‘We’re All Getting Attacked’: How Disorder Broke Out in East Leeds

By the time a double-decker bus is burning out of control in a dense Leeds neighbourhood and a police car has been overturned and taken away, a number of things have happened.

The first is that there was an altercation at a residential address in Harehills – a poor and highly diverse neighbourhood in the east of Leeds’ inner city – where, it is understood, children were being taken into care by agency workers. Police attended the scene, and people appeared to first throw things at a police car before flipping it on its side.

The second is that police were instructed to withdraw from the area. In effect, this drew the disturbance down the length of Harehills Lane, the busiest road in Harehills, building up a large crowd. In response, riot police first attempted to set up a blockade at a major road junction, before being recalled altogether. In this time period, a delivery driver caught in the junction had his vehicle raided and the goods set alight, and a bus was halted before also being set alight.

In the time that follows, thousands of residents crowd in the streets. Most seem to stand filming the flames, some even dragging a sofa into the street to get a decent view. Large groups of middle-aged people stand discussing the events as they unfold. Young people in rival groups occasionally chase each other in skirmishes. Families look on from a distance. Near to the fires, altercations that could have become physical – seemingly about people literally adding fuel to the fire – are de-escalated. But the truth is that few people have possession of all the facts, and social media is flooded with disinformation about what even happened here.

I see one group of British Asian men blaming Romanians for the disorder, which leads another group to chant “Romania! Romania!”. A Romanian woman and her neighbours argue back, saying they are trying to stop people joining in with the disorder, not contributing to it. A white English teenager comes away from the fracas claiming, apparently on the basis of a hunch, that the woman is some kind of Romanian nationalist. Now and then, the atmosphere stops dead with a bang from the fire, or the sound of some loudly fizzing combustible threatening to explode.

Amongst the crowd I meet Mothin Ali, one of the councillors for the ward, who is vaguely aware that far-right-authored slander about him supposedly being a participant in a riot is circulating online as we speak. He hasn’t responded because he has been busy. Footage shows him and fellow councillor Salma Arif at the start of the evening appearing to attempt to mediate the situation involving agency workers, children, their parents, and the police.

Now, he is chasing people who are racing through the streets with wheelie bins and wooden pallets to add to the fire. He appears to tackle one mid-flight, before dragging bins from the flames. Not long after, he and another resident put their bodies between a large Biffa bin and the fire.

Most residents can’t understand why the emergency services aren’t here. The heat from the blazing double-decker bus is intense. Residents in the immediate vicinity tell me they fear for their homes setting alight, and are almost certainly suffering with smoke inhalation. Many feel that the police’s mismanaged withdrawal from the area exacerbated the situation, and now feel abandoned.

Residents say it feels typical for attitudes towards Harehills from outsiders. A blacked-out Land Rover slows down, asking where the passengers can “see the cop car on fire” (there isn’t one), while a lycra-clad cyclist on a fixie stands filming from across the junction. The tourists seem disappointed there isn’t more to see. By now the crowd has thinned, and a group of men seem to be having a break-dancing contest.

“We need cooler heads,” says Ali. “We need to grab every member of the community, we need a mass community initiative where we engage everyone who feels let down.”

“We keep talking about how this community’s been let down, but how’s it ever going to [be] recovered without the investment? We need to have this community built back up.”

A WhatsApp message goes out asking people to bring fire extinguishers from their kitchens and taxis. When the first arrives, the all-too-brief blast that empties it makes it clear the effort is futile given the size of the fire.

People begin gathering bins to fill with water. Large commercial and household bins full of water are wheeled out of a ginnel and up the street, pushed by two or three residents at a time. Then they use buckets, washing up bowls and petrol cans to decant the water onto the flames.

As an assembly line sets in motion, I speak with a man who is filling bins with a hosepipe and insists he only wants to be credited as a “local community resident”. Like many I speak to, he can remember previous riots in Harehills – the last two of which were prompted by the actions of the police – and feels residents have learnt from those experiences. He’s especially dubious of onlookers who aim to inflame the situation.

“We’ve learnt from our elders, we’ve learnt how to love our area,” he says. “We’re Romanian, Gypsy, Pakistani, Asian – this is what it means to be from Harehills. People can shit on us all they want, but when we stand together, we stand together, because we love our area, and we’re not going to have people from outside agitating and causing anger.

“Something’s gone wrong. There’s been miscommunication … it’s a poor area with one of the largest youth populations in the city and everyone wants to come and make us look stupid and bad – the Islamophobia, antisemitism, people who are anti-Gypsy or Roma – we’re all getting attacked.”

A man in his twenties runs up the ginnel having burnt himself on a scorched metal bollard whilst emptying a binful of water. He holds his hand under the water by way of first aid, though it seems obvious that he’s going to need more attention.

The hose belongs to Belasario, a Filipino restaurant worker who has lived in Harehills with his young family for a year. He heard people shouting for water and answered the call from his window. Both he and his neighbour Arnold, also from the Philippines, have attached hoses to their sinks to run them outside. Just an hour ago, they feared their homes would catch fire.

Shortly before 1am, the fires are out. About 20 minutes later, fire engines arrive, escorted by police vans. I speak to Arif, one of the councillors.

“It’s been a really difficult night in Harehills, especially with it being mainstream news as well,” she tells me. “We don’t want this attention for our community.”

“There’s lots of things to reflect on … there’s a lot we need to get in terms of the facts of what’s happened, but ultimately right now it’s important as a community that we come together and we don’t scapegoat a particular community, that we’re united.”