Faced with a lack of scientific evidence—because for several hours it had not been possible to secure the crime scene—police officers arrested 359 people, interviewed most of them without lawyers, and laid charges based on untaped confessions.

A widely supported campaign arose to overturn the convictions, which were quashed in 1991 when scientific testing cast doubt on the authenticity of detectives' notes of an interview in which Silcott appeared to incriminate himself.

[14] British journalist David Rose writes that by 1976 the Farm was already seen as a sink estate, and that by 1980 a Department of the Environment report had suggested demolition, although a regeneration project after the 1985 riots led to improvements.

[17] The Royal Institute of British Architects blamed the unrest on Haringey Council's policy of "using the estate as a gathering ground for its problem tenants", combined with low rents that left no funds for adequate maintenance.

[19] Combined with the ground-level parking spaces beloved of drug dealers, these had turned the estate into what commentators called a "rabbit warren" for criminals, to the point where residents were afraid to leave their homes.

[21] Dutch architectural historian Wouter Vanstiphout described the estate as it was at the time of the riots: [T]here are elevated walkways, there are little stairs that connect them, there are these huge stairwells where the different elevated walkways come together ... there is a huge underground zone that is completely unmonitored, which consists of parking places ... so it's an incredible nest ... one of these typical modernist, multi-level network city constructions that make it extremely difficult for the police to exert any control over it, and it makes the police extremely vulnerable for attacks from behind, underneath, from the top.

David Rose, a British author and investigative journalist, writes that the pathologist, Walter Somerville, told the inquest that Mrs. Jarrett had a heart condition that meant she probably only had months to live.

[46] At 9:30 pm Sgt David Pengelly led the unit onto the estate to protect firefighters who had earlier attended a supermarket fire in the Tangmere block but had been forced out.

[52] "In total, 230 police officers were injured and one, PC Keith Blakelock, was killed"—The Daily Telegraph[54]There were rioters at the bottom of the stairs too, wearing masks or crash helmets, and carrying knives, machetes, baseball bats, bricks, petrol bombs and paving stones.

The pathologist, David Bowen, found 54 holes in Blakelock's overalls, and 40 stabbing or slashing injuries, eight of them to his head, caused by a weapon such as a machete, axe or sword.

[57][b] A second group surrounded PC Coombes, who sustained a five-inch-long cut to his face, had his neck slit open, and was left with broken upper and lower jaws.

Couch, Mr Stratford, and other officers ran back too and managed to pull PC Blakelock away, but by then he had sustained multiple stab wounds and within minutes the 40-year-old father of three was near death.

[68] The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Kenneth Newman, told reporters that groups of Trotskyists and anarchists had orchestrated the violence, a theme picked up by the Daily Telegraph and others.

Falling for a story from media hoaxer Rocky Ryan, the Daily Express reported on 8 October 1985 that a "Moscow-trained hit squad gave orders as mob hacked PC Blakelock to death", alleging that "crazed left-wing extremists" trained in Moscow and Libya had coordinated the riots.

He had studied at Bramshill Police College, served with the Flying Squad, and was known for having solved several notorious cases, including that of Kenneth Erskine, the Stockwell Strangler.

[77] Melvin defended his decision to hold people without access to legal advice by arguing that lawyers, unwittingly or otherwise, might pass information they had gleaned during interviews to other suspects.

Born in England to West-Indian parents, Pennant had been raised in the West Indies until he was nine, after which he returned to the UK; he was diagnosed with learning difficulties and was attending a special school.

In 1985 he made the news when he told Diana, Princess of Wales, who was on an official visit to Broadwater Farm, that she should not have come without bringing jobs, which The Sun interpreted as a threat.

[113] The trial of the six accused of murder—Silcott, Raghip and Braithwaite, the adults; and Pennant, Hill and Lambie, the youths—began in court number two of the Old Bailey on 19 January 1987 in front of Mr Justice Hodgson.

[117] Silcott's barrister, Barbara Mills, a future Director of Public Prosecutions, decided that he should not take the stand to avoid exposing him to questions about his previous convictions.

[119][79] The press coverage of the trial included the publication on day two, by The Sun, of a notorious close-up of a half-smiling Silcott, one that "created a monster to stalk the nightmares of Middle England", as journalist Kurt Barling put it.

They published an 18-page report in 1987 by Margaret Burnham and Lennox Hinds, two American law professors who had attended part of the trial, and who wrote that Silcott's conviction "represents a serious miscarriage of justice".

She began to explore Raghip's mental state, arguing that his confession could not be relied upon, and arranged for him to be examined by Dr. Gísli Guðjónsson of the Institute of Psychiatry, a specialist in suggestibility.

Mills noted the lack of photographic or scientific evidence, and argued that Silcott would have been unlikely to stop firefighters from extinguishing a fire on the deck of the Tangmere block, given that he was renting a shop there.

[148] In December 2003, weeks after Silcott was released from jail after serving 17 years for the murder of Anthony Smith, police announced that the Blakelock investigation had been re-opened, and would be led by Det Supt John Sweeney.

[161][162] He was charged with affray, and in November 1986 Judge Neil Denison sentenced him to eight years, ruling that Jacobs had "played a leading part" in the riots and had thrown a petrol bomb.

[168] Richard Whittam QC, for the prosecution, told the court that all three had admitted kicking or hitting Blakelock and would normally face murder charges themselves, but the CPS had decided during Commander Perry Nove's inquiry to offer the "kickers" immunity in exchange for testimony against the "stabbers".

[176] PC Dick Coombes, badly injured during the attack, went back to work part-time in July 1986 but was forced to retire in 1991, partly because of the epilepsy that developed as a result of brain damage.

Sgt David Pengelly, who single-handedly fought to hold the crowd away from Blakelock and Richard Coombes after they fell, received the George Medal, awarded for acts of great bravery, for having proceeded "with total disregard for his own safety".

[178] A lack of clarity about who was in charge of the police operation on the night of Blakelock's death led to a failure to deploy reinforcements and equipment in a timely manner.