Then Came the Looting

A Riot Tick-tock, pt 2

2.15 - Shouts of "they're going to the Dail" start to be heard among the crowd, coming from near O'Connell Bridge. Most of the most energetic and most of the people wearing any kind of green colour scheme start heading off, some at a run, southwards. Garda vans start taking off at speed down side streets.

2.27 - First window is broken in the Schuh outlet on O'Connell Street. I hold up camera over the crowd and take some snaps. These aren't political types to say the least. Most of them are teens.

Within two minutes I'm approached by one 6'3" early 30s man with plenty of veins broken in his face, then another smaller version, hoods up on both, and threatened for using a camera. [Given the number of cameras and camera phones being used to snap pics of the looting, I can only guess that the reporters' notebook might have made me stand out a bit. Plus I wasn't wearing a tracksuit.]

No hero me (first child coming in two weeks) I walk about 10 metres away and put the camera away. I'm followed by the same pair. I'm told if I don't fuck off right then I'll have my eye put out and fingers broken. "Then let's see how you can use that camera." "And put that fucking pen away", adds a third from behind me. "Right, I'm taking that camera," says the big one.

"You can try", I offer with all the fake bravado I can muster, because at this point they're following me and showing no signs of taking my retreat for an answer. "You're going to thump a reporter in front of 50 witnesses, half of em with cameras in their phone?"

They look confused. They head back towards Schuh, which is undergoing a stock clearance, as is the Foot Locker next door, with sports bags, trainers. White T-shirts, then black ones, are tossed into the crowd by the handful.

2.55 - Heading up towards Leinster House. Two Garda vans are parked on the traffic island in front of the Screen, next to Pearse Street Garda Station. One van's windscreen has a sign's base through it, clearly done after the van was parked here. People are queueing up to have their picture taken in front of it. At least 20 stop to take pics with their mobile phones.

3pm - Walking along Trinity's fence south by College Green, a crowd of tourists suddenly come running out of Nassau Street. A garda van screeches past them. Someone throws a bottle at the passing van. A line of gardai walk abreast of the street, moving toward Molly Malone.

Behind them are two lines of police. The riot unit in front, a line of horse-mounted gardai behind them. In between a pack of Alsatian dogs, whining at an eerie pitch. Maybe it's the smoke from the burning car behind them, past the Kilkenny shop. It's surreal.

It's also weirdly recreational and festive. It's like the night after an Apprentice Boys march in Derry when I was there in 1998. The daytime disorder in the Diamond was this odd bit of theatre with rocks and bottles, but little else, and the cops just took it. Later that night, though, kids set fire to a Kentucky Fried Chicken of all things - that great symbol of British imperialism - and tried to burn down a bank branch. And looted neighbourhood shops - most of them owned by Catholics. But I suppose it didn't, and doesn't, have to make sense.