There are grounds for deep anxiety about what may yet be to come, writes DAVE HILL
THE FIRES have been put out but the embers still burn hot in Tottenham after the explosion of destruction, looting and flames.
The shocking cost to property and residents’ peace of mind is only starting to be counted.
Have we seen the end of a purely local conflagration or just the end of the beginning of a long, late, summer of riot and rage in that part of north London and elsewhere in the capital?
Instant punditry on events like last weekend’s in Tottenham is a perilous, and often irresponsible pursuit, to be indulged in only with caution until some hard specifics are nailed down.
We do, though, have the evidence of history and contemporary reality to give grounds for deep anxiety about what may yet be to come.
Those events exploded amid circumstances that create a kind of social tinderbox that needs just one fatal spark to ignite it.
Tottenham forms the core of the borough of Haringey, where a fast-rising total of well over 10,000 people are claiming jobseeker’s allowance.
In Tottenham itself, recent UK government figures show that there were 54 people chasing each registered employment vacancy. Worklessness and its associated subcultures are becoming more deeply ingrained, with Tottenham and nearby Edmonton recently failing in a bid to be made an economic enterprise zone. Attempts to regenerate the White Hart Lane area are also threatened by the desire of wealthy Tottenham Hotspur Football Club to move elsewhere.
Despite a small fall in reported crime in the year to June 2011 compared with the previous 12 months, Haringey had an increase in burglaries and an alarming rise in robberies – up from 884 offences to 1,204.
Edmonton, which lies just across the borough border, in Enfield, has become associated with fatal stabbings of teenagers in recent years.
Spending cuts have led to Haringey closing eight of 13 youth clubs with reductions in community police numbers soon to come: small sticking plasters that help stem the flow of blood in a city where violence against young people has long been rising.
In such a climate, an event like the shooting dead by police of Mark Duggan last Thursday night is more likely to provide in some minds, especially young ones, a pretext or opportunity to jettison any respect for the law or regard for fellow citizens and let rip.
Could the worst have been avoided? Might the police or the Independent Police Complaints Commission have made a better job of anticipating such trouble and defusing it in advance?
I don’t know what the answers are, but I feel grimly confident that such a perfect storm of rumour, resentment and criminality could break in a dozen other parts of inner-city London any day. These are nervous times.