Lewisham is back to its old self after a quiet night. Nothing happened, despite rumours of race riots and marching bands of National Front / English Defence League, of which a little bit more in a bit. But first, the market is open and all is normal. Two photos from this morning:
...although TK Max is late to the party – the boards are new this morning. All photos: Ed Ewing
Last night was again spent watching the looting spread across the country, while grazing Twitter and online for news about what was going on locally. According to Twitter a gang of up to 2,000 men from the NF / EDL were in Eltham and about to march on Lewisham in an attempt to spark a race riot. (About 3.5 miles - 1hr 10mins according to Google Maps.)
There were pleas - hundreds - aimed at the BBC to stop showing what was going on in Birmingham and to focus on the disaster about to happen in south east London. 'Eltham' was trending on Twitter. Eltham of course is known for the murder of Steven Lawrence and the only time it makes the news is when race is on the agenda.
The teenager who was with Steven when he died was Duwayne Brooks. Duwayne is now a local councillor, tried to run for London mayor last year, and has been Tweeting all week for calm (as well as tweeting through last night's Newsnight and laughing at the classic spat between Harriet Harman and Michael Gove).
So it's all very relevant, still current and now. But it was almost impossible to make out what was going on - to separate the fact from fiction. The best clue was, as the tweets about an imminent race riot reached peak, a helicopter - presumable police - flew over, checked out Lewisham and Eltham for a few minutes around 9.30pm, and headed off.
We had to weed out the voices of reason from a huge amount of nonsense - the BBC and the Guardian sent reporters down to Eltham, and both reported 'Nothing to see here'. There did indeed seem to have been some sort of tribal gathering – but it was guys getting together to defend their community. Loud and raucous and intimidating but nothing the police on the ground couldn't handle, unlike the past three nights across London.
This led to the amazing/baffling/alarming/take-your-pick sight of people like Boy George (an Eltham boy - yes, amazing isn't it) who was bigging-up the Eltham defence posse/Millwall fans on Twitter appearing to stand alongside Nick Griffin from the BNP.
All quite bizarre. Anyway, Twitter's very double-edged when it comes to these sorts of things – you have to find your Tweeter and stick with them, otherwise, like last night, you just get lost in waves of rumour and speculation. Local councillors like Mike Harris (although where is Steve Bullock in all this? Oh, he's been on holiday...) and mainstream media seem to be the best. Even Brockley Central got carried away in the moment (although it's understandable - everyone does it and it's the nature of the beast).
The lesson is, if you don't know, don't speculate: it's why we all shout at the BBC News these days – too much shoddy speculation (I am in my 30s and read the Guardian btw, not 80s and the DT).
Anyway, it's all back to normal for now in Lewisham. It's safe to head back down to get almost-over veggies and fruit, a massive bowl of bananas for a pound, or perhaps even a criminally expensive loan – surely this type of legal looting, charging 500%+APR for a short-term loan, should be brought under control. Oops... can of worms!
Update: Tuesday 9 August, 3.45pm
Having had one eye on Twitter for the day, I had read variously that Lewisham was either now rioting, about to riot, fully closed, closed to traffic, being guarded by the Welsh police, locked-down or shutting up shop.
I went for a look at the town centre at 3-3.30pm. Usually the market is in full swing, with the bargains just about to kick in at this time. But instead many – most – of the shops were indeed closed, but there was no riot/smoke/groups of looters. The market was not there.
The bellweather of the day, Gennaro's deli, was half-closed – two shutters down, tables inside, but still serving. That sort of reflected the feeling of the place: half closed.
I saw seven police on the beat, and two (maybe three) police cars. There was no 'nervousness' or 'tension'. It was more watchful. In saying that would I head down there this evening, with all the rumours flying and the afternoon turning out to be warm and sunny? Probably not.
PS: Thanks for the nice/thoughtful comments to my earlier post today. :)
10.30am: Overnight damage
London riots in Lewisham: Police and rioters on Albion Way on Monday 8 August. Video: Fragshield
I was coming back to London from Edinburgh yesterday when at 6pm I got a text. “Lewisham now, check Twitter.” For the next hour and a half as we headed for Kings Cross I was on my laptop, trying to follow what was going on.
Arriving in London it was very quiet. Not many people on the trains and Tubes coming through town at 8pm, and the atmosphere was a little bit jumpy. Literally in one case as I bumped into a girl getting off the Tube and we both jumped. “Sorry!”
The best joke on Twitter last night – and there were lots – was along the lines of, “They’ve raided Primark in Lewisham and have made away with £42.50 worth of goods.”
The other remark people kept making was, “Lewisham? That’s where Europe’s biggest police station is…”
And yes it it. Lewisham actually has a pretty daggy town centre at the best of times. The shopping centre is brutal, in both senses of the word, although the daily fruit and veg market outside keeps it human. Elsewhere, there are neat little gems – a deli, things like that.
Coming into Lewisham at 8.30pm it was clear most of the riot was over. There were no cabs at the station, the shops and petrol station nearby were all shuttered, there were no helicopters overhead and the sirens weren’t abnormal.
Turning on the TV it seemed everyone had moved onto Croydon, where they’d set the world alight by burning down a furniture store.
View The Lewisham Riot: key locations, with photos in a larger map
This morning I went out to look at the damage from the Lewisham Riot of summer 2011. I took a tour through the town centre first. There is actually very little visible damage in the centre itself. McDonald’s was smashed up, Thinesh Jewellers had its shutters buckled – I don’t know if it was looted or not – and Superdrug had a window smashed.
Much more damage was done on Lee High Road, centred round the Dirty South pub. This pub has form for me – when I moved to London I spent longer than I wanted to living above it for a few weeks in tidy but overcrowded dorm rooms (a dodgy/illegal 'hostel') sharing with Aussies, Eastern Europeans, a few Africans and some Russians. When one of the guys got meningitis and nearly died, the pub (then known as the Hobgoblin, I think) was quarantined by the health squad – after that, as soon as I could I moved out.
“They tried to burn the Dirty South down,” said a guy sitting literally in the window of his barber shop opposite. He was originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe, by his accent.
“Do you not have shutters?” I asked.
“For a barbers?” he said.
The window had been completely taken out and he was now just sitting in it, taking the sun and guarding the shop. He said he’d watched the riot for two hours from his upstairs flat. “They were just kids,” he said.
Despite this little parade of shops being minutes from Europe’s biggest police station, the police didn’t arrive for two hours, he said. And when they did there were only six of them in a van. “They came, they got out of their van, they looked, and then they went away again,” is what he said.
“What are they going to do at the Olympics?” he asked. “It will just take a spark.” The off licence next door with its shutters now firmly down had been looted thoroughly, he said.
He declined to have his photo taken with his window or shop.
Almost next door is Heidi Alexander MP’s constituency office. This had its windows and door smashed in and a laptop stolen. She was on BBC News 24 last night talking about it.
One of Heidi’s team who lives nearby was inside tidying up. “They didn’t take the desktop PCs” he said, “and the laptop is encrypted so that will be useless.”
There are no shutters on Heidi’s office. A token of respect and openness for the community she represents. Sadly, that didn’t pay off last night.
He pointed me up towards the BP garage, which had also been attacked. ‘Closed’ said the sign. The windows were smashed, the bins upended, glass on the floor. It was pretty much beaten up.
Heading back down towards the town centre, I noted that Nando’s had survived – this was another key Twitter comment last night, along the lines of ‘Nandooooo’s Noooooo!’. Obviously people love this place. Next door, the temple was in good shape too.
In Albion Way though there were two cars burnt out (see the BBC footage). A group of early birds were standing around discussing them. Among them a man who “came to this country 35 years ago,” from, I presumed but didn’t ask, Jamaica or the West Indies. “I came into town yesterday but it was full of smoke. I thought the car park was on fire. So I turned and went home.”
He was back, taking a look at the damage. “When they are caught they will get a criminal record,” he said, displaying a certain faith in the system.
One guy, also on his bike, said he’d rung the police the night before when a woman had been hurt outside his home. They’d said, I paraphrase, “Don’t worry, this is Europe’s biggest police station, it’ll be over in 20 minutes.”
He continued: “And it was. The police cordoned off the town centre, put a line across it and they all got in their cars and went.”
The ‘They’ were the rioters, who he said he’d seen arriving in cars (“all smart cars, not older than two or three years old”), park up, move into the town centre and then leave when the rioting failed to take light.
“The damage you see down in Catford is as they fanned out towards Croydon,” was his take.
As we stood there watching, a respectable-looking white man on his bike rode past, looked at the cars and said, “Fucking n******.”
"Fucking idiot," someone said after him.
“My fear is if this happens again tonight some shopkeeper will shoot someone,” said the other man on the bike. Another guy, who by the look of him and his cameras was a freelance photographer, agreed. He said he’d seen shopkeepers organising and defending their shops last night in Hackney. He’d also had two cameras stolen from him in Tottenham the night before.
Apart from the tidying up then, Lewisham appears to have got off lightly, certainly compared to other parts of the city. Two burnt out cars, the local MP's office, the garage and various shops.
On the way home I stopped at Genarro’s deli to see if he and his staff were ok. His assistant was putting out two tables and the Italian flag was flying as normal. “Yes, yes,” he said, “Everything was ok.”
“Kids,” had told him that trouble was coming to Lewisham so he’d been forewarned. “Kids of customers, kids who come in, they use Facebook, Twitter…” he mimed the thumbs going. “I said, Lewisham? Nah! But at 5.30 we start to see people so we just closed the shop.”
That must have been about the same time that a friend was getting her nails done in a nail shop in Lewisham centre. She’d been scared witless because they’d looked up and seen hooded guys outside with bats/wood coming towards the shop.
The owner locked everyone in until it was safe to come out.
She then walked home quickly “the back way,” which meant going up and over Blackheath. There she saw a group of guys preparing, wrapping scarves around faces and the like.
“I just held my head up and walked through,” she said, before, like a lot of us last night, getting home, closing the door and watching it all on the telly.
Some more photos from damage around Lewisham:
PS: I've lived in Lewisham/Greenwich/Blackheath area on and off for about six or seven year. Before that I worked for three years as editor of one of the local magazines, The Guide - now owned by Archant. Sometimes I post reviews and the like on Greenwich.co.uk. I don't usually blog, I just file articles etc here, but when it's on your doorstep, well, you've got to.
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