The Ely Riots

Kyrees and Harvey: Two Ely boys failed by South Wales Police

If you’ve been watching the news recently, you will see the outpouring of condemnation of recent riots in Ely a district in Cardiff, Wales. What seems to have become a side note in this story is the fact that two young boys have died and that the local police have been caught muddying the waters and distorting the truth over the issue.

On the afternoon of Monday May 22^nd Kyrees Sullivan (aged 16) and Harvey Evans (aged 15) died in a collision on Snowdon Road, Ely. The two boys were riding an electric bicycle through the narrow pre-World War II streets. These old streets are made even narrower by the larger modern cars parked outside most of the houses which line them – any sort of speed can become dangerous, especially if you’re an inexperienced rider being pursued into riding faster.

Shortly after the collision and with emergency services arriving at the scene, a crowd began to form nearby. Rumours spread quickly via social media that the boys were being pursued by police prior to the collision and it was assumed that this chase led to the boys losing control of their bicycle and subsequently crashing. As the crowds grew, apparently to between one hundred and one hundred and fifty people, police cordoned off the site of the accident. They even prevented the parents from being with their sons in their last moments.

Police and Crime Commissioner and former Welsh Labour Leader Alun Michaels defended local police, saying that they were not chasing the boys. The Guardian and Wales online both defended this position, blaming social media for spreading disinformation. Shortly afterwards, a video appeared on social media, refuting the police’s claims. This video showed the boys riding down Frank Road (leading onto Snowdon Road) at 5.59pm, closely followed by a police van (a vehicle prohibited for pursuits).

At 6:03pm, emergency services were called to attend the scene of an accident on Snowdon Road. After this video emerged, the police’s position altered, and that “No police vehicle was on Snowdon road at the time of the accident.”, an intentionally ambiguous statement. Very worthy of a politician such as Michaels (A Blairite Drone – Alexander Mckay).

This is not the first time Michaels has blindly defended his police force in spite of the facts. Following a riot in another working-class Welsh area, this time in Mayhill, Swansea, Michaels refused to blame the wholly inadequate police response to that incident. Before he became Police and Crime Commissioner, he was the Welsh Labour Leader for a mere nine months, jumping before he was pushed. A rumoured vote of no confidence against him prompted him to hand in his notice.

Michaels’ tenure as Police and Crime Commissioner has not been free of controversy, either.

He was accused of being “invisible” by former police sergeant Mike Baker and of cronyism by Judith Woodman, leader of the LibDem Welsh opposition for employing his Labour colleagues into high wage deputy positions. She said on these appointments:

“These rather secretive appointments by Labour’s Police and Crime Commissioner just months from an election quite frankly stink.

“The people of South Wales can now figure out why they’re paying 5% more for their police services than last year: so Labour can blow the money on employing rejected Assembly candidates and other party members.”

The media’s focus is on the rioting which followed the collision, rather than the incident in which two young boys from a poor working class area who lost their lives. A media-orchestrated campaign has taken place to shift blame away from the police and onto the working-class inhabitants of Ely, making an extremely tenuous link with the Ely ‘Bread Riots’ in 1991, where a dispute between two shopkeepers escalated into rioting, to make the inference that the people of Ely are pre-disposed to mass disorder.

Ely’s community is both close-knit and working class, as can be seen from the response to the boys’ deaths. Ely has a dense and poor population –  more then 14,000 live people in the district, with 59.1% of its population eligible for free school meals. The metric of how many families are eligible for free school meals is an accurate barometer for levels of deprivation in an area. Ely is among the top 10% most deprived areas in Wales.

Labour MP Kevan Brennan said on Tuesday that it was “highly unfortunate” that the information initially provided by the police appears not to be correct. It is obvious that South Wales Police have an institutional disdain for the people that they are there to serve, much like the British establishment has for the entire working class. Since the tragedy on 22nd May, the police have demonstrated that they felt they could act with complete impunity and, in Alun Michaels, they have the perfect spokesperson.

The Class Consciousness Project offers its deepest condolences to the families of Kyrees Sullivan and Harvey Evans and lends its support to the entire community of Ely for again being treated as second class citizens. Events such as those which have unfolded in Ely demonstrate that there is clearly a “Them and Us” divide in this country. We need to understand that servants of the establishment will never act in our interests. We need to force their hand as the good working-class people of Ely did.