ABSTRACT
A riot occurred on the premises of Broadwater Farm Estate instigated by the death of Cynthia Jarrett, a local black mother who collapsed and died as the police raided her home, near Broadwater Farm, on 5 October 1985. The events which proceeded the following day began as protests on the nearby Tottenham High Road but ended in the penning in of an angered group within the boundary of The Farm, culminating in the killing of the Metropolitan Police Officer Keith Blakelock.
The focus of this chapter is to explore actions and reactions which surrounded the 1985 UK riots in North London, and partially explore how these compare more recently with the UK wide riots of 2011 and subsequent policy decisions thereafter. Examining the Broadwater Farm Estate in a place specific, political, and social framework, this text furnishes the argument for how both protests and urban space can be malleable toys for politicians and political actors. In this case in particular: a housing estate is engulfed by rioting, and in the aftermath, the spatial organisation became implicated and thus mouldable. This specific housing estate became a testbed for alterations – by academics and politicians alike – seeking to draw determinist conclusions, or rhetorically loaded remedial works, which they hoped would extinguish the likelihood of future conflict between citizens and the state.
