On the afternoon of Saturday 6 August 2011, around 300 people walked from north London's Broadwater Farm estate to Tottenham police station.
The group were, in their words, seeking justice and answers over the death of a local black man called Mark Duggan, who had been shot dead by police two days earlier. The circumstances of Duggan's death were initially unclear and controversial, stirring up longstanding mistrust between the local black community and police. While it was believed that Duggan was armed, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) later admitted that they had mistakenly suggested to journalists that Duggan had fired at officers.
What followed was five nights of unprecedented unrest and violence in the capital, which spread to cities across the country including Birmingham, Salford, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham. Involving an estimated 20,000 people, the clashes led to damage costing £500 million, nearly 4,000 arrests, left dozens of people homeless and resulted in five deaths.
Some have made comparisons with the violence seen on the streets of cities across England in recent days, led by far-Right and racist mobs. However, the motivations and circumstances surrounding the far-Right violence and London 2011 riots are very different.
This week, riots organised started across the country after the fatal stabbing of three young girls in Southport on Monday. Hotels housing asylum seekers have been set alight and daubed with racist graffiti, and dozens of police officers have been injured. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has condemned the "far-right thuggery" on UK streets and says those involved "will regret it".
The 2011 riots sent shockwaves across the nation, generating five days of wall-to-wall television coverage and creating widespread panic that prompted the government to consider sending the military on to the streets of Britain.
The prime minister has some experience dealing with the judicial side of riots. At the time of the 2011 riots, he was director of public prosecutions, and he kept the courts open 24/7 to process offenders and allowed magistrates to pass longer and tougher sentences.
Here, we take a look back at the riots in London, what caused them and how the country responded.
The shooting of Mark Duggan
On Thursday August 4, Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, was shot dead by Metropolitan Police officers as he got out of a taxi in Tottenham, north London. His death occurred during an operation by officers from Operation Trident, which investigated gun crime in London’s black community. The circumstances of his death were controversial and initially shrouded in confusion, fuelling anger and distrust of the police.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), now known as the Independent Office for Police Conduct, later acknowledged that it had mistakenly led journalists to believe that Duggan had fired shots.
David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said he was “shocked and deeply worried” about the incident. Two days later, on Saturday August 6, 300 people gathered outside Tottenham police station to protest about the shooting and its aftermath, saying they wanted justice for Duggan and his family.
Part of the reason for their demonstration was down to the “alleged failure by the IPCC to provide Duggan’s family and the local community with reliable information in the aftermath of his death”, wrote the Guardian at the time.
On January 8, 2014, a coroner’s jury concluded that Duggan was lawfully killed but that he was unarmed at the time.
How peaceful protest turned to violence
On the evening of August 6, tensions rose after the initially peaceful protest march in Tottenham. As the protest continued into the evening, violence broke out. Protesters clashed with the police and shops were looted while buildings were set on fire in Tottenham Hale Retail Park.
The spread of news and rumours about the previous evening’s disturbances in Tottenham sparked riots during the night of Sunday August 7 in Brixton, Enfield, Islington and Wood Green and in Oxford Circus in the centre of London.
For five nights, London was rocked with chaos, violence and arson. The last time disturbances on this scale hit the capital on successive nights was during the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780.
The existence of social media made the 2011 riots unparalleled to any before them in terms of the speed at which issues managed to spread and at which rioters were able to mobilise and organise. Many used sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote and advertise sites for looting and disorder. As a result, many online organisers were handed severe sentences for their roles in the violence.
By August 10, six days after the shooting of Duggan, a significant police operation was deployed, with over 16,000 officers on the streets of London. This heavy presence, along with public calls for calm, eventually led to the containment of the riots.
At the end of the rioting, five people had died, including a 68-year-old man who was attacked while attempting to stamp out a litter-bin fire in Ealing. Dozens of people were left homeless and more than 200 people were injured, the vast majority of them police officers.
What happened to the rioters and what was Keir Starmer’s role?
The judicial response to the 2011 London riots was swift and severe, with the legal system taking unprecedented measures to process the large number of individuals involved in the unrest.
In response to the high volume of arrests, courts were kept open 24 hours a day, including at weekends.
Courts handed down harsh sentences for those convicted of participating in the riots. Many defendants received custodial sentences that were significantly longer than usual for similar offences under normal circumstances. Two men were given four-year sentences for inciting riots via social media, even though the riots did not materialise from their posts.
Sir Keir Starmer, who was the director of public prosecutions at the time, played a key role in overseeing the legal response to the riots. As the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Starmer was responsible for guiding the prosecution strategy.
"For me it was the speed [of processing cases] that I think may have played some small part in bringing the situation back under control," Starmer said afterwards. He added: "I don't think people gamble on the length of sentence, particularly. They gamble on: 'Am I going to get caught? Am I going to get sentenced and sent to prison?' And if the answer is: 'I'm now watching on the television some other people who had been caught 24 hours or 48 hours after they were on the streets with us' - I think that's a very powerful message."
While the approach effectively restored order in the short term, it also sparked debate about the balance between deterrence and fairness.
