The civil unrest which spread across England in 2011 left five dead and caused more than £200 million ($340 million) in damage to shops and homes.
It was sparked by the death of a young black man, Mark Duggan, at the hands of police.
On the streets of Tottenham, everyone knows Mark.
They’ve gone to school with him, shared a drink with him, know his kids, and remember his dad who died a few months after Mark's death.
"Hey, are you here for Mark?" I'm asked in the street when they see my camera. "I can’t believe it’s been five years already."
Police say he was dealing drugs and the inquest into his death found that he had a gun. His friends and family believe that’s not true.
I ask them if they’re still angry, and their faces tighten. It’s that time of year, when everyone asks them the same question. The answer: most definitely yes.
"We didn't cause the riot", they said. "The police did."
I ask passers-by the same. "Of course", they shrug, with the air of confirming the obvious. No justice, no peace.
The anger is there, in the setting of a jaw, a gaze, the way a hand grips a steering wheel.
This is a community still seething. A community that’s incredibly diverse, yet seemingly united.
There are families from Ghana, Turkey, Nigeria, Morocco. And now, there are increasingly younger and richer families moving in.
Privately funded developments are emerging all over Tottenham, many planned for the sites of current council housing slated for demolition. In an area which includes some of the poorest wards in the country, inequality is becoming starker.
Researchers argue that the riots weren’t just about Mark’s death, but stemmed from frustrations with authorities who had neglected them. These include toxic relations with the police and large chunks of the population living in poverty.
Protesters marching from Broadwater Farm to Tottenham police station in London to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Mark Duggan, August 6 2016. Source: AAP
After the riots, there were inquiries, there were reports. Some appear to blame the community. Observers say many of the recommendations - such as improving relationships and building trust - were never implemented.
Now, the shiny new buildings are part of the plan. Mixed-use private developments are approved with aim of trying to uplift the area. Property prices are on the up, along with rent. Local council residents say they don’t know where they’re going to end up.
The man who started the riots
Opposite the place on the road where Mark was shot, there’s a new shopping centre topped with luxury flats. It’s across a small park from the rows of face-brick terrace houses where some of Mark's friends live, including Marcus Knox-Hooke, the man who started the London riots.
He shares a home with five others. We talk in their communal kitchen, sitting on the only two chairs.
They’re often described as the worst civil disturbance in a generation. But the riots weren’t so much riots as an uprising, he tells me. It was about a devastated community demanding respect after being treated so badly by police for so long.
“The first riot, I was four-years-old. Mark died five years ago. So do you understand, we’ve been going through this practically our whole lives.”
“There’s no love for them. No respect for them,” Marcus says of the police.
He pauses to reflect, “I guess you could say I hate them.”
Watch the interview with Marcus Knox-Hooke:
After Mark’s death, his family and friends marched peacefully from the council estate where they lived to the Tottenham Police Station to report his killing. There, they waited for six hours, before being told to come back another day.
“We just felt humiliated, offended, disrespected,” Marcus explains. “I kind of said to myself, before I leave the High Road, I’m going to let my frustration on one of these officers.”
So he smashed a police car, expecting officers to arrive, so he could attack them. They didn’t come, so they smashed another, then another. Then they moved onto shops.
“The first riot, I was four-years-old. Mark died five-years-ago. So do you understand, we’ve been going through this practically our whole lives.”
He’s since spent 13 months in prison, receiving an initial 32-month sentence for crimes he committed during the 2011 riots, including burglary and robbery.
“Prison helped me mentally, it was a time for reflection. I chilled out in there, I had no trouble,” Marcus says.
Now that he’s out, he’s working on a programme with kids in the community to try to help them find opportunities to change.
I ask if, looking back on August 6th, 2011, he’d do the same again.
“I probably would, to tell you the truth. I think the only thing I would have to apologise for is for the fact that a lot of innocent businesses were affected. Local businesses, businesses that we interact with on a daily basis," he said.
“A lot of innocent lives… about five deaths that happened during the riots. I wasn’t really sure how it happened. And a lot innocent homes were burnt down. It wasn’t my intention for any of that to happen.
“My initial fight was with the police.”
But could it happen again?
“If they don’t change the way they do things,” he shrugs. “I think that quite possibly there could be another riot.”
But the London Riots were already “another” riot. They followed the 1985 riots which came from the same place, with the same people, over the same issues.
A shop is set on fire as rioters gather in Croydon, south London, August 8, 2011. Source: AAP
The first riot Marcus speaks about was sparked by the death of Cynthia Jarrett, who died of a heart attack when her home was raided in the Broadwater Farm council estate by police. The community erupted.
In the ensuing violence, police officer Keith Blakelock was killed.
On the estate, residents who rioted in ’85 have no regrets. 'We rioted to be heard', they say. Now, they're still being punished for PC Blakelock's death, some say.
In the aftermath, authorities painted the walls of the enormous brutalist buildings in calming pastel shades.
Now, the giant cement structures are falling apart.
'If you live here, and you're black, the police assume you're a criminal,' residents say.
There are officers wandering the open corridors while I'm there, looking inside windows and talking into radios. No one will tell me what they're looking for.
On Thursday, the anniversary of Mark’s death, as the sun began to drop, a young woman on a bicycle stopped on the road where he was shot, to light a candle on the pavement.
But the remembering here doesn’t only happen once a year; it happens each day.
“We live it,” one man stops to say to me on the High Road. “We don’t need to think about it, because we live it.”
