The 2011 UK riots directly echoed 1980s riots sparked by police killings

Evidence

After 9 December, the student protests lost momentum. The major moments of dissent in 2011 — which would also be the most powerful explosion of working-class rage in the UK since the riots of the early 1980s — would come from the group that Mason identified as “banlieue-style youth from places like Croydon and Peckham, or the council estates of Camden, Islington and Hackney”. As with some of the 1980s riots, the immediate cause for the UK’s first major uprising of 2011 was the death of a black person, Mark Duggan, shot by the police in Tottenham. “25 years ago police killed my grandma in her house in Tottenham and the whole ends rioted, 25 years on and they’re still keepin up fuckry”, tweeted Tottenham MC, Scorcher. His grandmother was Cynthia Jarrett, whose death prompted the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1292

Categorization

• XREF: Connects the 2011 UK riots as a class/racial event to the discourse on moral panics and police-violence riots elsewhere in this reading list. — connects to: Police racism triggered most UK and French urban riots, hitting immigrant-origin youths hardest — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3161; The 1980s War on Drugs created street-level policing as a new enforcement front — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 1059

Broader Connections

• Police racism triggered most UK and French urban riots, hitting immigrant-origin youths hardest #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3161
• The 1980s War on Drugs created street-level policing as a new enforcement front #qualifies (0.72) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1059