English riots were 'a sort of revenge' against the police

"The police is the biggest gang out there." This view of the police, or variations of it, emerged frequently in 270 interviews of people who took part in August's riots across cities in England.

Of those participants questioned for the Reading the Riots study, a Guardian/London School of Economics project, 85% said policing was an "important" or "very important" factor in why the riots happened.

Again and again, rioters from different parts of the country described the police as a "gang", claiming its officers enforced a law they themselves played fast and loose with. Complaints included claims of being beaten up in police vans and "stitched up" over offences people were innocent of, but more often related to stop and search and the basic incivility police were accused of displaying in everyday interactions with communities.

The worst street disturbances in decades were, according to many of the people who caused them, "anti-police" riots. Researchers were aware that wider anti-state sentiments might crystallise around negative comments about the police, but in many cases interviewees had specific stories, some dating back to their childhoods, in which they claimed to have been treated unjustly.

One 17-year-old Muslim, who was in full-time work in Tottenham, north London, and took part in the riots, told researchers of an episode when he was stopped by police on his way to school when he was 13: "One of them said to the other one: 'Mate, why don't you ask him where Saddam [Hussein] is. He might be able to help out.' They're supposed to be law enforcement. I hate the police. I don't hate the policing system, I hate the police on the street. I hate them from the bottom of my heart."

Another rioter, aged 34 and also from north London, described an incident when he was aged 12, claiming he was thrown into a police van, handcuffed, beaten, kicked, spat on and called "nigger" and "black bastard". In later life he said he had never "gotten over [his anger] with the police", compounded, he claimed, by three instances in which attempts were made to fabricate charges against him, including one involving a knife.

"These are the type of things that if you ask some people on the other side of the fence or from a posher community or people that have never been in trouble, if you said to them: 'Oh, I got stitched up by police with a knife,' they are saying: 'No, police don't do things like that.' Well, believe me, that is what happened."

One reason for hostility towards the police could be that two-thirds of those interviewed said they had been cautioned by police or convicted of an offence in the past. The riots provided a long-sought opportunity for settling scores; rioters spoke of "payback".

But whether or not the rioters interviewed had been in trouble in the past or not, what many had in common was that they felt the police treated them like criminals regardless of what they had done.

"Young people in general cannot walk down the street without the police stopping them," said a 27-year-old woman from Salford. "[They say]: 'Take your hat off, take your hood off, what you doing, empty your pockets, there's four of you, you've got to split up, you can't go round in a group – even when they are not doing anything wrong."

The Reading the Riots interviews, comprising 1.3m words of first-person accounts from people who took part in disturbances in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford, are full of references to the police.

"They just generally class you as someone that's bad like that," one interviewee said. "It really irritates me because I'm not like that kinda bad person, it's just that I get frustrated at police people thinking they can just talk to you like you're some, any other hoodlum, and know you're stupid … and talk to you like you're a five-year-old and you don't know what you're doing, but I'm the police, so you have to listen to me."

A 20-year-old student from east London said: "It's how we get treated. Really and truly... How we get treated is fucked. So, people just had enough. If you keep getting poked, you're gonna go mad. You're gonna blow up."Although the Metropolitan police's interim report into the riots conceded "a level of tension existed among sections of the community" it also noted that this had gone largely unnoticed – having not previously been identified through the force's community engagement process.

Asked "Do the police in your area do a good or bad job?", only 7% of Reading the Riots respondents said "excellent" or "good" – compared with 56% of respondents to the same question in the British Crime Survey.

The project asked 270 rioters to say which of a list of possible causes of the riots they regarded as significant. These same factors were also put to 1,001 adults across the UK by ICM, the Guardian's pollsters. Rioters cited poverty and policing as the two most important causes of the riots, with 86% and 85% of respondents respectively saying the causes were "important" or "very important". The ICM survey of the general population, by contrast, cited poor parenting (86%) and criminality (86%) as the leading riot causes.

Many participants in the disturbances also spoke about the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, north London, by police, which sparked the riots days later after his family went to a police station asking to speak to a senior officer and were kept waiting. One 21-year-old student who had rioted in central London said: "Police are a gang … They can pull out shanks [knives] or guns and start shooting … They shot Mark Duggan; they're a gang. Look what they done and they think it's OK. That's what a gang is."

The precise circumstances of Duggan's death are not known and are the subject of an investigation by the police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

But the shooting often struck a chord with people involved in the riots, irrespective of their race or the city they lived in. One 33-year-old man in Liverpool, who spoke about how he took part in smashing up a police station during the disturbances, said: "I've got friends that have been abused in police custody before … I can't relate to being a black killed, because I'm a white man still alive, but I could relate to injustice within the police force."

Race was never far from the surface of the first-person accounts of rioters. The most acute sense of a longstanding mistrust was among black interviewees.

Many referred to specific incidences of black people dying in custody or during police raids. Though the IPCC said recently that there was no evidence to pursue criminal charges, some blamed police for the deaths of the reggae singer Smiley Culture, who died when officers raided his home; others Roger Sylvester, who died while being restrained outside his home in north London.

One 25-year-old student, who works part-time to fund his studies and who was involved in the Tottenham riot, said: "When we grew up in Tottenham, we'd always hear, 'You've got to be cautious about the police.' I was born … the year before Cynthia Jarrett was killed in Tottenham so I heard from my family, 'You gotta be wary of the police.' So when you got that memory back in there, from that time we heard stories about Roger Sylvester, that kind of kicked off a lot of friction, and then you had Mark Duggan. It's like: 'All right. Wow.' It's like a slap in the face."

Antipathy towards police within black communities appeared to transcend generations. One young black man in Liverpool spoke of how participating in the riots was an expression of his identity: "Grown-ups … the elders of the community … were making it known that they didn't like the police so … that made me personally feel more like yeah, I was representing them."Nowhere were frustrations with police tactics more apparent that when rioters spoke about stop and search. Of the Reading the Riots interviewees, 73% said they had been stopped and searched in the past 12 months – they were more than eight times more likely than the general population in London to have been stopped and searched in the previous year.

The riots panel set up by the government to take evidence from victims and communities identified tensions over stop and search as a possible "motivation factor" in the riots for black and Asian men. It called on the police to improve the way stop and search is conducted. "Where young law-abiding people are repeatedly targeted there is a very real danger that stop and search will have a corrosive effect on their relationship with the police," it said.

The Reading the Riots research indicates that a significant factor in sparking the disturbances was the humiliation, unjust suspicion, lack of respect and targeting that characterises the way rioters felt police carry out stop and search.

One 32-year-old black man from south London said police "stop you for nothing" and "violate" his personal space. "Because you might live on that estate or you might hang round that estate … OK, I fit the description. What's the description? Young black male … I just come out of my yard and I'm chilling for you to come and stop me and search me up. And violate me. Because that's what it is, a violation, talking to me like I'm nothing."

Another 18-year-old black man in Birmingham said he had even changed what he wore – tracksuits – to try to prevent police stopping him. "If you're of ethnicity, you'll get stopped. 'Where you going? What you got pushing?' But yeah … same group, white person, they won't."

That black people are targeted by the police using stop and search was supported by white rioters researchers spoke to. One 22-year-old white female university student, who rioted in London, said: "All my friends are black. It's always black boys that are getting stopped and searched. All the time. I don't know any white boys. I know a couple of white boys and I think they do get away with a bit more. And I feel like young black people are punished a bit more. Like, I'm not just saying it to make excuses for them, I do. That's genuinely what I've seen happen."

The complaint of a harassment by those interviewees on the receiving end of stop of search was made in every city the research took place in and by interviewees from different racial groups and ages.

Rioters recounted how they sought revenge against police. Many adopted the language of war when recalling the brutal confrontation they sought with the police in streets across England. One 29-year-old in London recalled rioting with "a battalion, a squadron, a whole section of men. A troop of men".

Others described how they threw stones and bottles, rammed police with wheelie bins and shouted: "Fuck the police." Some spoke of how they targeted police property, setting fire to and vandalising cars, vans and police stations, or deliberately tried to inflict injury on officers.

What appears to have been the result of this outpouring of anti-police attitudes was, for some at least, a five-day catharsis. Many spoke of being ", of being empowered liberated" and paradoxically, while the streets burned, of being euphoric. Repeatedly, the rioters said their confrontations with police made them feel "powerful".

"We had [the police] under control," said one 21-year-old London rioter. "We had them under manners for once. They never had us under manners. We had them on lock. On smash. Running away from us. We weren't running from the police. They was the criminals today. We was enforcing the law. Getting them out of our town because they ain't doing nothing good anyway for no one."

Responding to the findings, the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "The disorder seen in August was unprecedented in its scale of violence and the way in which events escalated rapidly. It took people by surprise, not enough police officers were available initially and it eventually required 16,000 of them to restore order. Of course the way in which those events took place and were seen by others through the media had an impact on confidence in the police, and it is important that lessons are learned from all the different processes and reports investigating what happened. In a survey of 270 rioters, it would be quite odd if a high proportion did not cite the police as a factor in their behaviour. But August also showed the ability of our police to restore order using robust, common sense policing in the British way."

Indifferent elites, poverty and police brutality – all reasons to riot in the UK | Gary Younge

At the beginning of August, in a fit of collective pathology, thousands of young people across Britain took to the streets and started breaking into shops, stealing and confronting the police. What triggered this is a mystery. But whatever it was, it wasn't politics, poverty, alienation or despair. That would be making excuses for bad behaviour and imply a humanity to which the rioters had no right. For the riots were not the work of mostly disaffected teenagers but a "feral", "uneducated" "underclass" who somehow managed to outwit the police for the best part of a week using new technology. Venal, entitled and irresponsible, they adhered to values entirely unfamiliar to the British political establishment.

Beyond the growth of gang culture and the demise of individual responsibility, no credible broader explanations were offered for their behaviour. If the problem had been rooted in politics and economics, the solution might have resided there also. But for the government, this was the work of criminals; the only effective remedy was punishment.

Four months later the absurdity of the official response to the riots is painfully clear. It took a while. Given the spontaneous, geographically diverse and inchoate nature of these disturbances, there was never a credible single cause. Even if there had been, there were few among the rioters who would have been in a position to articulate those grievances. The journey from the margins to the mainstream is a perilous one, which few make intact without losing their voice.

The government's narrative may have been ridiculous, but in the absence of a counter-narrative, many believed it plausible. The impression of unclaimed chaos and the shots of burning cars, devastated shopkeepers and hooded youth lent credibility to claims that this was nothing more than young hooligans running amok. "A riot," said Martin Luther King, "is the language of the unheard." Now, thanks in no small part to a study undertaken by the Guardian with the London School of Economics, we've had a chance to listen.

We already knew the government was wrong about the causes. "At the heart of all the violence sits the issue of the street gangs," claimed David Cameron at the time. The government's own research later showed that only 13% of those involved in the riots were gang members, and even then, most were not operating as a gang. Paradoxically, if anything, the riots temporarily tempered gang activity, as rival gangs set aside their differences so they could participate freely in the looting. Poverty was clearly a factor. Ministry of Justice figures revealed almost two-thirds (64%) of the young rioters lived in the poorest areas and 42% relied on free school meals. "There is nothing so dangerous as a man who has nothing to lose," wrote James Baldwin. "You do not need 10 such men. Only one will do." With youth unemployment rising to 21.9%, Britain is producing thousands.

But in the absence of any demands, organisation or even slogans, even those who argued that these riots were political in nature struggled to fathom what the nature of the politics were. Thanks to the research, two particular themes have helped correct some initially flawed impressions. First, the rioters were far more politically conscious than even many on the left, myself included, first thought.

This in no way romanticises their actions. Looting is opportunistic, and most of those involved freely admit to being opportunists. When asked how he heard about the riots, one interviewee said he got a message on his BlackBerry saying people were "getting free stuff out and about", so he joined in. One should not overstate the case: stealing trainers and burning police cars are not the hallmarks of political sophistication. But then nor are riots. They are the crudest tool for those who have few options. By definition, they are chaotic. Rich people don't riot because they have other forms of influence. Riots are a class act.

However, these youngsters were not devoid of political consciousness either. Many, including those who live outside London, knew of the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, and 75% cited it as an important or very important cause of the riots. They were also considerably more likely than the public at large to say poverty, inequality, government policy and policing were behind the riots.

The second theme to emerge from the report is that the rioters' primary grievance is not the one most of us imagined. The general assumption, among those who believed political causes both existed and mattered, was that the driving force for discontent was economic. Everyone from the UN to Nick Clegg had predicted social unrest if the austerity measures were pushed in time of recession. Indeed, the government's high-handed moral pronouncements were particularly hard to take given the recent behaviour of our political and financial elites: a corrupt political class embroiled in phone hacking and expense scandals, and a disdainful financial sector where failure brought huge bonuses.

Cameron characterised the moral collapse that made the riots possible thus: "It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society; people allowed to feel the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and their actions do not have consequence." He could just as easily have been talking about bankers.

Economic issues were important. The cause most often cited for the riots was poverty (86%), but unemployment (79%) and inequality (70%) featured prominently too. Few guessed, though, that this tinder in the box was lit at least as much by the long arm of the law as the invisible hand of the market. Almost three-quarters of interviewees said they had been stopped and searched by the police in the last year; 85% said "policing" was an important or very important cause of the riots. Just 7% believed the police do a good job in their area.

But in all the interviews, the apparently mutual contempt between rioters and police comes through. Tales of petty harassment, abuse and humiliation were commonplace. One told the story of a looter who stole a television so he could throw it at the police. "It felt like it was on a leash for years and … we've come off the leash and just responded in that way basically," says one interviewee.

"And what was the leash; who was holding you on that leash?" asks the interviewer.

"The police."

In a year that started with the uprisings in Tunisia and is ending with police raids on occupations protesting inequality across the globe, only a naïf would understand these disturbances as a random, isolated moment of mass social deviancy particular to Britain. It would be like claiming that the two black athletes who raised their fists on the podium during the Mexico Olympics in 1968 engaged in individual acts of protest in no way related to the students in Paris, the massacre in My Lai or the passing of the US civil rights act.

The 2011 riots would probably win gold as the year's most destructive, least coherent protest of disaffected youth against indifferent elites, economic hardship and police brutality. Rioters were more likely to give the finger than clench the fist. But what this report makes clear is that they belong to the same category of protest.

Police hunt for lodger after two women found dead in Southport

Police investigating the murders of a woman and her 75-year-old mother are trying to trace the daughter's lodger.

The bodies of Angela Holgate, who was 54, and her mother, Alice Huyton, were found at Holgate's house in Southport at 5.45pm on Saturday. It is unclear how the women died, and police are awaiting the results of postmortem examinations.

Merseyside police said they were keen to trace Holgate's lodger, Barry Morrow.

It is thought the 51 year old, who is understood to be an engineer, is described as white, 5ft 7in, of medium to stocky build with straight, short brown receding hair and blue eyes.

It is thought he may be in France or Spain. Holgate's white Citroën is also missing.

A spokeswoman for Merseyside police said a postmortem examination "will continue throughout the night. However we can confirm that this in now a murder inquiry."

Chief Superintendent Nikki Holland, area commander for Sefton, said: "

"We are appealing to anyone with information that may help us with this investigation to come forward as soon as possible.

" In particular we are keen to trace Mr Morrow, who lived at the house for a period of time and who we believe may have vital information for this investigation."

Forensic experts are examining the scene, while officers are carrying out house-to-house inquiries and have stepped up high-visibility patrols.

Huyton was last seen on Friday evening when she left her home in Southport to visit her daughter, who had been ill recently and had not been seen out of the house for some time.

Rioters: anger at police fuelled summer unrest

Widespread anger and frustration at the way police engage with communities was a significant cause of the summer riots in every major city where disorder took place, the biggest study into their cause has found.

Hundreds of interviews with people who took part in the disturbances which spread across England in August revealed deep-seated and sometimes visceral antipathy towards police.

In a unique collaboration, the Guardian and London School of Economics (LSE) interviewed 270 people who rioted in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford.

The project collected more than 1.3m words of first-person accounts from rioters, giving an unprecedented insight into what drove people to participate in England's most serious bout of civil unrest in a generation. Rioters revealed that a complex mix of grievances brought them on to the streets but analysts appointed by the LSE identified distrust and antipathy toward police as a key driving force.

Details of the research findings, which are also based on an analysis of an exclusive database of more than 2.5m riot-related tweets, will be unveiled in a series of reports over the next five days. Monday's findings include:

• Many rioters conceded that their involvement in looting was simply down to opportunism, saying that a perceived suspension of normal rules presented them with an opportunity to acquire goods and luxury items they could not ordinarily afford. They often described the riots as a chance to obtain "free stuff" or sought to justify the theft.

• Despite David Cameron saying gangs were "at the heart" of the disturbances, evidence shows they temporarily suspended hostilities. The effective four-day truce – which many said was unprecedented – applied to towns and cities across England. However, on the whole, the research found gang members played only a marginal role in the riots.

• Contrary to widespread speculation that rioters used social media to organise themselves and share "viral" information, sites such as Facebook and Twitter were not used in any significant way. However, BlackBerry phones – and the free messaging service known as "BBM" – were used extensively to communicate, share information and plan riots in advance.

• Although mainly young and male, those involved in the riots came from a cross-section of local communities. Just under half of those interviewed in the study were students. Of those who were not in education and were of working age, 59% were unemployed. Although half of those interviewed were black, people who took part in the disorder did not consider these "race riots".

• Rioters identified a range of political grievances, but at the heart of their complaints was a pervasive sense of injustice. For some this was economic: the lack of money, jobs or opportunity. For others it was more broadly social: how they felt they were treated compared with others. Many mentioned the increase in student tuition fees and the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance.

Although rioters expressed a mix of opinions about the disorder, many of those involved said they felt like they were participating in explicitly anti-police riots. They cited "policing" as the most significant cause of the riots, and anger over the police shooting of Mark Duggan, which triggered initial disturbances in Tottenham, was repeatedly mentioned – even outside London.

For the research, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Open Society Foundations, a team of more than 60 academics, researchers and journalists spent three months interviewing people rioters and analysing their accounts. 

The most common complaints related to people's everyday experience of policing, with many expressing deep frustration at the way people in their communities were subjected to stop and search. An independent panel set up by the government in the aftermath of the riots identified stop and search as a possible "motivation factor" for black and Asian rioters.

In findings released last week, the panel – which took evidence from riot-hit communities and victims, but did not speak to rioters – concluded there was no single cause for the riots, but urged police to improve the way stop and search is conducted.  "Where young law-abiding people are repeatedly targeted there is a very real danger that stop and search will have a corrosive effect on their relationship with the police," it said.Of those interviewed in the Reading the Riots study, 73% said they had been stopped and searched in the previous 12 months. They were more than eight times more likely to have been stopped and searched in the previous year than the general population in London.

The Metropolitan police's internal report on the riots, also released last week, appeared to identify simmering tensions with police. Citing community feedback about the riots, the report concluded: "Either the violence was spontaneous without any degree of forethought or … a level of tension existed among sections of the community that was not identified through the community engagement."

The Met said it welcomed the research that provides an insight into why the riots occured "so that police and society can do everything possible to prevent a recurrence".

"We will consider this research alongside the detailed operational review that we are conducting." The force said its own research showed 66% of Londoners believed the MPS does a good job in their area, and that stop and search "can be a highly effective and essential tactic" against knife crime.

It added: "Stop and search will continue to be necessary but we want to ensure that it is only used in an intelligent, professional, objective and courteous way."

The second phase of Reading the Riots, to be completed next year, will draw on interviews with communities, police and judges about their experience of the disturbances and their aftermath.

Police 'want terror powers delay'

 By Robin Brant Political Correspondent, BBC News  Control orders were introduced under the former Labour government in 2005 Counter-terrorism police are not ready for the introduction of new laws to replace controversial control orders on suspects, the BBC understands.

The bill which would create Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPims) is due to pass its final hurdle in Parliament on Wednesday.

But some senior officers have told the BBC they still feel they are not fully prepared and a delay is necessary.

The Home Office said "extensive preparations" were ongoing for TPims.

TPims are due to come into effect early in 2012.

Eleven people are currently subject to control orders. Their movements and their access to communications are severely restricted because they are deemed to be a threat to national security.

But the law is changing, following a commitment in the coalition agreement to "urgently review control orders".

End of relocation

The Liberal Democrats pushed for changes to some of the most restrictive conditions which they viewed as an intolerable breach of civil liberties.

One of the biggest changes will be the end of relocation, which gives the authorities the power to force suspects to move away from their homes and close associates. This applies to most of the current orders.

The police and MI5 have been given more money to pay for extra surveillance under the new system and about 100 new agents could be recruited.

But the BBC understands that some senior officers at Scotland Yard who deal with counter terrorism feel the police are not ready for a January start.

They want a delay of several months.

So far the government has been asked to extend the transition period by just two weeks.

This echoes concerns expressed in June by then Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Osborne, who told Parliament the Metropolitan Police needed "more than a year" to get the resources and people in place.

A Home Office spokesman told the BBC that "extensive preparations were being made for transition to the new TPim regime".

Police hit out at pension changes

 The Scottish Police Federation said the proposals showed "utter contempt" Police officers have become the latest group to reject the UK government's changes to public sector pensions.

BBC Scotland has seen a submission by the the Scottish Police Federation which describes plans for an increase in contributions as "an affront to democracy".

Public sector workers face increased contributions from April.

The UK government believes the current system for funding retirements is unsustainable.

More than two million public sector workers are due to take industrial action on 30 November in protest at the moves.

Police officers are not allowed to strike but they can make their views known.

In their submission to the Pensions Authority, the Scottish Police Federation, which represents 16,000 rank-and-file members, said the proposals showed "utter contempt" for the Scottish Parliament.

Ministers in Edinburgh control police pensions but said they had to adopt the pension reforms or face losing millions of pounds in funding.

'Serious reservations'

The submission said the SPF did not support adopting the England and Wales proposals in Scotland.

It said that without an up-to-date valuation of the pension schemes the SPF had "serious reservations about a proposal to increase contribution rates that bears no relation to the true value of the schemes".

It added: "It is our view the funding arrangements for police pensions in Scotland are such that there is absolutely no justification for passing increases to members of the police pension schemes.

"We further believe the Scottish government should be absolutely clear to HM Treasury their approach on this matter is an affront to democracy, undermines the devolution settlement and shows utter contempt for the role of the Scottish Parliament."

There are two police pension schemes: one for staff who joined after 1987, with contributions of 11% of salary, and a less generous one for staff who joined after 2006, with contributions of 9% of salary.

Officers earning between £27,000 and £60,000 a year will eventually pay 3.2 percentage points more in the 1987 scheme and 2.5 percentage points more in the 2006 scheme.