The initial Metropolitan Police handling of the Tottenham riots shows a depressing failure to learn lessons from recent history

The deputy Mayor in charge of London’s police authority and Scotland Yard’s high command have both repeatedly claimed that nobody could have foreseen that an initial protest over the shooting dead of a black suspect in Tottenham would mushroom into a riot situation. However, Chris Gilson finds that recent history should have provided plenty of pointers to how deaths at police hands or in police custody can often act as triggers for wider outbreaks of lawlessness.