This was the view from the flat at 1.30 last night; the family were panicking, wouldn't let me put a light on, and didn't want me to call the fire brigade in case we got targeted. It took ages to get through to them, but they came very fast. It was a car which had been dumped and set on fire.
I went into town this afternoon to do some shopping; a lot of places were closed, only the vegetable end of the markets was open, and shops were closing early. Shop workers I spoke to were really scared. Bad as it was, damage was being fixed at a rate of knots, and it was nothing like the looting I saw in Soho Road in 1993. That time, there was a power cut across Handsworth, and people descended from all over the West Midlands to fill up their cars. Every shop window in the entire road was smashed, every shop emptied - even the shoe shop and the butcher's - and a police car toipped onto its roof and completely wrecked. That, in turn, was nothing like the 1985 riots.
I don't know what happened here; nobody was killed that I'm aware of.
The glaziers must be making a fortune.
No comments:
Post a Comment