It had never occurred to me that a riot was a community, but it is. It is a spontaneous, weirdly self-organising thing that is, within certain very specific and obvious limits, kindly and helpful. In the middle are a lot of women, rioting mothers with their sons and husbands. It’s not that they don’t throw things or break things, but they keep an eye on their loved ones and they settle disputes over who has a claim on bits of looted property. Where the men would fight, the women scream and negotiate and tug, and somehow some sort of consensus emerges and debts are acknowledged and the thing is settled without the mob turning in on itself. When we meet the police, though, the mothers become Furies. One grey old woman lunges through to the front lines, hands outstretched and clawing, rips the Lexan visor from the face of the nearest one and tears a piece out of his cheek, has to be pulled away before his mates can bring her down. She’s shouting something about bloody bastards, bastards, bastards. "Her son died in custody," another woman tells me.