05/12/2011

'Anger At Police Caused August Riots', Says Study

Anger with the police fuelled the unrest during the August riots in England, so says a Guardian-LSE study of the riots.

A study into the cause of the riots, which erupted across England, has said that in every major area where riots erupted public relationships with the police were cited as significant influencers.

According to the Guardian hundreds of interviews with people who took part in the disturbances revealed deep-seated and sometimes visceral antipathy towards police.

This revelation comes after a unique collaboration between the Guardian and London School of Economics (LSE) who interviewed some 270 people that took part in riots in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford. The study managed to collect 1.3m words of first hand accounts of the riots.

Out of those questioned, 85% said policing was an "important" or "very important" factor in why the riots happened.

It was second only to poverty, which saw 86% of rioters class it as one of the main causes of the four consecutive nights of unrest during the summer.

(LB)

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