Defiant Londoners armed with brooms and buckets rather than with bricks and baseball bats today tried to clean up streets after three nights of rioting only for some to run into opposition from health and safety officers.
Mobilised into a volunteer “clean-up” movement by calls on Twitter via @Riotcleanup, and by word of mouth among neighbours, hundreds of residents swept up broken glass from shattered shop windows and cleared away debris.
In Camden, Leanne Westbury, 25, said: “I was watching all through last night as my boyfriend was a police officer on duty. It was terrifying. He’s in bed now, deservedly, and I’m here because we want to take back our city. A friend saw people being beaten with poles in Great Portland Street last night. So heartbreaking.”
Paul Ratner, 27, stood in a smart suit with dustpan in hand. “Last night we saw the worst of London,” he saisd. “Today we’ll see the best.”
The man behind the response told The Times how he was motivated to mobilise an army of broom-wielding volunteers, creating the @RiotCleanup Twitter feed to organise willing helpers and amassing 70,000 followers in under 12 hours.
Amid the swelling crowds outside Clapham Junction station, Sam Duckworth, the musician behind the one-man-band Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, said: “Ideally we’d like to not be here cleaning up a riot. I think it’s mad. [The Twitter page] has just been aggregating everyone else’s feeds. It’s nice to have a central location as ... it has been confusing trying to find out where to go.
“People have come from all over London - there’s been lots of teams just worried about what might happen. It’s communities standing together and standing tall and taking a stand, saying that we’re not going to let this lie like this. “Hopefully we won’t be here tomorrow and the day after and the day after doing the same.”
Crowds also gathered on Chalk Farm Road in Camden, scene of mass confrontations last night between police and rioters, who smashed shopfronts and pub windows, brandishing metal poles in a standoff lasting until 2am.
With brooms, dustpans and bin-bags, the volunteers congregated outside Camden Town station after updates from Duckworth’s Twitter page.
Police warned the volunteers that forensic scientists would be busy for some time at the sight of a smashed O2 mobile phone shop, so they headed en masse to Clapham Junction, where help was being sought.
There, however, more than 200 volunteers waited behind barriers as firemen hosed down the burned-out shell of the Party Superstore shop. Litter and debris were strewn around as police asked the crowds not to invite any more friends to join the massing numbers of volunteers.
The operation had been expected to begin at 1pm after police dealt with the crime scene. But officers told the volunteers it had been decided that the council should do the work. Asked why, an officer replied: “Health and safety mainly. There’s lots of broken glass around.”
Other reports said however that some helpers were simply asked to wait while a building was secured because the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was on his way to visit the area.
Staff from the local Sainsbury’s handed out Danish pastries to the crowd, who erupted into applause for the firefighters as they finally switched off their hoses.
Twitter and Facebook, both used by the rioters to organise their mayhem, were becoming tools for residents to congregate in a show of solidarity and repair damage from London to Bristol.
Twitter led to a meeting outside the Clarence Road convenience store in Hackney, where three men covered in ash, broom in hand and bag of debris in the other, chatted outside the shop run for 11 years by a Sri Lankan immigrant, Sivaharan Kandriah. The shop was gutted and looted.
The three, one local, one from Bethnal Green, and the third from Walthamstow, learnt of the clean-up on Twitter and had not met before. Paul Wallis, from Bethnal Green, said: “It’s encouraging. It brings us together. To see strength of feeling come from different areas, it’s amazing.”
Rob Davidson from Walthamstow laughed: “Yeah, well it was this, or clean up my living room.”
From Walworth Road in southeast London Sammy Wu tweeted that he was equipped with gloves and a broom:. “Evry other window is smashed but streets r clean. Bustling w community workers volunteers.”
The Londonist website issued an appeal for city residents to revive the spirit of the Wombles, furry pointy-nosed stars of a 1970s BBC children’s television show who lived on Wimbledon Common and were famed for loving – and cleaning up – the environment. It said: “Wombles Needed: How to help with the Riot Cleanup.” A new Twitter account, @riotwombles, was set up to mobilise volunteers.
It said: “Basically, if your high street’s been hit, just head out and see what you can do.”
One volunteer, Gina Byrne, was eager to join and tweeted: “Large gathering of #riotwombles outside Clapham Junction Stn. Nothing to clean as of yet. Have never seen so many brooms in 1 place before!”
Celebrities also joined in, with the Kaiser Chiefs singer Ricky Wilson volunteering in Camden. The frontman tweeted that he would be on the street with a broom.
Emmy The Great was helping in the Westbourne Park area, tweeting : “If you live on Westbourne Park Rd… Could do with two people with dustpan and brush to clean up glass outside CP Hart bathrooms.”
A website was set up at www.riotcleanup.co.uk calling for residents to turn up with bin bags, gloves and duct tape as well as dustpans and brooms. It appeared to crash early in the morning but later resumed with a notice that read: “This is not about the riots. This is about the clean up – Londoners who care, coming together to engender a sense of community.”
The site provided a map and a list of locations where help was needed and gave times for volunteers to gather to help.
Misplaced priorities. Rather than focus on the cleanup, stop the looters first. Neighborhoods need to defend themselves and hang a few looters at the entrances to deter the rest. Then they can clean up.
I trust there'll be no nonsense about wrongful binning. I can't remember the exact phrase "_______ tipping"?