London Riots and Resistance.

Welcome to the London Riots and Resistance website. The role of this website is to document and make more widely available the rich history of radical action within Britain's largest city. In doing so we also aim to help preserve a number of accounts and documents that might otherwise be lost. This website is based around a chronology of mass resistance dating from the 14th century on. Those who wish to gain more information on specific events can click on individual listings in order to access information and eyewitness accounts. The chronology and accounts are far from complete and will be added to over the coming months.

1325 Riots against the King result from City squalor.
1381 The Peasants Revolt sees Wat Tyler lead an army of labouring people to end feudalism and property ownership. London is occupied for two days, prisons thrown open, the Tower ransacked and Tyler killed by the Mayor.
1430 Jack Cade leads Kentishmen in a protest against economic oppression and the incompetence of the King. London is occupied for three days.
1554 The Wyatt uprising takes Rochester and marches on London.
1591 William Hackett proclaims the Second Coming of Christ and incites anti-government anger.
1640-49 The English Civil War.
1675 Spitalfields weavers riot for 3 days.
1720 Sporadic rioting and attacks on MPs following the collapse of the South Sea Bubble and the ruin of ordinary investors.
1743 Riots break out in opposition to the Gin Act.
1763 Issue 45 of John Wilkes North Briton paper is suppressed leading to numerous small scale riots.
1780 The Gordon riots demolish sections of London as rioters take control of the city. Prisons are liberated.
1810 Riots take place in support of radical MP Sir Francis Burdett.
1820 The King is mobbed in a London Street.
1831 Riots follow the Government rejection of the Reform Act. Prisons are opened and burned.
1833 Police violently disperse reform protestors in Clerkenwell. Juries later acquit, on the grounds of self defence, those accused of killing and attempting to kill police .
1848 Chartists march on Whitehall.
1855

Protestors fight back in Hyde Park as police move to prevent 50 000 people from demonstrating against Lord Grosvenor's Sunday Trading Bill.

1866 Riots develop when police attempt to break up Reform League meetings in Hyde Park.
1880s Salvation Army meetings regularly set upon by the 'Skeleton Army'.
1887 Police and the Army ride down demonstrators in Trafalgar Square during 'Bloody Sunday'.
1912-14 National docks, mines, seaman's strikes see picket line violence.
1914 The Women's Social and Political Union is banned from holding meetings in Hyde Park. This decision leads to numerous clashes between Suffragettes and the police.
1926 The General Strike.
1932 The culmination of the National Unemployed Workers Movement's fourth hunger march sees police driven out of Hyde Park.
1936 The Battle of Cable Street repels fascists from largely Jewish areas of the East End and breaks the back of Moseley's blackshirts.
1958 White bigots attack black communities in Notting Hill. The majority of attacks are repelled by locals and the racists driven out.
1968 Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations draw up to 100 000 people. One breaks out into a riot at Grosvenor Square.
1976 Notting Hill anti-police riot.
1981 Brixton Riots drive occupying forces out of the area.
1983 Skirmishes between hundreds of locals and police occur following police evictions of squatters along Railton Road in Brixton.
1984 Various Stop The City protests see 100s of actions throughout London's financial 'Square Mile'.
1985 Riots in Brixton and Tottenham break out on successive weekends in response to the killing of local women by police. PC Blakelock is killed during rioting on the Broadwater Farm estate and the Brixton disturbances extend across Lambeth and into Peckham. Earlier in the year a huge march of 80 000 striking miners and their supporters sees clashes with police at Whitehall and yet more rioting at the close of the Nottinghill Carnival.
1986-87 Rupert Murdoch's News International sacks most of its workforce leading to year long picketing at the company's Wapping site and numerous clashes with scabs and the police. Squatters at the Stamford Hill estate hold police off from a mass eviction for three days.
1987 Two hours of rioting against police operations follow the close of the Notting Hill carnival. One police woman is stabbed during the fighting.
1990 The Trafalgar Square riot marks the demise of the poll tax and with it Margaret Thatcher's political career. Smaller riots and skirmishes in Islington, Hackney, Haringey and Brixton set the scene for the explosion to come.
1993 Police set up anti-fascist demonstrators leading to battles during a march on the British National Party HQ in Welling.
1994 Hyde Park sees a massive riot when police attempt to prevent partying after a demonstration against the repressive Criminal Justice Bill.
1995 Rioting in Brixton follows the umpteenth murder of a black man in police custody.
1999 London's contribution to the global J-18 day of action against Capitalism sees heavy fighting, occupations and window breaking across the 'Square Mile'. Later in the year an anti World Trade Organisation demo sees further fighting with police and a police van burnt out.
The actions have made the listing on the following basis-
(1) That they involved at least 100 people.
(2) That they involved direct and physical resistance to authority.
(3) That they were opposed to oppression and did not seek to further it (eg-race riots). Few historical events however are ideologically or otherwise "pure" and their participants often have differing intentions. It is for this reason we have included events such as the Gordon Riots which had both negative (attacks on ordinary Catholics) and positive (burning of prisons) outcomes.

The inspiration for this website has been largely drawn from an article and chronology that appeared in issue 29 of Anarchy (UK) magazine in the late 1970s. Much thanks is due to those who originally produced it and those who have helped with the further research we have done.

Contributions and comments are most welcome and can be sent to- questionmarks01@yahoo.co.uk