ABSTRACT
I utterly condemn this mindless hooliganism and yobbery for which there can be no excuse. I hope all local people in the areas involved will back the police in the difficult job that has faced them.
(Home Office Minister, John Patten, quoted in The Guardian, 4 September 1991)
This was the forthright denunciation by a government minister of 4 nights of public disorder on council house estates in Cardiff and Oxford, and a night of looting in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, which took place between 30 August and 3 September 1991. The Cardiff riots broke out on an Ely housing estate when police confronted local youths who stoned an Asian grocery store. In Oxford, a police operation designed to rid the Blackbird Leys estate of ‘hotters’ (people who participated in or watched the performance of high-speed stunts in ‘hot’, or stolen, cars) resulted in similar clashes. Finally, in Handsworth, a crowd of youths took advantage of a temporary loss of electric lighting in the area to break into local shops. A police vehicle was stoned and twenty-three arrests were made as the police reimposed their authority.
