Runneymede Trust report on the Riots

This report, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, is the result of a series of ‘Riot Roundtables’ which took place in Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Croydon and Lewisham in Autumn 2011.

 

The Riot Roundtables brought key local decision-makers, professionals, young people and members of the community together to find out what happened during the riots and what can be done to prevent something similar happening again. Runnymede was keen to find out if race played a role in the riots.

 

To download the report, please click here: http://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/174/32.html

 

The foreword to the report is below

 

Riots are not demonstrations. They are not organized, do not have a clear set of political demands, or spokespeople who might seek to explain the actions of the many who are caught up in the disorder that ensues. In this vacuum of explanation, many commentators have sought to makes sense of last August’s riots.

 

Immediately following the events of Saturday 4th August in Tottenham, we pointed to the classic features of the disturbances which appeared very similar to past events that have come to be understood as ‘race riots’: anger at police actions, breakdown in communication between police and policed, anger at patterns of discrimination, high levels of unemployment, and fear of further exclusion. However, 24 hours later we had to admit that the events had taken an unprecedented turn, both in terms of the scale of the riots, the number of people involved, and the multiple locations of disturbances.

 

Commentators were quick to dismiss racial injustice as a driver of these disturbances. The claim was that since the rioters were from a range of ethnic backgrounds, the riots were not racialised. Due to the breadth and range of locations, it was further suggested that there were no clear reasons for the riots beyond ‘criminality, pure and simple’.

 

We felt that these explanations were at best incomplete. Instead of indulging in further speculation, we were keen to hear from people who were directly affected by the riots. As a race equality focused organization, we wanted to ask directly about how racial inequality and injustice may have featured in the riots. This was not to pre-suppose that these events were driven solely by poor race relations; indeed we would rather that this was not the case.

 

In order to discover how racial injustice may have featured in the riots of August 2011, we hosted a series of roundtables where people engaged in community work from black, white and Asian backgrounds reflected on the events, alongside a series of interviews of members of the general public in hair and beauty salons. Much discussion in the post-riots analysis has been focused on young people. In order to enable young people’s voices to be foregrounded in our analysis, we supported three groups of young researchers in London and Birmingham who hosted discussions among their peers.

 

These discussions have highlighted the ways in which racial injustice acted as a driver for the riots, and crucially have reminded us about the issues which need to be tackled in order to minimise the risk of such devastating disturbances in the future. Misdiagnosis of the causes for the riots will inevitably lead to misdirected solutions being offered. The findings in this report suggest that unless we start to take concerted action to respond to the persistent racial inequalities in our society that in a period of financial austerity we are at risk of facing similar disturbances again in the near future.

 

Dr Rob Berkeley

Director

Runnymede

January 2012