It was a warm summer day, but it was the heat from cars burning in the street that made Ram Parkash feel as though he was walking through hell.
Ram was 18 and returning home to Handsworth in Birmingham from a school trip, only to find his hometown on fire as tensions between locals and police erupted into riots.
“Cars were turned over and burning, buildings were looted,” Ram, now 57, recalls. “It became the war zone it was always going to end up as. The tensions had been there for a long time.”
