Messages on broken windows reveal Londoners' love and hate

In riot-hit London, locals have started leaving messages on the boarded-up shop windows, voicing their opinions on the looting, arson and vandalism that has rocked their neighbourhoods. For some it's a form a group therapy, venting their emotions and reaffirming their faith in their district, while others shrug at the "hypocrisy" of "white liberals" for their part in it. One such board has become the focal point for messages in Clapham Junction, an area named after Britain's busiest railway station, which is often sold in glossy property magazines as the heart of south London's "nappy valley". While mothers with strollers normally fill the streets, Monday night saw feral mobs running amok, looting shops, torching buildings in an orgy of violence. Hundreds of messages have been scrawled on a board put up over one shattered shop window. They range from anger at the looters: "Rot in hell, bastards", "Looters should be lined up and shot"; peace and love: "Let there be light", "I love Clapham Junction", and soul-searching: "These are our children. Ask the question: what have we done wrong?" Peckham, a few miles eastwards across south London, is a much poorer and more multi-ethnic neighbourhood. There, the colourful sticky notes left on a board covering another smashed window have a more pacifist tone -- "Peace", "Peckham is love", "Think of other people before you do any harm" -- and a more political one: "More education for children, less cuts". "My message is that we love Peckham," said 21-year-old Assad Yousifzi, who fled the war in Afghanistan to live here. "It's our home, we just want peace. Hopefully this will bring peace and love." He branded the rioters as "looters and thieves... people from here, young people, 17, 18 years old". Yousifzi put the unrest down to racism. "When I go the mosque with my prayer hat on my head, people stare at me in the street as if I was a terrorist," he said. Mike Uyi, president of the Nigerian non-governmental organisation Global Peace Movement, said: "Everybody has the right to protest, but nobody has the right of violence, stealing, beating up anybody. This is purely criminality." Marc Wadsworth, who runs the www.the-latest.com "citizen journalism for all" website, seemed dismayed as he looked at the growing wall of notes. "It's a feel-good for white people who are part of the problem, and not part of the solution," he said, taking a swipe at "hug-a-hoodie, politically-correct liberalism". "I don't want a group therapy, I want justice. Black and poor people must get a fair piece of the economical pie," he said, otherwise "it will happen again. It's like a volcano." He said the causes were clear: racism, poverty, and police stop-and-search tactics which he said were 29 times more likely to affect blacks than whites. Michael, a security guard at a neighbouring shop, said the board was a wall of "shitty white liberalism". "People come here, make comments about something they don't understand," he said. "It's a picture of an ideal Peckham, mostly people who put a message here haven't spoken to a stranger in the past year. Hypocrisy!" An elderly white lady walking with her grandson in a pushchair listens in. "If they want to kill and burn, send them to Afghanistan or Iraq!" she says. Tracy Cahoon, from Northern Ireland, has no sympathy for the rioters but understands where they are coming from. "Kids have got nothing here. They're fighting for something, but they probably don't even know for what," she said. "There are no jobs, no community centres to keep children happy, teach them art, culture. We always had community centres in Ireland, and we avoided a lot of problems. "It's not like they're evil, crazy devils, they're human beings! "It's summertime, they've got no money to go on holidays. There is anger, frustration among the kids." "I come here and I see all this," she says, clearly moved. "I have a lot of empathy".