Scarred London opens for business after riots

LONDON—After a relatively quiet night on London’s streets, life started to return to normal Thursday following four nights of rioting that have left homes and shops in ruins and four people dead.

The owners of shops and cafes in districts of the British capital where rioters looted and set fire to shops put on a brave face and opened for business.

On London’s Oxford Street, a shopping magnet for tourists, stores that have shut early for the past two days finally felt confident enough that the violence had receded to stay open late.

In Ealing, to the west of the capital, shopkeepers were opening up at premises attacked in one of the most intense bouts of rioting in London on Monday night.

An entire row of shops were boarded up with chipboard, but their owners pushed open the makeshift doors cut into the wood and began to serve customers.

Organic cafe Farm W5 had its shattered main window covered up but manager Hussein Hagg prepared coffees and juices in the semi-darkness.

“As soon as they opened the road, everyone started helping each other.

“I opened yesterday… We all know each other and we have worked together.

He hoped Ealing, a leafy district unaccustomed to violence, would recover. “The area is recovering quickly,” he said. “I do not think it will have a permanent effect on the area. We just need time to get everything back to normal.

“The residents here are very nice. I have been here five years and I have never had any problems before.”

Nearby, a homemade poster on the chipboard at a health food shop cheerfully announced: “We are open as usual,” accompanied by a smiley face.

Longtime Ealing resident Helen Brooke, 64, admitted that behind the defiance, there was still fear that violence could erupt again, especially when the police reinforcements that have flooded the area have to leave.

“I have no idea if it will change the area forever, but I know that people are scared,” she said.

“There’s definitely a lot of fear that it could flare up again. You can have a few days of extra police presence but they aren’t going to stay around forever.”

The red-brick building housing the Ealing Green Local corner shop, which was looted and burned out, destroying the flats above, was surrounded by scaffolding and police crime scene tape.

A crane carefully lifted the clock tower off the roof on Wednesday while structural engineers assess whether the building can be saved.

In the center of the capital, Oxford Street – where riot police were dispatched at the height of the violence on Monday night – was back to its normal thronged self after it was noticeably quieter earlier in the week.

Some shops had closed early on Tuesday and Wednesday on the advice of police.

A spokeswoman for major department store John Lewis said it had been unaffected by the violence and would open late until 1900 GMT on Thursday, but she added: “We continue to monitor the situation closely, taking advice from the relevant authorities.”

In Trafalgar Square, Alison Bailey was sightseeing as she tried to salvage her trip to the capital from southwest England after the England v Holland football match she had come to watch on Wednesday was cancelled because of the violence.

“We hesitated about coming but we had already paid for the trip and the hotel so we decided to come and visit London instead,” said the 46-year-old.

“My family were a bit worried. I did tell my sister I would call her every day to tell her I’m OK.”

In Birmingham, where three men died after being mowed down by a car during riots in the early hours of Wednesday, traffic began flowing around Britain’s second city for the first time since the violence began.