Twenty-year-old Mohammed Naji and his friends say they are not surprised by the rioting and looting in several suburbs in and around London this week.
Naji, a biomedical student who lives in Ealing, a north London suburb badly hit by the rioting on Monday night, blames unemployment, education cuts and the lack of opportunity for young people for the rioting.
Naji and two friends were hanging around a street corner talking about the rioting in the area, which was sparked by, among other things, the death of Mark Duggan, the 26-year-old who was shot in a car in mysterious circumstances in Tottenham last Saturday.
One of the young men, who asked not to be named, is unemployed after losing his job in a pub last month. He said the pub had laid off 10 staff because to the recession.
“There are just no jobs here. It is so difficult for young people in London. They have no housing and no prospect of work,” he said.
“Most of the rioting since Saturday has been the result of opportunism. But there are problems and the government must address them. It is a vicious cycle and not something the government can afford to ignore.”
Naji, who came to London from Iraq as a child with his family, has had to take out a loan to fund his studies and the debt weighs heavily on him.
“I’m only in my first year at school and already I owe £4 000. My parents are not living here anymore as they went to Morocco and I have to look after myself,” he said.
“What will happen to me when I finish my degree? I probably won’t even be able to get a job. They are so scarce around here.”
His 19-year-old friend, who would not give his name for fear of intimidation by other youths, described what it was like to be caught up in the violence. He had been working in a café in Ealing Broadway when the looting began on Monday night.
“It was 10.30pm and I was packing up. They went mad, looting and throwing things at the police,” he said. “I wasn’t frightened. They weren’t really trying to hurt people, they were just fighting the system.”
A store owner in Maida Vale said she believed lack of parental control in Britain had led to the spiralling violence.
“Kids are given too much freedom. I am the mother of a young daughter. When she grows up, I will know who she is with and what she is doing,” she said angrily.
“These kids have freedom and they have rights. They must use these rights to do something good with their lives.”
Police: ill-equipped
The scale and violence of the rioting in several areas in London and other major centres such as Birmingham and Manchester caught the police by surprise. They have been accused of being absent when the rioting broke out in some central areas of London, such as the affluent suburb of Croyden.
While shops and cars were razed in Hackney and Clapham Junction, south of the Thames River, the police were clearly ill-equipped to cope.
The use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and cellphone messages, such as the BlackBerry messaging system, is also given as a reason why gangs of youths, some as young as 13, were able to outwit the authorities.
Locals tend to go on holiday in August and London is swamped with tourists. Surprisingly, in spite of the looting, there were few injuries.
The gangs used the opportunity to show their disdain for a system that led to the shooting of Duggan. Autopsy results show that Duggan died from a single gunshot wound, but no further information is available.
A London cab driver blamed the legislation that controls the response of police for the mayhem.
“Police aren’t able to show any type of force. If they do, they will be locked up,” he said. “If they hurt anyone while trying to arrest them, they will certainly face charges.”
But the police did show they were in charge by arresting more than 300 around the country overnight on Tuesday. They have since issued statements saying that all the cells are full and they will have to send people to jails outside London.
According to the BBC, by Thursday 1Â 300 people had been arrested.
Police are also calling on parents to keep their children off the streets.
In Ealing Broadway, a bobby on the beat this week said he was expecting more trouble, but couldn’t talk to journalists. “It won’t stop for a while,” he said. “But we will get on top of it.”
Restoring order
When British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a televised speech on Tuesday, Londoners switched on to watch, even in their local pubs.
“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything to restore order to London,” said Cameron. “These are sickening scenes. Scenes of people looting and attacking police. This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be stopped. I feel for all those who live in fear and I applaud the police for their bravery on our streets in confronting these thugs.”
On Monday night, there were about 6Â 000 police on duty, but all leave was cancelled and the force was bolstered all over the country, Cameron said. By Thursday there were reportedly 16Â 000 police officers available in London.
On Tuesday afternoon, a man jumped onto a bus in which I was travelling from Ealing. He was visibly panting from running. “They were going crazy and looting. The youngest I saw looked 13. I just ran and got on the bus,” he said.
“I am going to get my son. He is only one and a half. I’ve got to get him home, just like any parent would.”
The streets outside the bus were eerily calm and full of people, but the youths had gone on a quick rampage down the road. “It’s bloody madness,” the man said.
Tim Goodwin, the acting chief commissioner of the metropolitan police, said pictures of those who took part in the looting were being put on social media sites to ask people to assist in identifying the looters. “This is total criminality,” he said.
“If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to feel the might of the law,” Cameron warned.
The prime minister recalled Parliament for a day on Thursday to hold an emergency debate over the riots.
One business which was doing a roaring trade was Mojo Barriers, a company erecting barricades all over the city. “People just don’t want to take chances,” said one of its workers, heaving up the heavy steel barriers. “It’s a preventative measure.”
He was barricading the luxury Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush in West London, as people there were clearly expecting trouble. Restaurants inside the large centre, which includes the famous eatery Jamies, which belongs to Jamie Oliver, were considering closing at 6pm.