LONDON — Despite promises from British Prime Minister David Cameron of an overwhelming police presence on the streets, many people here Tuesday remain fearful after three days of rioting has paralyzed this city.
In the north London neighborhood of Holloway, so far untouched by violence, shops were closing early and cellphone stores and banks were being barricaded with metal shutters in midafternoon.
Uniformed police officers, many in riot gear, were evident in many neighborhoods as police cars patrolled streets with sirens blaring.
In the east London neighborhood of Hackney, one of the hardest hit in Monday night's violence, many shops remained closed. Drugstores, department stores and electronics shops were dark. Plywood boards covered broken windows of a betting parlor that was attacked by bands of rioters.
Hackney Town Hall was closed and a half-dozen uniformed bobbies stood watch in front of it. A line of police vans from south Wales, more than 100 miles away, idled nearby.
A wave of violence and looting has raged across London since Saturday, as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.
The rioters appeared to have little unifying cause — though some claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.
Cameron recalled Parliament from its summer recess Tuesday and nearly tripled the number of police on the streets after the riots turned into a full-blown political crisis.
He described the scenes of burning buildings and smashed windows in London and several other British cities as "sickening," but refrained from more extreme measures such as calling in the military to help beleaguered police restore order.
Instead, he said 16,000 officers would be on the streets of the capital Tuesday night, almost tripling the number that were out Monday night.
"People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding," Cameron told reporters after rushing home from an Italian vacation to chair a crisis meeting at his Downing Street office.
About 525 arrests have been made in London alone and dozens were arrested in other cities. The riots also claimed their first death — a 26-year-old found shot dead in a car.
"Why was nothing done to stop them?" said teacher Julia Adegoke. "More force should have been used."
She said she had more confidence that police would be in control Tuesday night.
On Monday, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks into Tuesday's wee hours . The violence erupted in gritty suburbs along the capital's fringes to central London's posh Notting Hill neighborhood.
The spreading disorder was an unwelcome warning of the possibility of violence during London's 2012 Summer Olympics, less than a year away.
England's soccer match Wednesday against the Netherlands in London's Wembley stadium was canceled to free up police officers for riot duty.
Cameron said leaves have been canceled for police in London, and reinforcements have been called in from all over the country. Armored vehicles were deployed in some of the worst-hit districts, but authorities still struggled to keep pace with the chaos unfolding at flashpoints across London, in the central city of Birmingham, the western city of Bristol and the northwestern city of Liverpool.
Graham Reeves, 52, stood dumbstruck in front of the smoldering ruins of his family store, the House of Reeves on Croydon in south London. The store is a local landmark that had been run by his family for decades — he said his 80-year-old father was hysterical upon hearing the news.
"No one's stolen anything," Graham Reeves said. "They just burnt it down."
Pizza parlor worker Arun Selvam said he would not abandon his shift Tuesday afternoon but would stand close to his restaurant's fire exit.
"If anything happens, I'm out of here," he said.
Contributing: The Associated Press
On another blog I wrote:
AntwortenLöschenI feel reminded to the riots 1968 in Paris, later in Berlin. They initiated a big change in Europe, away from a depressing traditional bourgeois society to general liberation and emancipation. Many of the achievements which seem now so natural and for granted arose from this movement, which ranged from swinging London to Prague Spring, from Woodstock to the anti-Vietnam movement, from sex and drugs and Rock 'n Roll to decentralized alternative groups.
It is high time for such a new liberation movement to overcome the current desperate situation of injustice and predatory capitalism.