Dozens of shops ransacked and Miss Selfridge store set alight as masked gangs in Manchester wage battles with police Central Manchester and Salford saw serious looting and disorder as gangs waged running battles with police, ransacking dozens of shops. Similar, if less widespread, trouble flared in Birmingham and elsewhere in the West Midlands. The most serious disorder came in Manchester. Groups of young people consistently evaded police attempts to stop them from the late afternoon onwards, breaking into a series of upmarket shops and setting a branch of the Miss Selfridge clothing chain ablaze. As evening fell, up to 200 youths raided an off-licence and other shops in the main shopping precinct of Salford, a couple of miles to the west. The violence ebbed in Manchester city centre around midnight and police regained control. One of the few remaining signs of trouble was a gang of masked youths looting a branch of Jessops on the corner of Albert Square, beside Manchester town hall. The gang had posted a lookout and scattered as a police van swept past with blue lights flashing, then went back into the store a moment later. A woman who walked past shouted, “Disgraceful” at the gang. Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan of Greater Manchester police said Manchester and Salford had been badly damaged. “These are pure and simple criminals running wild tonight,” Shewan said. “They have nothing to protest against. There has been no spark. This has been senseless on a scale I have never witnessed before in my career.” By midnight police had made 47 arrests in Manchester and Salford. One suspected looter turned himself in after seeing his picture on Facebook, police said. Shewan said Manchester and Salford had been shamed by the criminals committing “wanton acts of violence and criminality”. Earlier in the day Greater Manchester police sent 100 officers – four public order units – to assist in London. While Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, who organised the reinforcements, said such assistance had been planned to ensure other forces could cope with violence in their own areas, it was clear that the city could have used the extra officers. Masked gangs in central Manchester’s New Cathedral Street targeted a series of high-end outlets, among them Louis Vuitton, Selfridges, and Harvey Nichols. In nearby King Street, a branch of the clothes store Diesel had its windows smashed. Some looters were seen carrying away window dummies. Cheers went up as the crowd broke through the front window of a Bang & Olufsen store. Two looters carried away a widescreen TV. Another shop seen ransacked was Pretty Green, a fashion boutique set up last year by the former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher. Several hundred young people, many masked or wearing hoods, baited riot police before trying to storm the entrance of the huge Arndale shopping centre on Market Street. It was then that the branch of Miss Selfridge was set alight. As police brought in more riot squads and vans, later backed up by officers on horseback, the looting moved to the upmarket St Ann’s Square area, targeting a T-Mobile store, Links jewellery store, and a branch of Starbucks. The mood turned tense, with rioters threatening photographers and journalists. There was a melee as the crowd turned its attention to the Swarovski crystal shop on St Ann’s Square. Three cars carrying plainclothes police drove up and the officers waded in using batons. Youths were wrestled to the ground; one appeared to have an injured leg as he lay among the broken glass. The police were then forced to guard their prisoners – and themselves – from a screaming crowd of rioters. One young bystander said the violence was because young people felt they had no voice. “Things are really hard at the moment; there is a lot of frustration and tension. This is our way of making a point in as direct as way as possible. People don’t believe the government anymore since the Iraq war. Now, because of the internet, they are able to think for themselves. This is a response to their frustration.” As night fell the crowds moved on again, looting other stores including a branch of Sainsbury’s, with rioters openly carrying away bottles of alcohol and bags of groceries. Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, which includes parts of both Salford and Manchester, was heavily critical of police for not being better prepared. He said: “It was known that this was coming to Salford and Manchester, and now shops have been looted and set on fire. Businesses have been seriously damaged. There are a lot of questions that the chief constable needs to answer. The police need to get control of the streets, which they have failed to do. “This was predicted. The police knew it was coming. It was co-ordinated and organised by well-known criminals and gangsters. They were taking the opportunity because of the publicity. It wasn’t spontaneous, it was organised.” The trouble in Birmingham was sustained, if slightly less serious than that experienced in the city on Monday night, although West Midlands police said an officer believed he had heard a shot in Aston outside the city centre. It was not clear if it was linked to the rioting. A police firearms team was despatched to investigate. West Midlands police said they had arrested 80 people as a number of shops were looted and cars set alight. In central Birmingham a mob of up to 300 youths gathered, dispersed and regrouped, attacking shops. Chased by police, groups tried to get into the Mailbox shopping and office centre near the city’s rejuvenated canal basin, and the Pallisades shopping complex above New Street station before staff brought shutters down. Windows were damaged at a Marks & Spencer and a car was set on fire in Albert Street by a large gang. House of Fraser was attacked along with a nearby jewellery shop before a line of riot police with batons drove the crowd away. Riot police cornered 60 youths in part of Wolverhampton after five hours of sporadic violence that left the town centre empty of residents and visitors, with shops shuttered and pubs closing early. Two vehicles were set ablaze in West Bromwich as large crowds gathered in the town centre. West Midlands police said the force’s officers had been “managing” several groups of people causing trouble. A spokeswoman said: “Police have been dealing with disorder in Birmingham city centre, Wolverhampton city centre and West Bromwich town centre. The disorder has been on a smaller scale today than was seen on Monday evening in Birmingham, and police have been working throughout the afternoon and evening to calm the situation and target the offenders in all three areas.” UK riots Manchester Birmingham Crime Police Martin Wainwright Sandra Laville Peter Walker Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
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US stock markets rally from worst crash in two years as government says it will keep interest rates near zero until 2013 Wall Street bounced back on Tuesday from the worst stock market crash in two years as the US government moved to halt the fall and pledged to keep interest rates near zero until 2013. It was another wild day on the US stock markets as share prices soared then fell then rose again. At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 430 points, or nearly 4%. It shot up more than 500 points in the last hour, the biggest one-day gain since 23 March 2009. The rally followed one of the worst days on world stock markets since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, setting off the financial crisis. Monday’s crash came as investors reacted to Standard & Poor’s decision to cut the US credit rating, a historic first that was slammed by the White House. The rally came as the US Federal Reserve said it was prepared to step in should growth and unemployment continue to weaken over the coming months. Unemployment remains above 9% in the US. In a statement the Fed said: “Economic growth this year has been considerably slower than expected.” Earlier, London’s FTSE 100 shrugged off the riots and rose for the first time in eight days in anticipation that the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, would propose measures to prevent the US economy sliding back into recession. The swings in share prices on Wall Street mirrored wild gyrations in the FTSE earlier in the day, which saw the City’s main share index down more than 250 points during the morning before rallying to finish up 96 at 5165 points. The rise meant that the FTSE avoided falling for eight consecutive days in a row for the first time since the build up to the invasion of Iraq in early 2003. European shares ended broadly higher, halting a 20% dive over the previous two and a half weeks. Bernanke stopped short of committing to a third round of quantitative easing, the process of electronic money creation that has pumped $2tn (£1.2tn) into the US banking system over the past two and a half years. The Fed said it expected “a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters than it did at the time of the previous meeting” and anticipated that a jobless rate of about 9% would decline only gradually towards the level judged by the central bank to be consistent with keeping inflation low and employment high. It added that economic conditions were “likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013″, and had looked at a range of policy tools to promote a stronger low-inflation recovery. These would be employed “as appropriate” in the light of fresh information on the economy. Previously, the Fed had said it would keep borrowing costs low for an “extended period” but the commitment to maintain them at an exceptionally low level led to three members of the policy-making open market committee dissenting from the decision, the first time this has happened for almost 20 years. Cary Leahey, managing director and senior economist at Decision Economics in New York, said: “This is a lame way for the Fed to try to help the marketplace. They redefined extended period to mean at least mid-2013. But to today’s marketplace, what difference does it make if they tighten in 2012 or 2013?” On the foreign exchanges, the dollar lost 4% of its value against the Swiss franc, while the price of another safe haven – gold – was trading at a new record high. Bullion has gained about 13% since the end of June and peaked at a session high of $1,778.29 in New York before the Fed announcement. The price of oil slumped in the New York futures markets as dealers anticipated lower demand from a stuttering US economy. The prospect of low growth also drove interest rates on US bonds lower. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bill dropped to 2.27% compared to 2.34% at the start of the day. US economy US Interest rates Economics US unemployment and employment data Interest rates Dow Jones Stock markets Quantitative easing Ben Bernanke Commodities United States Dominic Rushe Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
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