Gang Wars of Tottenham

Tottenham Hotspur’s Brad Friedel looks on as a cat invades the pitch

It was dangerously close to midnight and we were driving through Tottenham. My cousin needed a lift home after football. As we passed one of the area’s most notorious parks, my cousin reminded me of the latest incidence of gang violence that took place in Tottenham. I am already somewhat familiar with Tottenham’s reputation for gang violence. The London Riots; Mark Duggan; those miscreants that stole my bike in year seven and my phone a year later. Not too long ago Britain saw one of its most infamous riots on these very streets; proving that gang violence is alive and well in North London. I felt relieved that my cousin was not made to bus it home all the way from Walthamstow that night.

My encounters with the sinister underbelly of this part of North London are scarce but noteworthy nonetheless. One warm evening in August long ago, I was staying the night at my cousin’s house (same cousin, different house) when we saw two adolescents in tracksuit bottoms and nike t-shirts trick-or-treating in broad daylight. Halloween was weeks away! Far from hilarious pranksters, these young men went about their expedition with great seriousness and determination. They were greeted with looks of utter bewilderment and genuine fear by those opening their doors. One nonplussed neighbour actually handed the boys a pack of Chewits.

I recall one occasion in which me and my friends got caught in the middle of a fisticuffs between Turkish and Afro-Carabean gangs at a five aside football tournament. There were knives and police sirens. All the Asian lads ran home before we got the chance to see anything too dramatic. A more recent incident brought to my attention involved a group of teenagers shooting their BB guns at my cousin and his friend playing cricket in the local park. (It wasn’t as serious as it sounds.)

With past encounters running through my head, we parked up on my cousin’s road. We unlocked the doors momentarily to let my cousin out but our attention was caught by a tabby cat and his ginger playmate. The cute underbelly of a not-so-dangerous North London neighbourhood? On closer inspection, the cats were aggressively facing up to each other.  There was a black & white cat looking on. They were trying desperately hard not to get distracted by the bright headlights of the car. We looked on intrigued and only slightly frightened. We seemed to have disturbed their late night rendezvous but the cats remained stubbornly in place, each one waiting for the other to flinch first. This was not a cordial meet up between two friendly felines. Tails erect, backs arched, fur raised along the spine – signs the ailurophile would identify with readiness to fight. We saw another dark-coloured cat in the distance rushing off home early (like I did years earlier at the football tournament). There were several others ominously lurking in the dark.

It was the closest I’d come to gang violence in a long while and I felt like Ross Kemp in Gang Wars.