Wales' First Minister has said "13 years of erosion" under a Conservative government in Westminster led to the riots in Ely. Talking to the Guardian Mark Drakeford compared the unrest witnessed in Ely to the bread riots in 1991.
He said: "It’s 13 years of the erosion, the systematic erosion, of the things that sustain community life. You fray social fabric at your peril and we see what happened on Monday.”
Mr Drakeford represents the Ely area within his Cardiff West constituency as an MS and was working as a youth justice worker in the early 1990s. Meeting community leaders in Ely ahead of a vigil in memory of best friends Kyrees Sullivan, 16, and Harvey Evans, 15, he admitted that the Labour-led Welsh government and Cardiff council had questions to answer about how they were supporting the area.
Around 1,000 people gathered on Friday night at the spot where the two teenagers died after the electric bike they were on – which was an early birthday present for Harvey ahead of his 16th next month – was followed by a police van. The boys' deaths sparked hours of violence and vandalism after word spread on social media that a marked police van had been following the pair minutes before the crash. Nine people between the ages of 15 and 21 were arrested following the disorder. CCTV has since confirmed police were following the teenagers despite South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael having dismissed chase reports as "rumour". Here's our report setting out the unanswered questions.
Mourners carried blue and white balloons or wore white T-shirts with the faces of Kyrees and Harvey printed on them on Friday evening. Fireworks and blue and orange flares were set off to loud applause as well as heart-shaped balloons.
Mr Drakeford accused the UK Government of creating the poor social conditions that formed the backdrop to the riots by systematically eroding community life, public services, and citizens’ incomes. He told the Guardian that what had happened was “deeply, deeply distressing”. He said: "First of all, and foremost, of course, for those young men who lost their lives and for their families and their friends. It’s hard to imagine what they will be experiencing.
“But also I feel desperately sad for that wider community of Ely, which is full of absolutely decent hardworking people who ask nothing more than to go about their lives peacefully. And for them the reputational damage that is done to the area by these sorts of events it’s just a huge weight on their shoulders.”
He added, however, that the rioters needed to be accountable. “There are people whose own behaviours were absolutely indefensible,” he said. “They must be held accountable for it and there may have been some service failures on the night – we will learn about that when the independent investigation is concluded.”
Asked if his government should have been doing more for Ely he said: “I think all layers of government and all aspects of government are right to look at themselves in the mirror and ask exactly that question. So we will certainly be doing that as a Welsh Government.”
The First Minister worked as a probation officer, youth justice worker, and Barnardo’s project leader in the Ely and Caerau areas before he entered politics. He was working in the area when the Ely bread riots of 1991 took place – unrest said to have started with a dispute between two shopkeepers – and believes he's seen it before.
He added: “I know it just takes years to recover from these sorts of events. Fundamentally it seems to me the difficulties of 1991 happened 13 years into a Conservative government and here we are, by chance as much as anything else, 13 years into a Conservative government again. What is common between them is that it’s 13 years of the erosion, the systematic erosion, of the things that sustain community life.
“Many people in Ely will rely on social security benefits for their weekly income. They have been systematically eroded over the last 13 years. People have less and less to live on and they see their bills going up every day. The struggle is not theoretical for those people – it’s something that matters and bites into their lives every single day of the week.
“And the public services that are there to try to help them through all of that have had 13 years of budgets reducing every single year as well. So I don’t think you can understand what happened in Ely without understanding that sort of fundamental background cause.”
Police said they were continuing to investigate both the crash and the riot which followed. The Independent Office for Police Conduct has launched an independent investigation and on Friday outlined four key points in the inquiry.
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