[10] The protests started in Tottenham Hale, London, following the killing of Mark Duggan, a local black man who was shot dead by police on 4 August.

The following days saw similar scenes in other parts of London, with the worst rioting taking place in Hackney, Brixton, Walthamstow, Wandsworth, Peckham, Enfield, Battersea, Croydon, Ealing, Barking, Woolwich, Lewisham and East Ham.

[6][13][15][16] On 4 August 2011, a police officer shot dead 29-year-old Mark Duggan during an intelligence-led, targeted vehicle stop procedure on the Ferry Lane bridge next to Tottenham Hale station.

There were significant outbreaks in parts of Battersea, Brixton, Bromley, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, East Ham, Hackney, Harrow, Lewisham, Peckham, Stratford, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, Woolwich, and Wood Green.

[43] Although London employs CCTV cameras to monitor crime and large events, reports indicate that citizen footage contributed more to capturing looters in action than the police force.

[46] The Guardian created both a map and a dataset of events of the riots[47][48] News channels also were able to utilise this public service to capture live footage on the streets and inform citizens of dangerous or crowded areas.

There were reports that the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service was used by looters to organise their activities, and that inflammatory and inaccurate accounts of Mark Duggan's killing on social media sites may have incited disturbances.

[65] On 10 August, in Winson Green, Birmingham, three men – Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shahzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31 – were killed in a hit-and-run incident while attempting to protect their neighbourhood from rioters and looters.

[72] Many tributes were paid to Bowes, including Ealing Council, who flew the Union Flag at half-mast over its town hall and announced the launch of a relief fund in his name,[73] and Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who described him as a hero.

[4][82] On 2 March 2012, two men, John Kafunda of Ilford and Reece Donovan of Romford, were found guilty of the robbery of Rossli and also violent disorder by a jury at Wood Green Crown Court.

[135][136] London's mayor, Boris Johnson, who cut short his summer holiday in Canada to return to the UK on 9 August,[137] said: "I'm appalled at the scenes of violence and destruction in Tottenham"[122] whilst his deputy Kit Malthouse told a Sky News reporter that "criminal elements were to blame for the trouble".

[139] In a strongly worded criticism of what he deems to be a misplaced "hyper-sensitivity about race", dating back to the Macpherson Report of 1999, Civitas director David Green attributed the reluctance by police to use force to a fear of disciplinary action.

Most were men or boys, some apparently as young as 10....But families and other local residents, including some from Tottenham's Hasidic Jewish community, also gathered to watch and jeer at police."

CIFW responded by condemning the newspaper saying, "A 1,800 Guardian report doesn't mention the race, ethnicity, or religion of the rioters, somehow found it pertinent to note that some of those who gathered to jeer police were, allegedly, Hasidic Jews."

[178] Three men killed in a hit-and-run incident in Birmingham, Haroon Jahan, Shazad Ali, and Abdul Musavir Tariq, were described as heroes for dying while attempting to defend their neighbourhood.

Some of these groups began being referred to as 'riot wombles', taking up brooms and other tools to clear streets of debris and wreckage,[185] a term that was later used by Prime Minister David Cameron during a speech on the aftermath of the riots on 15 August 2011.

[197] On 8 and 9 August, people from Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Kurdish, Turkish, Sikh and English communities chased down masked youths in several areas of North and East London, including Green Street, Hackney, Haringey, and Tower Hamlets.

[222] The Ministry of Justice report also noted that rioters brought before the courts were disproportionately male (89%) and young (53% were aged 20 or under, with the number of "juveniles" ranging from 26% in London to 39% in Merseyside, and very few listed as over 40).

[243] On 1 September 2011 the BBC reported that official Ministry of Justice figures showed that of the 1,566 people that had appeared before magistrates on charges connected with the disorder, 1,027 had been in London, 190 in Greater Manchester, 132 in the West Midlands, 67 in Merseyside and 64 in Nottingham.

[255] The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn presented a piece of new writing, The Riots by Gillian Slovo, which looked into the events over those days in August and the thoughts and opinions of a range of people directly involved and politicians.

The piece included community leaders Stafford Scott and Martin Sylvester Brown, police constables on duty that night and a former resident of the Carpet-Right building, the burned remains now providing a reminder of the events.

Several speculations have emerged as to what the likely contributory factors might be for the riots; from socio-economic causes focusing on unemployment and spending cuts, as well as social media, gang culture and criminal opportunism.

[257] A wide-ranging LSE study called Reading the Riots concluded that the major contributory factors were opportunism, perceived social injustice, deprivation, and frustration at the way communities were policed.

[272] Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, writing in The Observer, stated that the riots were not caused by a broken society, but due to a group of young, alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour; he added that this is found in virtually every developed nation.

[277] Christina Odone writing in The Daily Telegraph links the riots to a lack of male role models and argues that "Like the overwhelming majority of youth offenders behind bars, these gang members have one thing in common: no father at home.

[265][280][281][282][283][284] Ken Livingstone, the Labour Candidate for Mayor of London in 2012 has argued that "The economic stagnation and cuts being imposed by the Tory government inevitably create social division.

"[285] Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats political party, made it clear that the government's planned cuts to police budgets will go ahead.

[291] The number of people chasing every one job vacancy in Haringey has been put at 23 and 54 in separate reports, and fears had spread of disorder after youth club closures in recent months.

[303] Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne suggested that moral decay is just as bad at the top of society as it is at the bottom, with the rich and powerful generating anger among the British population.

[305] Kenneth Clarke, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, writing in The Guardian, described the riots in part as "an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes".