Recently crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world – burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people – in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot? Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Our riot that happened here in Los Angeles happened on May 1st. It was all pre-arranged, pre-set up by this government. It had nothing to do with the people in the area ... Those who are behind the scenes who control this government. Jordan Maxwell, Lucifer 2000
As for rioting the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right one – flog the rank and file, and fling the ringleaders from the Tarpeian rock. Thomas Arnold, 1795-1842, English historian & educator
The young officers’ scenario of a breakdown of civil order in Britain is acted out in a remarkable Sandhurst training exercise in internal security techniques. Panorama, BBC 1975
It was the worst rioting for more than a decade. A week of mayhem in our towns and cities. Mobs whipped up by the far right on social media. Panorama: The Riots that Shocked the Country, BBC 2024
The police were to blame for what happened on Sunday night, and what they got was a bloody good hiding. Bernie Grant, Tottenham MP, speech 8th October 1985
In 1989 the plan to introduce a Poll Tax sparked the worse rioting in living memory. In November 1990 Mrs Thatcher’s radical leadership of the country came to an end. Crude Britannia: The Story of North Sea Oil 3/3, BBC 2009
In the Spring of 1990 Thatcher introduced a new local tax to replace domestic rates which would prove to be the beginning of the end. Thatcher’s new method of raising local revenue was called the Community Charge or Poll Tax. It would be payable by everyone. And the poorest in the land would pay as much as the richest ... When it was tried out in Scotland there was chaos. Huge numbers of people simply refused to pay. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
Thirdly, in 1987 the Tories were re-elected on a manifesto based on their ‘flagship’ – the poll tax. Four years later the same government, which made no new pacts and still had a parliamentary majority of nearly 100, withdrew the poll tax. Had they been terrified by the parliamentary opposition? Not at all – they were contemptuous of it. What changed their minds and abolished the poll tax was a mass campaign of civil disobedience, whose climax was probably the biggest demonstration since the war, which turned into a full-scale riot. These huge political shifts in our direction were all set in motion from below. They were almost unaffected by what was going on in parliament, or even by which government was in office. The pace of events was determined by the ebb and flow of the struggle between the classes – when they win, we lose, and vice versa. Paul Foot, article Why Labour Lost, May 1992
When last year’s riots took place we were all left with questions about what they meant. Millions of pounds of damage was done to cities across the country. For four summer nights the rule of law was at breaking point. Five people died and thousands of businesses and homes were lost. Riots: The Aftershock, BBC 2012
Thousands were arrested and their sentences harsh. ibid.
Simmering resentment about police treatment of black people; it was a demonstration in response to Mark Duggan’s death in Tottenham that sparked the riots. ibid.
Burglary: half of all the rioters were charged with this offence. The average prison sentence handed out for that charge was fifteen months. ibid.
More than a hundred people have been injured tonight in serious rioting across central London. BBC News 2011
We’re going to get the dramatic first-hand accounts of those who were there – the police and the rioters. First, the rioters. The Riots: In Their Own Words I: The Rioters BBC 2012
The interviews were undertaken by the Guardian and London School of Economics as part of their Reading the Riots research. ibid. caption
On 6th August last year about 120 people gathered outside Tottenham Police Station in London. They had marched from Broadwater Farm Estate to protest at the shooting by police of local man Mark Duggan. ibid.
‘People started throwing weapons and I knew something was going to take place because I could see by the youths gathering, and that’s when I knew this was war.’ ibid. rioter
‘They stood united together on the front line and was pelting the police, and that was really really nice.’ ibid.
The crowds gathering on the streets were a mix of races. ibid.
Even many rioters would later speak of a party atmosphere and of warring gangs suspending their hostilities. ibid.
Shops would be the prime targets. ibid.
‘Everyone else was doing it.’ ibid. rioter
Some of the strong targeted the weak. ibid.
Some expressed a hatred of the police shocking in its intensity. ibid.
By the end of the rioting five people were dead and nearly 2,000 crimes of arson and criminal damage had been recorded. It had taken four days to gain control in London; the riots outside the capital had lasted two nights. ibid.
‘There’s petrol bombs being thrown, there’s bricks being thrown. They had control.’ The Riots: In Their Own Words II: The Police, BBC 2012
For five days last summer England was looted and burnt. ibid. commentary
The lack of officers dictated police tactics. ibid.
Tottenham High Road becomes an inferno. ibid.
‘People wanted to hurt us really really bad.’ ibid. rozzer
Disorder is now breaking out in twenty-two London boroughs. ibid.
Rioting has now spread to other English cities. ibid.
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here? 1967
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it. Martin Luther King
The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society. Martin Luther King
I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they’d shoot me. Tracy Chapman
On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire. Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot
In the summer of 1981 riots broke out in the inner cities. Thatcher: The Downing Street Years I: Woman at War, BBC 1993
The Rebecca Riots are a victory. Huw Edwards, The Story of Wales IV: Furnace of Change, BBC 2012
Bombay was in crisis: anti-Muslim riots had erupted here in December 1992 and again in January 1993. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Altogether 900 people, more than two-thirds of them Muslims, the rest Hindus, were slaughtered in those riots as law-enforcement officers stood and watched. ibid.
In the last five years, the number of peasant riots has risen spectacularly to roughly 80,000 per year and they continue to proliferate. ibid.
The wind backed sharply and hurled a torrent of sparks and whole burning splinters of wood across the Pike. The bright shower flew over the crowd to settle on the roofs of the quarter guard and of the magazines and store-houses behind it. Not for thirty seconds could Rodney hear under the other noises, the bang and rattle of rifle fire. John Masters, Nightrunners of Bengal p213
The green strangers pressed closer. An inch from his ear a rifle exploded. The ball smashed into Torrance’s appalled face, blew off his nose, and ploughed up between his eyes, into his forehead, and out at the top of his head. The Byronic boy squirmed gobbling in the dust, and spouted blood and brains. ibid. p214
All India had exploded into smoke and fire, that all its millions would be his enemies and he would find no pity or shelter in all its miles of plain and jungle. To right and left the bungalows burned, and outside each one men moved in silhouette. Some of them were shouting excitedly and firing rifles; in others the first panic of fear had gone, so that they stood about in whispering knots. ibid. p220
His son Robin lay beside Rambir, face down in his nightshirt the back of his head a black and clotted blur. Rodney felt the skull gently and thought it was not broken. Blood still trickled under the fair hair and dripped on the earth. They must have held him by the ankles, dashed him once against a wall or a tree, and thought they’d killed him. Rodney gathered him up and pressed him, kissing the round face and purple eyelids. The boy breathed in quick shallow gasps. The sepoys still moved about the lawn. ibid. p221
Tottenham, August 2011: ‘There is intelligence to suggest that Mark Duggan is currently in possession or control of about three firearms and is looking to take possession of a firearm at the scene.’ Lawful Killing: Mark Duggan, rozzers’ briefing, BBC 2016
The police shooting of Mark Duggan in August 2011 triggered the worst riots in modern British history. People died in those riots … There is still no agreement about what actually happened when Duggan was stopped by armed police on that summer’s day. ibid.
The story is wrapped up in secret intelligence … leading to a suspicion that the truth is being hidden. ibid.