Peckham riots: views from the streets
- By Kieran Yates
Kieran Yates headed down to Peckham in the thick of the riots this week to hear some of the female voices coming from the ground.
Yesterday, along with most of London, I was transfixed by the BBC live coverage of looting and riotous behaviour taking place across the capital, a capital that I describe as my city, my home. In normal circumstances, a TV screen can provide an effective distancing technique between the events on screen and where you are- however, this comfort is shattered as soon as you hear a familiar name. As soon as riots were reported to be starting in Peckham, I felt like an old friend was under attack. I needed to go down there and see the anger and movements first hand and ask fellow young people what their motivations were,( if possible) and at least, see for myself what the general feeling was on the streets. My journalism career has taught me that answers can usually be found on the ground when in doubt.
So, myself and co-journo Mervin Martin walked down, armed with phones to record/capture/film, but mostly to see for ourselves what wasn’t being reported-voices of young people in the community. We walked until we hit Peckham Library at around 7pm last night, the tension was severe, and conflict between police and the crowd was just beginning.
As part of the minority of girls in the crowd, I felt a different atmosphere to one of pure tension- on one hand, lots of guys approached me asking if I was ok and advising that I should leave, “Before things get heavy” while others smiled and gestured protectively, making me feel at ease. In contrast, I also felt suddenly a lot smaller than the guys around me and felt I could easily get crushed in the crowd.
As a result, looking around, one of the things I was fascinated by was the number of girls present, some young, some very small, falling into two distinct camps from what I could overhear. One, encouraging boys to grab things from ‘Blue Inc’, the shop in front of us which was being ransacked in a midst of broken glass and smoking debris, where I heard demands of, “ Go get me some jeans!” and the other, providing a voice of reason to boyfriends, friends, maybe even brothers, berating them and telling them to leave the scene, “Get out of here you dickheads, what are you trying to prove?” (This did prove to be quite effective, it has to be said).
Comparatively, much of the older female voices we’ve heard from within these news stories have been split: On one hand, we witnessed inspiring scenes from Diane Abbott, an MP who has actually taken the initiative to walk around Hackney (her local constituency) and engage with local shopkeepers and frightened locals. An example of strength and compassion, in direct contrast to Theresa May’s bullish ‘Dolores Umbridge’ (as I describe her) like approach to severe zero-tolerance policy who sounds so out of touch with the true thoughts of the people, rejecting the idea of recent events being a response to social or ideological unrest. I know which camp I’d like to see more of.
In the midst of the aggression of guys standing near us throwing bricks, holding on to shards of glass and running towards the police line, I (mainly through worry of being trampled) stood aside with some young girls and asked why they were there.
After tentatively sparking up conversation, I ask them if they’ve seen their boys being stopped and searched and they laugh: “Yeh, it’s why we’re always late” from a girl known only as Keisha, while one other girl simply stared me down and spat, “Obviously”. This anger and helplessness of young girls (the group I spoke to were 16-18) was fully felt in the stoical way in which they talked about episodes of police targeting their friends and though they had not felt police brutality first hand, “It’s the principle innit?” says 17 year old Ayesha, “ You just have to stand back and watch, because what can you do? Not saying this is the answer” pointing to the debris being set alight in front of us.
Our conversation is halted by a sudden surge of the crowd moving forward and I stay back, overhearing a pair of girls behind me swearing. I had just spoken to a looter who declared “We run this city” moments before and I turned around to ask them if they agreed. They giggled and quoted Beyonce’s ‘Who runs the world (girls)’ track, which I also noticed was one of their ringtones, but as I press the question they shrug, “That’s a hard one” and no more is said. They seem far more animated vocalising their incredulousness at the looting going on in Blue Inc, a “ shit shop” where clothes are sold at cheap prices and when I ask if they shop there, they look at me with a mock-frown and respond, “Just cos we’re from Peckham doesn’t mean we dress shit.” I take that as a no.
I watch the guys causing trouble and remember a headline in the Daily Mail last November scaremongering about the rise of girl gangs and female violence, especially within the student protests, and I ask them if any girls they knew would be involved, and almost in unison, they respond indignantly: “No, these guys are just angry and see it as fun, I think it takes more for a girl to get involved in this kind of madness. We would have a reason.” What reason, I ask? A friend interjects, “Well, I don’t know, I suppose I would understand how angry some of these guys are if I was pushed against bars and walls being searched by police, like I’ve seen happen to my brother. He’s never had anything on him.”
As things get slightly out of control what with the police being heavily outnumbered, and a girl falling over after a crowd surge, I quickly ask Natasha, one of the girls why she’s there. “I just wanted to see these dickheads” she responds. I look around and am suddenly hyperaware of the anger felt around me- from boys throwing bottles at police, to boys watching their peers with disgust. Gesticulating to the police and crowd, I ask Natasha, “So, how many people here are just dickheads?” She laughs and shouts, “Everyone is a dickhead-these ones just use a different language to the ones in police stations!” and with that, we run away.
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