued and with a sense of people not quite knowing what to do with themselves.

It was weird. Coming home from Helen's barbecue last night around 9 pm, we would never have guessed that riots would erupt within a matter of hours. It had been Brixton Splash, a street festival, during the day, which seems to have been fun and chilled and there were still quite a lot of people around, sitting in groups on the lawn in Windrush Square. There seemed to be a rather unnecessary number of police around, but they weren't doing anything - we laughed about how one of them was queuing for a burger from one of the street vendors. Ironically, later it turned out that there weren't enough police on hand.

We came home, watched a movie (The A-Team!) and went to bed - then got woken up at 2.30 in the morning by the noise from a police helicopter directly overhead. The noise was unbearable - reverberating with all the tall buildings of the council estates around us. It went on for about half an hour/40 minutes, maybe longer. I got up and looked out of the window - it literally was straight up from our flats, with a huge beam pointing in the direction of Currys, I now realise. I guess we realised that meant something was going on - but something usually is going on in Brixton.

I just fell back asleep and was none the wiser until K checked the headlines online as he settled down to work at home for the morning, and was greeted by 'Riots erupt in Brixton'.

I feel kind of depressed about the whole thing. It seems to have been organised and there is some talk online about groups of youths bussing in from outside Brixton. But what is it all about? What is the point of it? So far it seems to be utterly senseless, violence and looting for the sake of it. One of the buildings that has been completely gutted by fire in Tottenham was a rather handsome 1930s block, now destroyed - so sad. A lady standing next to me this afternoon as we surveyed the emptiness of Brixton Road said to me, 'It's so unfair - they're smashing up their own back yard, where their parents and grandparents have to work and shop'. It doesn't have the ideology of 30 years ago - but is that how all riots start? With a spark and then you rationalise it later? I just hope that's it, and we're not in for a repeat of what happened last time.

P.S. so touched by all the messages and calls we've had this evening asking us if we're ok - thanks for caring guys!

It was 30 years ago today...

© Neil Libbert for the Observer - see other photos here

The Brixton riots broke out - the worst racially motivated riots in UK history I think, a combination of severe social deprivation, including 55% unemployment among black youths in Brixton, and disproportionate stop-and-search tactics on the part of the police, which erupted violently one April weekend. Nearly 300 policemen were injured in the riots and many buildings were burned.

I remember them - or I remember hearing about them from the news and people around me talking about them, as I was only 6 years old. But they have always been something I have wanted to understand better. There was an event in Brixton yesterday to mark 30 years on from the 'Brixton Uprising' and I would have liked to have gone along, but alas I had an article to finish writing (which I sent off today - hurray!). I have been watching these excellent short films on YouTube, Battle 4 Brixton, which weirdly shows places that I know very well from living here but looking terribly run-down 30 years ago. This edition of the Radio 4 programme, The Reunion, is also very instructive.

The Brixton riots led to a change in Metropolitan police tactics but it seems to be taking a very long time for these to really change at grass roots. Linton Kwesi Johnson talked on the radio this morning about how his grandson still faces stop-and-search by the police in Brixton today. You like to think that everything is much better socially in Brixton now, but looking back on a day like today makes you think about whether that is actually the case. There is certainly still a lot of unemployment and disaffection among black youths which leads to gang activity. God, how white middle class do I sound? It makes you remember that there are two social strata in Brixton - the comparatively privileged home-owning, mainly white, middle classes and the more disadvantaged majority that live all around us in the council estates. One does well to remember.