Seven police were injured – one seriously – as violence erupted at a street party to ‘celebrate’ the death of Baroness Thatcher.
Trouble flared after midnight when a rowdy 200-strong crowd refused police requests to disperse from Easton, Bristol.
Dozens of officers donned riot gear and used shields and batons as they were pelted with bottles, cans and rubbish.
Wheelie bins were set on fire by the mob and a police car was damaged by the flying missiles.
Some of the injured police needed hospital treatment and one male officer was still detained today with a neck injury.
One man was arrested for violent disorder and it took police more than two hours to restore calm.
It was not until 3am that most of the police units sent to the scene were stood down.
The party had started outside the Chelsea Inn in Easton, which is one of Bristol’s poorest and multi-cultural neighbourhoods.
The air was thick with cannabis smoke as revellers toasted the death of the Iron Lady, chanting; “Maggie Thatcher, Maggie Thatcher, she’s not living anymore. She’s not living anymore.”
Some people drank champagne while others walked around in Thatcher masks and one man dressed up as the former PM.
Sound systems were set up in the street to fuel the party atmosphere and the trouble broke out when police tried to stop the music.
Unemployed Julian Styles, 58, who was made redundant from his factory job in 1984, said: “I’ve been waiting for that witch to die for 30 years.
“Tonight is party time. I’m drinking one drink for every year I’ve been out of work.”
Police Chief Inspector Mark Jackson said: “It seemed to be a street party which people had pulled together in relation to the death of Baroness Thatcher.
“It occurred during the evening and was just a normal peaceful party but at about half past ten it expanded somewhat and there was 150 to 200 people gathered in the street.
“They had set fire to bins and had loud music playing and were being generally quite unruly.
“As you can imagine, the local residents were quite upset by this and wanted something done about it.
“They were asked by officers to end the party and turn the music off but that unfortunately just led to hostilities and officers were pelted with bottles and cans.
“So far it appears seven officers were injured. One of them is still in hospital receiving treatment.”
Officers were back at the scene this morning carrying out house-to-house inquiries and examining CCTV footage of the unrest.
Avon & Somerset police said they had been alerted to the party beforehand and put sufficient resources in place to monitor it.
A spokeswoman said: “We had a sizeable presence to keep an eye on the event and no reinforcements were needed.
“The incident continued for more than a couple of hours but it was dealt with by the officers already there.”
One local resident said around 50 police in riot gear were called to quell the hostilities.
The 42 year-old, who asked not to be named, said: “I was trying to drive home around 10.30 when I found the road blocked.
“A crowd of people had pulled loads of industrial bins across the road to block it off.
“There was an awful lot of noise, music was blaring out and there was dancing in one area and people were shouting slogans.
“There were some fireworks and others were still arriving in camper vans and it was all good-natured at that point.
“But around midnight it started to get louder and louder as people drank more and more.
“I’d already seen one fire in a litter bin and I saw another on the pavement.
“I’d tried to go to bed but there was no way I was going to be able to sleep so I put my jeans on and went outside to see what was happening.
“By this time a line of riot police with full shields had formed at the bottom of the road.
“There was a load of partygoers confronting them and throwing things at them – bottles, bins, For Sale signs, flower pots, plastic pallets – anything they could get their hands on.
“The police just stood and took it all and another police line was formed on the other side of the crowd.
“The two lines started slowly moving together to corral the crowd and very slowly people started to leave.
“Things didn’t really quieten down until 3 or 3.30am and there was glass everywhere – the place was left in a real mess.”
what a bunch of idiots. Normal druggy, piss head scum !
i think you are missing the point, freedom of speech. just goes to show how much the women was dispised by normal working class people.
this behaviour is not normal though…. and goes to show what the youth of today think is acceptable behaviour. This all makes the majoriy look like thugs who do what they want and when they want … im 21 and think that this is discussing, she didn’t kill anyone so why the “party” . It also makes my Geniration look bad
She killed lots of people and your inability to spell makes your generation look bad
Learn to spell
just goes to show people dont forget what she did for the working class. f all.
^^ what a tosser!!
Thick scum. No matter what Government was or has been in power, one woman can’t make decisions on her own! And other Governments such as Labour – they have fixed anything that her Government did – no.
Most of those people are not even old enough to know who she is and were not ‘directly’ affected. And if the parents of those kids on the street were so poor, how come they had said children?
I can understand why people didn’t like her and why they are glad she is gone because she did cause a lot of damage in her time in office. Poll tax, privatising things, selling council houses and closing the mines but that does not give people the right to get drunk and destroy things especially a charity shop window. I am annoyed that taxpayers have to fund her funeral though.
Why are all the comments mentioning politics? Bristol has always had more than its fair share of ignorant people. Any excuse for a riot and causing mayhem, just wander around the city center any Fri/Sat night. Incidentally, I doubt drugs has anything to do with it. Uneducated parent(add an ‘s’ – if they are lucky) = lack of self determination, responsibility and work ethic. Funny, all the things Margaret Thatcher believed in… maybe they were politically motivated without even knowing it.
Poll tax = Was a mistake, but the idea was that everyone made (the same) contribution
Privatisation = Lead the world in this process the belief that competition leads to better standards and innovation. Result, world leading businesses (Rolls Royce, BT, British Airways). It works well provided consumers have a choice and can make rational choices (if you all choose to stay with the same bank even though they offer a bad service the system stops working – YES all of you who are still with Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, HBOS are in part to blame for the poorly functioning financial services sector). None of these banks has offered competitive products for years (except for short promotional periods to attract the weak and lazy).
Selling Council Houses = Result in mixing private and council tenants and giving people the chance to look after their own homes. Anyone who things this was a bad thing really needs to travel more.
Closing the mines = Really? you want British people working in those conditions in the 21st Century? You prefer burning coal to cleaner and safer nuclear power? Then you are an idiot who needs to read about the true consequences and death rates associated with mining NOW and compare them with nuclear power stations built NOW (don’t confuse poorly operated and designed nuclear power stations from the past). The only people who long for working down a coal mine are those who have never been in one.
Funeral Costs = £10million as a sign of respect to someone who quite literally saved this country (this is undeniable, whether she could have done it in another way is of course debatable). If you class this as a poor use of taxpayers money, you had better not look at this http://www.debtbombshell.com/
How many of the people who claim they are rioting because many coal mines closed would also complain if it was announced more coal fired power stations where going to be built?
Some bloke who has been unemployed for 30 years, blaming a woman who had not even been in power for the last 20. What stopped him getting a bucket, sponge and going round offering to clean people’s cars or windows? In the last 30 years, I have had no one knock on my door looking for work. In poor countries with high unemployment, you get people looking for work constantly.
If you have had 30 years with out work the one person to blame is the one you see in the mirror. You should be very grateful that other people have been prepared to work hard and pay taxed to keep you housed, fed, clothed, medically cared for, your children educated and everything else you take for granted.
If all these people who riot against Thatcher want to set the clock back to 1978, here are a few measures they can take.
1) Have your electricity cut off. Then you can experience the joy of constant power cuts we enjoyed before Mrs Thatcher
2) Give up internet and all your other fancy phones, and go back to a bakerlite model. Because if we still had a nationalised BT, that is all you would be allowed to use
3) Don’t put your bins out for collection, but just sit surrounded by piles of rubbish, just as we did through the bin strikes
4) Never send your children to school, that was you can reproduce the constant teachers strikes
5) Buy a classic car built by British Leyland in the union era, to remind yourself why our manufacturing suffered so much, when German factory production does so well. Its not Mrs Thatcher’s fault, it was a lot to do with unions more concerned with causing trouble than helping produce quality products. Sure management was to blame too. But not Mrs Thatcher.
She had her faults, but god knows what state we would have been in without her.
Those who want to use her death as an excuse to riot are just criminals who cannot accept responsibility for their own actions.
chelsea is a nice pub. this site seems like some sort of reactive daily mail bunch of nonsense…thatcher took my primary school milk! she was a patronising megalomaniac. all leaders are puppets for the increasing globalist agenda. media is not doing what it should do. it reports verbatim from dubious sources and bashes the poor for getting by. it does not investigate and report on the crimes being perpetrated by the “ruling classes”, the powers that should not be. the parasites.
i have a bakelite phone and work for bt. the phone works ok and i have fibre broadband. obviously the internet did not exist in 1978 and was only working at a primitive level as secret technology in the us at the time.
industrialists moved production overseas to increase profit with no thought to uk employees.
why is this woman always referred to as “mrs thatcher”? why is so much respect directed toward her. all politicians are liars and corrupt.
the system stinks and we are heading toward a globalist fascist state.