The fires have been put out but the embers still burn hot in Tottenham after last night's explosion of destruction, looting and flame. The shocking cost to property and blameless 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 such events is a perilous and often irresponsible pursuit, to be indulged only with caution until some cold, hard specifics have been 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. Last night's 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 government figures showed there were 54 people chasing each registered employment vacancy. It would be wrong and unfair to damn the place as a slough of blight and turpitude, but the long, main Tottenham High Road provides few obvious outward signs of prosperity.
Worklessness and its associated subcultures are becoming more deeply ingrained, with Tottenham and neighbouring Edmonton recently failing in a bid to be made a economic enterprise zone and attempts to regenerate the White Hart Lane area 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 saw an increase in burglaries and an alarming rise in robberies against the person – up from 884 offences to 1,204.
Edmonton, which lies just across the borough border in Enfield, has become grimly 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 officer 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 ominously.
In such a climate, an event such as the shooting dead by police of 29 year-old father of four Mark Duggan on Thursday night is more likely to provide in some minds, especially young ones, a pretext, a rationale or an 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 so defusing it in advance? Such questions are already being asked, and not only on the streets. I don't know what the answers are, but feel grimly confident that such an awful, perfect storm of rumour, resentment and criminality could break in a dozen other parts of inner city London any day. These are nervous times.
