At first, I thought he was the site foreman. He was in his mid-40s, well-built, standing in front of a building site on Madeley Road in Ealing. This leafy suburb in west London, which is about two miles from my house in Acton, was the scene of some of the worst rioting on Monday night and I had cycled over there the following day to try and help with the clean-up. I took a detour via Madeley Road on my way home.
On closer inspection, the house I’d taken to be a building site was just an ordinary home — or what was left of it — after a gang of thugs had tried to smash their way in the previous night. The man standing at the front gate, arms folded like a bouncer, was the householder.
‘There were between 30 and 40 of them,’ he said. ‘They were out here for about 15 minutes, smashing windows, setting light to cars, mugging people who walked past. Then one of them had the bright idea of trying to break into my house. A group of them tried to kick my front door in. I was stood on the other side of it, leaning against it, trying to stop them getting in. I’ve got two kids, aged three and four, and they were screaming their heads off. I told my wife to take them into the back garden in case they got in.’
Miraculously, the man kept them at bay and, in their frustration, they started hurling bricks through his ground-floor windows. Even then, they didn’t manage to break in and eventually they gave up.
‘How long did it take before the police arrived?’ I asked.
‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘I called them at 11.30
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