(I originally posted this over on Tumblr.)

I was at my friend’s house in Swinton when the riots started. To get back to our flat on the Quays would mean an unavoidable journey around Salford Shopping City, or just “the precinct” as it’s known around here. The news was full of bricks being thrown at riot police, cars being torched and shops being looted. My friend wanted me to stay at hers, but Stat wouldn’t have that.

Both he and our friend Neil, who is tough and cool, met me by St Thomas’s Church, and we went through the subways and up towards the precinct. Everything seemed to have calmed down, in comparison to the pictures I’d just seen on the news. Tactical aid units were still circling the precinct, but apart from a lingering smell of smoke there wasn’t any sign of fire. With the TAUs still taking up all of the Hankinson Way side of the precinct, we walked down the other to find the road blocked not by police, but by spectators sitting on the roofs of their cars. Someone was just breaking into a newsagent as we passed.

Crossing the roundabout, we saw the source of the smoke - the two cars on fire I’d heard about, flipped over and blocking the dual carriageway, now completely burned out. The crowd seemed less interested in the precinct now though. They were moving onto Fitzwarren Street, and as we turned onto Highfield Road, we saw men in balaclavas smashing cars up in the Lidl car park.

What I didn’t see much of in the area was the police. They were concentrated around the wrong side of the precinct from all the action we saw. Even once we were back home, the pictures rotating from the news were all from earlier in the day, with the scallies throwing missiles at the police on Churchill Way. It seemed to me that the police hadn’t bothered to follow them round the corner. The helicopters are still overhead even now though. This is going to go on well into the night, and it will probably get worse before the end.

So, here’s a question: What caused the riots in Salford, Manchester, Birmingham and the Midlands, when the first riots were sparked by a man being shot in London?

I can’t speak for everyone involved, but I’m going to hazard a guess and say that these new riots today have nothing to do with Mark Duggan, and probably not a whole lot to do with suspected police brutality.

Truth is, riots of some description have been on the cards in this country for quite some time now. The economic, political and sociological climates lately have all showed the warning signs of an event on this scale. Think of Britain as a brushfire: the trees on the other side of the wood didn’t know a thing about the match that started it, but something was going to set them alight at some point.

To everyone around the world watching our country now and asking why this is happening, let me offer this explanation:

Our jobs have been dismantled. Our services have been cut back or destroyed. Our wealth has been taken from us. All this, by a government we never truly voted into power in the first place. A government who answer not to their people, but to the bankers and financiers who have no conscience about causing such chaos, as long as their own bonuses are protected.

As reprehensible and counter-productive as rioting is, there appears to be no other way to have our voices heard by those in charge.

I have witnessed with my own eyes a desperate piece of history being written today. For now, there is nothing else to do but hope that the ends justify the means.