MP’s call for police probe into far right

A South Yorkshire MP has written to Home Secretary Teresa May to call for police investigation into extreme right-wing incitements during the riots posted on social media like Twitter and Facebook.

Denis MacShane, who represents Rotherham, said BNP MEP Nick Griffin told his supporters the riots were a ‘black/Jewish affair’ and provided details of areas where riots were taking place. A member of the English Defence League also used Facebook to say ‘these riots look brilliant’.

Mr MacShane added that another EDL supporter used Facebook to ask where he could obtain Semtex.

He said: “At a time when major prison sentences are being imposed on Facebook users who did not generate any response the police should also take action against the extreme right which used the riots to stoke up race hate and create an atmosphere of violence which contributed to the feeling that anything was permitted.

“Other elected people used their tweets to urge calm and restraint but Griffin tweeted with an orgasmic excitement as he watched the break-down in law and order.”

Mr MacShane added: “I do not think that social media should be used to encourage hate and incitement.”

The Star

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

A Riot Laugh With The EDL!

Crivvens! Britain burns, Dave dithers and Boris bumbles through but luckily the English Defence League are on hand to help! Phew! It’s not really been going too well for the EDL over the last few weeks what with the media fingering them over connections to Norwegian killer Anders Breivik, the continuing fallouts with the Jewish division, the appalling attack on a takeaway joint by Plymouth EDL and the subsequent sacking of Hayley Wells as regional organ grinder which incurred the wrath of the action monkeys of the ‘Combined Ex-Forces’ – regimental motto ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ And to top it off, after various factions have been sticking their nebs in where they simply weren’t wanted round ‘riot torn’ Britain they ended the week with a pisspoor demo in Wellington.

Poor Do!

Considering that there has been a bit of a hoo-ha recently on Albion’s fair streets, plod thought it wise to ban the EDL’s Wellington march but could not refuse a static demo. Locals were grateful as the EDL bought a bunch of outsiders into town, the Telford/ Luton match was rescheduled and shops had to fork out to some dodgy company to get boarded up. In case you don’t know, a static demo is when the EDL arrive in a town where they are not wanted armed with carrier bags of Stella to stand in a carpark with no toilets for an hour or two. After shouting a bit and getting out of hand, which the stewards always fail to deal with, plod then escorts them back to their coaches and they are told to go away. This is how ‘Islamic extremism’ has been successfully defeated by the EDL. Not really. At Wellington a diminished EDL stood cluelessly about getting more and more irate then, after chucking bottles at plod, some clever fellow attempted to get in the dog van! Why? As Rochdale proved plod dogs love the taste of EDLers – apparently they’re like kebabs! As usual, the EDL couldn’t help themselves and after a wee bit of argy bargy there were 5 nickings, the silly Billies! As usual the stewards lost control and one female steward ‘scratched the life out of’ another member. As usual, it also kicked off a bit on the train station when plod dished up Section 60s which mean ‘bugger off now, we’ve had enough!’ and there may also have been arrests at Birmingham train station when the Stella and Charlie relationship (the EDL’s royal couple) fully blossomed. Jeff ‘Stabber’ Marsh is currently seething and posting frenzied rebuttals to the scant press reports of the day on his website. Help Ma Boab!

It’s been a bit of week for ‘Cocaine’ Kev Carol, de facto EDL leader now that Tommy has to be in bed by 7. ‘Sir’ Tommy Robinson is currently under bail restrictions so cannot attend demos – though this did not stop him from appearing on Newsnight for some reason – and Cocaine Kev is now calling the shots. He turned up at the London trial of 3 brave EDL warriors who had been arrested for attacking ‘Muslamics’ at Speakers Corner. So much for defending free speech then lads? 1 EDL had also grabbed a policeman’s genitals! Really! There are better ways of asking for dates you know! At Wellington the cocaine cowboy praised the father of one of the 3 guys who had been killed last week for being a ‘good Muslim’ and held a minute’s silence. Apparently South Yorkshire also tried to organise a flash demo yesterday in solidarity but they didn’t get up in time. Shame.

A Bunch of Posses!

The EDL have also been making a perfect nuisance of themselves following last week’s interruptions to the weekly shop. In Eltham a bunch of ‘middle aged men’ – who surely should know better – ended up chanting EDL slogans and fighting with plod. Locals claimed that these characters were outsiders and were not welcome especially after they attacked a bus with some black lads on it and members of the EDL Facebook pages were calling for some ‘nig bashing.’ How 70s! The EDL have claimed that these chaps weren’t members but seeing as how there is no formal membership scheme anyone who says they are EDL is therefore EDL no matter how many times Kev and Tommy deny it. David Cameron condemned the EDL this week by calling them ‘sick’ and the EDL have finally got round to issuing a statement on it. It makes for dull reading. In Enfield, an EDL vigilante posse turned up to be roundly condemned by plod for drinking too much and getting in the way of things. Manchester EDL made a half-arsed attempt to do something but then didn’t. The EDL also claimed to have swept the streets of Cambridge clear of Brigands and then indulged in their favourite pastime of intimidating takeaway joints (like in Plymouth and Leicester).

Following the attack on the Plymouth takeaway 2 weeks back, Hayley Wells was removed as regional organiser for her part in the incident. The EDL leadership of course denied they had anything to do with it but seeing at it was caused by the Plymouth EDL after a Plymouth EDL meet and greet then it was Plymouth EDL wot done it! Hayley got a bit of a Facebook bollocking of Ma Wells for drinking and fighting instead of looking after her children. Hayley’s fiancé is Michael Rafferty, ‘commander’ of the Combined ex-Forces group (they love their little titles don’t they?) and he waltzed off in a tizz after Tommy slagged them all off and they are no longer friends. Hayley ran the EDL Extra on Facebook and she is currently having a pram war with Hel Gower (Tommy’s PA & known fascist) and the toys are flying about! The Combined exForces also features our old mate Billy ‘Bunter’ Baker of the English Nationalists Association –hello Chubs, how’s the diet? – and they are threatening to march on Downing Street on September 3rd. I may be wrong but the only ‘forces’ Bunter Baker has experienced is when he forces another pasty into his toothless maw. The 3rd is also the date of the Tower Hamlets do which Tommy has promised is going to be a ‘bloodbath.’ Yes, but for who?

The EDL have been invited to a Peterborough mosque to discuss issues but we will not be holding our breath. The EDL will not publicly debate with muslims for 3 reasons: that many of the EDL’s arguments are flawed and do not stand up to scrutiny; that the leadership have no one left who is articulate enough to debate in public; and they are unable to distinguish between moderate Muslims and the tiny percentage of Islamic extremists in the UK – as demonstrated by them singing ‘Mohammed /Allah is a pedo’ and assuming ‘moderate Muslims’ will not mind. So all in all a pretty terrible couple of weeks for the EDL: Norway, the Jewish division problems, numerous fallouts, being slagged in Parliament by Mr Dave and ever diminishing demos. Shame. See you on the 3rd!

Malatesta's Blog

Thousands back call to ban EDL march

The far right English Defence League plans to march through Tower Hamlets in September

More than 25,000 people have signed a petition urging the Home Secretary to ban a march organised by a far right group. Campaigners presented their petition to Scotland Yard today in a bid to stop the English Defense League (EDL) marching in London on September 3. The organisation was set up to combat a perceived threat of Islam on British culture.

Jevais Marche, of north London told The Voice: “I happily signed the petition. We cannot allow groups to use the recent riots as a stimulus for society to move backwards and resort to racial conflict. These groups are in the minority and can be quashed if the average member of the public stands up against them.”

The petition was handed in by a delegation from the Hope Not Hate coalition of East End community groups, led by London Assembly’s John Biggs and MP Rushanara Ali.

The Bethnal Green and Bow MP told the East London Advertiser: “What people need is reassurance and to know police are on their side. It’s important the Met listens to the public who are concerned about the disorder. We need police to act to protect the public, to safeguard all law-abiding citizens in this current climate of provocation by extremists stirring up racial hatred.

In a statement issued today, Ken Livingstone has put further pressure on Tory Home Secretary, Theresa May, to outlaw the demonstration. He said: "My case to the Home Secretary would be this: the last thing we need in the uneasy aftermath of the riots is a march through one of London's most diverse areas by far right provocateurs intent on stirring up division. We need calm and peace on our streets, not the threat of further street violence. It should be obvious that an EDL march in East London could be extremely dangerous."

The Voice

EDL stoop to all time low, yet again

Some of you may remember the lead up to the Luton Demo. The EDL had just received several bad blows to their popularity (what a surprise) and were desperate to gain support and paint muslims in a bad light to do so.

This was when Kev Carroll (Tommy's uncle and co-leader of the EDL) claimed to have been chased round his back garden by a ninja shotgun-waving man, who obviously introduced himself to Kev as being a muslim.

Kev unceremoniously claimed to have surrendered his family to the ninja by abandoning them and fleeing to save his own life (stuff the family I am out of here). Kev then claimed to have 'stubbed' his toe in his rush to run away (everyone say awwwww!).

It was no real surprise to find that the police rushed to the scene and found no evidence at all of their ever being an incident and door to door enquiries also failed to provide any witnesses at all, not a single one.

Sticking to the same tactics, we now find Tommy Robinson aiming to grab the headlines as some sort of hero (why do these creeps just not join the army). Tommy was recently stopped by Police in yet another of his street brawls (I bet it was brown people) with total strangers. Tommy quickly invented a story that he was protecting an old lady that had been robbed.

No surprise yet again to find that the 'old lady' was nowhere to be found and still remains as much of a mystery as the ninjas that chased Kev (no surrender) Carroll. Next up we will have Guramit Singh reporting he parted the water in the English channel and saved a ferry full of pregnant ladies on an unscheduled Ghost crossing.

These idiots really do not get any more desperate and clearly show the intelligence of those that accept these stories as fact.

Daily Star

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

EDL tried to take advantage of looting

Throughout the looting/riots, the EDL attempted to capitalise on the situation, and use it as an excuse to promote themselves and as an excuse for some violence.

Cambridge saw EDL vigilantes clear Mill Road (an important road in the town centre) of imaginary looters, only to be told by local traders that they were not welcome. Meanwhile a senior Met police officer warned of more attempts by the EDL to hijack local communities defending themselves, with places like Enfield being hit.

Nor did the EDL stick to its alleged belief of only being anti-Islamic extremism. An EDL gang attacked a bus with black youths on it in London, whilst EDL posters online flooded forums with racist language directed primarily against blacks:

The English Defence League have reverted to type, with torrents of sickening anti-black racism on their divisional Facebook walls, peppered with the N-word, and description of black people being “monkeys” and “apes”. Since their existance, the moderators have tried to brush all of their non-Muslim racism under the carpet, pretending that the EDL have only one enemy, Muslims, but since the rioting began in London, the far right group have switched tack to virulent anti-Black racism of an extreme and disturbing nature.

Now graffiti is going up condemning the riots, signed by the EDL. Compare and contrast such behaviour with how many victims of the looting reacted. In Birmingham, Tariq Jahan, the father of one of the three men killed by looters, called for calm:

Today we stand here to plead with all the youth to remain calm, for our communities to stand united. This is not a race issue. The family has received messages of sympathy and support from all parts of society … I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, whites – we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home – please.”

Others held vigils or banded together to clean up the area. If there is a silver lining in all this senseless violence and destruction then it will be the renewed bonds that now exist between many people in the worst affected areas, which is what a healthy society depends on.

Pickled Politics

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Determined to exploit riots, EDL promises to defy police

Tommy Robinson, seen here at a rally in Blackburn in April

The controversial English Defence League will go ahead with its march through the Shropshire town of Telford today, despite the Home Secretary's decision to ban it yesterday, citing the need to "protect communities and property".

But whatever unrest the group's mobilisation there may engender, it is as nothing to that which will erupt if its planned march through the London borough of Tower Hamlets goes ahead in three weeks' time.

The group, whose supporters number in the tens of thousands, gained attention this week when it co-ordinated efforts to defend the streets of Enfield in north London and Eltham in south London from would-be looters and rioters. The police did not welcome the "assistance".

The group's founder, Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Lennon, said of the Tower Hamlets march: "The police have told us that it will be the most hostile environment they have seen in this country in 20 years. They say marching through there will be absolute suicide. The Met have told us it'll be absolute suicide, but we will go ahead with it, whether it is banned or not."

The English Defence League claims not to be a racist organisation, and was set up with the declared aim of protesting against the spread of Islamic extremism in England.

Its previous marches through Luton, Birmingham, Bradford and Oldham have typically involved young white males singing pro-English football chants, but have occasionally descended into violence.

Tower Hamlets, which is to the east of the City of London, is one of the capital's most ethnically diverse boroughs and contains many of its most impoverished neighbourhoods. It is also home to the large East London Mosque, capable of holding 5,000 people.

"Why do they want to come here?" asked Abdul Azim, 34, emerging from the Mosque after Friday prayers. He is a stallholder at the Whitechapel Road street market, which runs through the area. "They are not from here. They just want to antagonise. They say they're not racist, but there are many thousands of them. How can they say there are not many in their group who want to attack us?"

It is an argument that Mr Robinson does not accept. "There's racists in the Met, there's racists in the Labour Party. When we find racists we kick them out."

The police have agreed to a 1.2-mile route for the march. The Home Office can only move to ban the march when it receives a request to do so from the police or the local council. So far no such request has been made. Mr Robinson believes that if the march is banned, the trouble will be worse. Salman Farsi, a spokesman for the East London Mosque, said: The EDL is an extreme far-right organisation. On their marches many of their members cause disorder and unrest, and they seek to stir up hatred and tension within communities. From our point of view we have advised the local authority to ban this march from taking place. If it does go ahead we can expect to see a repeat of some of the scenes we saw earlier this week."

IoS

EDL ashamed and angered by London riots

The EDL leadership have expressed their dismay and anger at the crowds which trashed, burned and looted parts of the capital and other areas of the country.

Their leader, Tommy Robinson said in an interview "we just can't do it like that, we feel inadequate, I've been watching it unfold on the news and there are some genuinely impressive scenes, masses of people trashing anything in sight, there is passion, there is energy!" Robinson vented his frustration and took notes on the way in which the riots were organised, he said "how they mobilized themselves is beyond me, we set up coaches, arrange stewards, meeting points, and yet we could only dream of causing such damage, we pale in insignificance, we'll be the next BNP and me the next Griffin. Oh fucking hell. I'm genuinely ashamed of my organisation, we've let ourselves down massively, all I can do is apologise to my followers and try to better these riots on our next demo".

The EDL, despite claiming to be a peaceful organisation, are notorious for their drunken town centre smash ups, which they arrange to protest against militant Islam and to stand up for true British values. In the past they have attacked shoppers, smashed windows and caused thousands of pounds worth of damage. On their website they list their crowning achievement as smashing up a family restaurant and chasing its customers into the back.

Robinson has vowed to do one better, adding that "any looters or arsonists are welcome to come and join us, show us how it's done lads!!".

Turkey Breath

English Defence League Join Rioters and attack the Police

A two hundred srong mob of middle aged English Defence League members threw bottles and fought with Police in Eltham in south London last night. Many were drinking from cans bought from the supermarket, EDL slogans were chanted and bottles were thrown at Welsh police wjo were draffted in from other parts of south London to deal with the disturbances. The far right organisation has a long history of violence at their demos

Video has emerged on the Telegraph website of EDL members attacked a group of black kids on a bus. We also understand that there have been multiple EDL arrests in Leicester lasst night. Leicestershire Police say they have arrested the EDL's regional organiser.

Today Clive Efford, Labour MP for Eltham, south London asked in a recalled parliament about far right groups using the riots to further their own agenda. Prime Minister David Cameron replied by stating that he spoke of 'sick individuals in society and none are as sick as the English Defence League'.

On the tuesday night, Efford spoke of the people who had spent the day working on operation #riotcleanup and EDL members took to the street of Eltham, the group had been drinking all day and tied up much needed police presence in a time when we needed all the police we can on the street.

The trouble in Eltham comes only two weeks after their Plymouth Division attacked a family-run restaurant and several members were arrested

Further information and more video from the Telegraph.

'Riot police were hit with missiles including bottles as more than 1,000 officers battled with dozens of middle-aged men on the streets Eltham, south-east London.

Witnesses reported that many of the 200 men were chanting in support of the English Defence League, the controversial Right-wing group. The group had promised to defy police orders and mobilise their own forces to protect their families and businesses from mobs of looters.

Last night hundreds of police from eight separate forces tried to restore calm from the mainly white men. Earlier they had claimed they were “protecting” local shops and businesses for a second consecutive night. With shops and pubs in the high street shut, the group brought carrier bags containing beer and drank and sat on benches.

Riot police eventually restored order after charging at the crowd. At least one person was arrested.

Around 60 EDL supporters had gathered in the square in the town drinking cans of beer and chanting "We love you England".

“Officers had missiles thrown at them this evening,” a Scotland Yard spokesman said. “Police have dealt with the disorder and the group has been dispersed. Police remain on the scene.”

Local police denied the group were comprised of EDL members.

But furious locals vented their anger at what they described as “outsider vigilantes” arriving in the area and sparking fights, particularly with police. Over the past few nights, residents in London have taken to the streets with baseball bats, swords and hockey sticks to defend their property after the police lost control.

There have been concerns that far-Right organisations had tried to take advantage of the social tensions by hijacking the “vigilante” armies. The EDL claimed that about 100 of its members were helping to protect the streets of Enfield on Tuesday night.

The league was also encouraging people to join a group of men in Eltham planning to guard their high street.

As many as 1,500 Sikhs, some in their eighties, had patrolled west London neighbourhoods around temples in Southall and Hounslow on Tuesday night, chasing rioters away. In Dalston, east London, Turkish shopkeepers armed with bats and pool cues saw off a gang of masked men. In Hackney, east London, Kingsland High Street was lined with Turkish and Kurdish men on Tuesday night, some carrying sticks. In Enfield, north London, an estimated 300 locals turned out to protect property on Tuesday after two nights of rioting.

Police said anybody taking the law into their own hands, however well intentioned, would divert police resources away from the looters and arsonists.

Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “What I don’t need is these so-called vigilantes, who appeared to have been drinking too much. These are small pockets of people. They’re frustrated, they’re angry, and that’s totally understandable.

“But the support that we need is to allow those officers to prevent looting and crime.” He said it was “ironic” that media pictures showed looting in areas where there were “no police available” while officers were being diverted to stop vigilantes elsewhere.

“That needs to stop,” he said.

Under the 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, home owners who use “reasonable force” to protect themselves should not face prosecution. However, they must not use more force than necessary. Experts say this can come down to a subtle difference, with anyone who chases an attacker likely to be at risk of committing an offence.'

EDL News

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Racist vigilantes on the loose

This is terrifying. I did tell you the Right was going crazy. Now, the racists have an opportunity to go on the rampage. In Enfield, dozens of white men aged between 30 and 40 were out earlier, chasing down Hertford Road yelling "Get the pakis". Paul Lewis reports:

"It was only a minor skirmish, but a potentially bad sign for community relations. Police, who have flooded the streets, were quickly on the scene when about 70 men started chasing local youths.

I wouldn't mention their ethnicity, but it seemed to be relevant. The men were white - in their 30s and 40s - and shouting that they wanted to get the "blacks" and "pakis". Lots of them seemed drunk. One man being held back by police shouted: "They're rats, they mugged my Auntie the other night."

Jay Bradley, 30, a witness, told me: "What happened here? What I just saw - everyone from this area aren't gonna have any looting. What I saw was a couple of ethnic lads, if you can call them that, black lads, and they chased them away.

A lot of it is alcohol - I don't think the kids were doing anything. They were just on bikes and in masks.

But no-one around here is going to stand for any looting. What are we supposed to do. The Co-op is closed and we're running out of food."

I don't believe that this is just a spontaneous response to looters. When the BNP membership list was leaked, it emerged that there were a number of members scattered around the lower middle class areas, and I wouldn't be surprised if they, along with local EDL supporters, were among those out tonight. The emergence of racist vigilantism is not unique to Enfield. It's also emerged that racist Millwall fans are supposedly 'protecting' Eltham tonight. Apparently, the EDL have been marching through the area. [Update: local residents and Millwall fans both assure me that this is untrue, and that it's just locals protecting themselves. Which, if true, is a relief - but one is still uneasy about vigilantes in football gear posing as defenders of the community.] This is why we urgently need a political response to these riots that organises communities around the issue of justice for victims of police violence. The IPCC have said tonight that Mark Duggan did not shoot at police officers. This, to me, suggests that his death was an execution, and that the bullet in the police radio may have been post-mortem framing. Either way, the police certainly lied about the circumstances of Mark Duggan's death, and this is a major cause of the anger in black communities, as it should be everywhere. There urgently needs to be an intervention on this by anti-racists and the Left.

Update: Given that there are lots of unsupported rumours flying about, I think it's important to add a couple of important qualifications to this post. A lot of the rumours going about are originating from the far right themselves - part of their propaganda about being men of action, etc. And some of them could result in people getting hurt. Naturally, I have no wish to contribute to either, so I'm just being cautious. First of all, I have heard conflicting things about the far right being involved in Enfield, but as yet no proof of this has emerged. It may well be just local racists. Guardian journalist Paul Lewis is being careful to say he only witnessed a brief skirmish (though, from the footage I've seen, it was a really nasty, scary event). Second, loads of people have been tweeting me to say it's not the EDL in Eltham. (There is some footage of what appear to be EDL being kettled there, but not the 400-strong mob that the casuals were bragging about). I'm still not okay with vigilantism, but there are degrees of danger. I'm not arguing for complacency. There are some real fascist efforts at stirring. Most of it has been kettled by the cops so far, however. So, I would bear these points in mind when you're scanning social media for updates.

Lenin's Tomb

Thanks to NewsHound and others for the heads-up

White riot: The week Notting Hill exploded

Police make a tactical withdrawal during
the riots which followed the 1976 Carnival

Today, Notting Hill is one of the nation's most exclusive enclaves, home to the rich, famous and fashionable. But it hasn't always been an oasis of affluence. Fifty years ago this week, it was gripped by the worst racial violence ever seen in Britain. Mark Olden hears the inside story of the riots and their aftermath

As darkness fell and the Notting Hill Carnival drew to a close last Monday, Europe's largest street party descended into mayhem. For more than two hours a mob of around 40 young men fought running battles with police on the streets of west London. The roots of the violence may have been different, but the images of flying bricks and bottles, of broken glass and other debris, evoked memories of 50 years ago.

Back in August 1958, Notting Hill had been seething with violence all summer.

Then, the west London neighbourhood was a place of grimy streets and decrepit, overcrowded tenements, a far cry from the chi-chi neighbourhood it is today. The Saturday before the area finally exploded, nine white youths had embarked on what one of them called a "nigger hunting expedition" around Notting Hill. They were armed with iron bars, blocks of wood, an air pistol and a knife. By the time they'd finished, five black men were in hospital, three in a grave condition.

But it was the following Friday – 29 August 1958 – when the touchpaper was really lit, igniting the worst racial violence Britain had ever seen.

It started with a minor domestic dispute between a black man and his white wife. Majbritt Morrison, a young Swedish woman, was arguing outside Latimer Road Tube station with her Jamaican husband, Raymond, who happened to be a pimp, and also happened to have had his windows smashed recently.

A white crowd soon materialised to defend Majbritt (who didn't want to be defended), and a scuffle broke out between them and some of Raymond's West Indian friends. By the following evening, a 200-strong mob were rampaging through the streets of Notting Hill armed with weapons, including sticks and butcher's knives, shouting "Down with the niggers" and "Go home you black bastards".

Johnny Edgecombe was one of those who just managed to escape. Edgecombe had arrived in Britain from Antigua in 1949, encountering the widespread casual racism which saw landlords turn him away from properties, and pubs refuse him drinks. In 1963 he became embroiled in the Profumo Affair (Edgecombe lived with Christine Keeler), one of the heaviest political sex scandals of the last century. But before then he ran a shebeen in Notting Hill, an illicit club where people would come for a smoke of weed and a drink, in a property belonging to Peter Rachman, the notorious slum landlord.

He was getting his car fixed in Oxford Gardens when he heard the crowd drawing nearer. "There's this mob of white folks, and they're calling for blood," he recalls now. "I thought 'Shit, it's time to get out of here.' I tried to drive out of the area but I hit a red light on Ladbroke Grove. I drove straight through."

PC Geoffrey Golding, in a statement preserved in the National Archives, caught the "extremely hostile mood" of the mob: "They were shouting abusive remarks at us, such as, 'Why are you helping the black bastards, you are a lot of nigger lovers.' A group of white youths shouted 'Come on you fucking coppers if you want to fight.' A shower of bottles were thrown and smashed in the road in front of me...."

Soon the newspapers were carrying graphic accounts of the unrest. "In one street where some of the ugliest fighting has taken place," said The Times, "your correspondent found a group of men in a public house singing 'Ol' Man River' and 'Bye Bye Blackbird' and punctuating the songs with vicious anti-Negro slogans. The men said that their motto was Keep Britain White." In the same report, however, black and white children are described playing together "just after a violent incident in which a coloured man was chased down a street by white youths."

As outsiders poured into the neighbourhood by Tube and bus to watch and encourage white locals violently drive out the recently settled West Indian immigrants, the Daily Mail ran an incendiary piece headlined 'Should We Let Them Keep Coming In?', calling for tighter immigration controls.

After three days of constant rioting, though, the tide finally turned. A group of mostly Jamaicans retaliated by throwing home-made Molotov cocktails on to the baying mob outside their base, the Totobags Café at 9 Blenheim Crescent. As the white crowd backed away, a few of the West Indians gave chase waving machetes and meat cleavers.

Before the West Indian fightback, the police, despite mounting one of the biggest operations of the decade, had struggled to contain the crowds. But now the white gangs had effectively been broken, and within 48 hours an uneasy calm at last settled on Notting Hill. In total, 108 people were arrested, and despite numerous injuries, almost miraculously, nobody was killed.

In their immediate aftermath, the Notting Hill riots sparked worldwide debate. Along with the Suez crisis, they were – according to Colin MacInnes, who fictionalised them in his classic novel Absolute Beginners – a defining event in post-war Britain: the moment when any British claims to moral leadership in the world evaporated.

Ivan Weekes, who'd arrived from Barbados in 1955 and was living in Notting Hill during the riots, believes their impact was more profound than Toxteth, Brixton or any of the major civil disturbances that followed, because: "They shattered the whole concept of [Britain as] the 'mother country'. Those of us who were on the front-line were in psychological no man's land, thinking 'What's next?'"

Exactly half a century on, much of Notting Hill is an exotic playground for bankers, media professionals and celebrities, and a place MacInnes might barely recognise. Estate agents trumpet its cosmopolitan vibe, and the number of residents earning more than £50,000 a year is double the national average. The carnival, founded in a spirit of resistance from the embers of the riots by the black activist Claudia Jones, is a symbol of multicultural Britain.

But what remains of the old Notting Hill and its original inhabitants? How do they see the world 50 years after some of them jeered and attacked their new black neighbours in a forlorn attempt to keep Britain – and Notting Hill – white?

In truth, there have always been two Notting Hills: the affluent south with its gleaming Victorian town houses, and the more deprived north. But when one talks of Notting Hill's original inhabitants, one's really talking about the white working class of Notting Dale.

Its unofficial borders west of Ladbroke Grove's busy main artery, and north of the grandeur of Holland Park, the Dale was first populated by brick makers and pig farmers. By the middle of the 18th century the pigs outnumbered the humans and the infant mortality rate was more than 50 per cent. "In a neighbourhood studded thickly with elegant villas and mansions," reads an article in Charles Dickens's Household Words journal, "[Notting Dale] is a plague spot, scarcely equalled for its insalubrity by any other in London." By the 1950s, it was a place of deep tribal loyalties, where everyone seemed to be bound by blood or marriage, and whole families sometimes lived in one or two rooms in crumbling tenements with no bathrooms and outside toilets.

"They talk about the poor of Africa today," says Carol Meehan, 68, who's lived here all her life, "but we had poor like that." So tightly knit was the Dale, that Carol's friend Jean Maggs, also 68, was deemed the product of a mixed marriage: "My dad was from Shepherd's Bush, my mum from Notting Hill."

The Dale of 50 years ago, they recall, was a world of bookies' runners working the street corners, milkmen collecting bets as a sideline, and rag and bone men in horse-drawn carts. It was the weekly wash at Silchester Baths, sugar sandwiches for tea, gas lit streets and smog so thick you could barely see where you were going. You could just tie a piece of string to your door to keep it shut and nothing would get nicked. The fiddles, though, were endlessly inventive. "You'd rob your own gas meter, or cut off pieces of lino to shove in the meter until there was nothing left covering the floor," says Meehan. Illegal gambling and drinking dens, known as spiels and afters, appeared faster than the law could close them down.

When West Indian people arrived into the area, Maggs says, some men saw them as a threat: to their jobs, their housing and their women. To go out with a black man would have been seen as a sacrilege.

Both women were teenagers during the riots. Meehan's dad got arrested (but was cleared after a black man gave evidence for him), while Maggs remembers one of her friends going to the aid of a black man lying bleeding on the street. "She helped bandage him. Her brother went mad and wouldn't talk to her for six months."

To understand one event, locals are fond of saying, you have to understand the 10 events preceding it. And though the argument outside Latimer Road tube is commonly seen as starting the riots, 80-year-old June Grey – who's lived in the Dale 78 years and raised six children there – believes the origins are also rooted in an incident she saw from her window on Bramley Road while waiting for her husband to come home late one night.

"Right opposite my house were two knocking shops [brothels] and people didn't like it," she says. "One day three boys from nearby White City thought they'd do something and threw milk bottles at the windows." It's believed one of the houses belonged to Raymond Morrison. The riots only really then escalated, she says, after the papers started covering them.

But there were also other, more sinister elements at work. As the West Indians had arrived in greater numbers in Notting Hill throughout the Fifties, so the far right had followed. Oswald Mosley's Union Movement leased an office at 47 Kensington Park Road, and Britain's war-time fascist leader held regular, well-attended meetings in the area in 1958. Meanwhile, the White Defence League, in the form of the Nazi Cambridge graduate and former schoolteacher Colin Jordan, also ran its operations from nearby 74 Princedale Road.

Despite attracting enthusiastic crowds, Mosley was ultimately humiliated in Notting Hill: losing his deposit when he stood as a candidate for North Kensington in the 1959 general election. Jordan, whose pamphlet entitled Black and White News sold for sixpence (Typical headlines: 'Negroes Lead in VD'; 'Black Gets White Girl'; 'Kings of the Drug Trade''), was an even more marginal figure. A Special Branch report in the National Archives from 1959 states that "in spite of wide publicity", only eight people attended a typical meeting – at which it was contended "that the Jews are the cause of the influx of coloured immigrants".

But some locals, nevertheless, were receptive. "Mosley never got big because of Hitler," said one of his former Notting Dale supporters, in an interview with The Independent shortly before he died. "There wasn't much difference between him and Hitler. He fucking hated everyone. He hated foreigners. Wanted Britain for the British." He paused. "I supported him. We used to hang around them [Mosley's people] because they'd give us money. "

On the third day of the riots, he was arrested on Elgin Crescent shouting abuse at passing blacks. "The riots started off with a false rumour that a black man had raped a white girl. It was just fighting which grew bigger and everyone joined in. We were bored," he said, matter-of-factly.

While much of the old Notting Dale was bulldozed into oblivion in a wave of 1960s slum clearances, shadows of the past remain.

Though the likes of Elle Macpherson, David Cameron and Stella McCartney now live in the area, not everyone in Notting Hill has money. And while it might seem that way, not every traditional boozer has been transformed into a gastro pub, nor has every working men's café been supplanted by a Starbucks or Caffe Nero. In the tatty Kensington Park, formerly known as the KPH, black and white old-timers drink together, whiling away their days in a manner unimaginable 50 years ago. A couple of streets away, on Walmer Road, is the Rugby Club. Founded in 1884 to "benefit the poor of Notting Dale" by a former Rugby School pupil who came here in the spirit of a wide-eyed missionary going to Africa, it's where successive generations of local youths have been kept off the streets, and characters who've been members since their childhoods 50 or 60 years ago still come to play bingo, reminisce and eat their Sunday roasts.

The sociologist Colin Prescod was only 13 when the riots erupted around him. He's lived in the same house in Notting Hill all his life, and his mother, the Trinidadian actress Pearl Prescod, was at the forefront of the anti-racist struggles of the late 1950s alongside the carnival's founder, Claudia Jones. The events of half a century ago, he argues, should not be divorced from their wider context.

"To think that Britain's history is one of only white working class racism towards black people is a nonsense. Race has been one of the key things in the whole of the history that makes Britain 'great'. Racism was at the heart of empire. It was institutionalised by the ruling class," he says.

For the black community, the riots were a watershed. "We lifted after the storm from victimhood to resistance. What happened was that a humiliated community became more militant and said, 'We're here, and we're here in a big way.'" Organisations such as the Coloured People's Progressive Association and the Racial Action Adjustment Society were founded in wake of the riots, and Prescod says, played a significant part in black British history in the 20th century.

This history, he says, is what the new residents and property dealers are buying into when they come to "sophisticated" Notting Hill. "I sometimes feel like some Masai village elder sitting outside my hut watching the new arrivals, wondering if they know anything about what made this area what it is."

"Black and white didn't mix back then," June Grey says. "Now they're our strongest allies. I've got a black son-in-law and he's everything a husband and father should be."

But in many ways, she is exiled from the world she grew up in. "I went to a funeral the other day and they said: 'You're always here.' I said it's because I'm a Notting Hill lady and I show my respects. There aren't many of us left." Her friend Jean Maggs echoes her: "Our betting shops are gone. They've closed most of our cafés and pubs. Someone got very rich on Notting Hill."

Mark Olden is a documentary maker and journalist

Independent