They share a city, and very little else. But one thing united the rioters who have left a trail of shattered glass and burned-out buildings across London and the residents left to clean up the mess: anger. Facing a storm of criticism for remaining on vacation while his city burned, London Mayor Boris Johnson returned Tuesday to tour Clapham, a well-off south London neighborhood that was one of many stunned by three nights of hopscotching riots that left one man dead and littered the urban landscape with hundreds of damaged businesses and residences. PHOTOS: Riots in England The shaggy-haired conservative was greeted by crowds of furious store owners asking where police were as their livelihoods were destroyed. “I felt ashamed,” juicy couture he said after viewing the damage, “that people could feel such disdain for their neighborhoods.” Community leaders, sociologists, police and lawmakers were left groping for a meaning for the worst social unrest to hit London in a generation. The riots laid bare a phenomenon that has stirred deep unease in Britain in recent years: “yobbery,” the anti-social behavior of a generation believed to be so alienated from the norms of civilized society that pockets of some cities live in fear. But there appeared to be no social or geographical boundaries for the groups of young people who, as the riots gathered pace, used social networks to line up the next target, looting and burning their way through entire neighborhoods with the knowledge that they could outrun police in heavy riot gear. Some officials, including former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a leftist commonly known as “Red Ken,” blamed the unrest on recent government budget cuts, which have hit education, social assistance and community budgets. But to many Britons, the riots were a near-anarchic crime spree that had nothing to do with politics, with hooded youths breaking into stores to help themselves to plasma TVs, clothes and even cash. With the ostentatious wealth of so many rubbing up against hard-hit lower-income communities, it was difficult to ignore the backdrop of social disparity that defines London. Community activist Symeon Brown works with disaffected young people in Tottenham, the north London neighborhood where the unrest began Saturday night in the wake of a police shooting that left a 29-year-old father of four dead. He said the unemployment rate is high in Tottenham, but it’s more complex than that. Young people there feel distanced from and hostile to police, who they believe treat their community with heavy-handed authority, he said. The continuing riots are a kind of “imitation” of the Tottenham protest, “which was very much a stance against the police, who were seen as losing legitimacy in the eyes of a section of the community,” Brown said. “When that stand took place, you saw young people realize, ‘Wow, we’re actually taking a stance.’ Then they realized that they could get away with it.” No one has been able to profile them, he said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them come from hostels or families where they weren’t accountable to parents; if you find an 11-year-old on the roads after midnight, you have to ask questions.” But people on the streets appeared to have little sympathy for the young rioters.Liz Pilgrim’s baby clothing shop in the upscale west London neighborhood of Ealing was trashed and looted. “I can only say I met with a group of feral rats. Where are their parents? We need to get the army out,” she told the BBC. The riots first struck districts neighboring Tottenham, but spread overnight Sunday to central Oxford Circus and southward to the multiethnic area of Brixton, which has begun to emerge from a dark past of race riots and social deprivation. By early Tuesday morning, crowds of marauders had moved to the more wealthy areas of Clapham and up to trendy Notting Hill. Looting mobs have mushroomed across the country, with copycat riots in Birmingham and Bristol in central England and Liverpool and Leeds in the north. Unrest flared again Tuesday night in Manchester, Leicester, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, while a police station in the central city of Nottingham was firebombed, officials said.
