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Wood End (also known as Woodend) is an area in the north of the city of Coventry, England. Wood End is surrounded by the districts of Bell Green, Alderman's Green, Potters Green and Henley Green.
To the south of Wood End is the Manor Farm estate, which along with Henley Green and Deedmore, make up the four areas marked for redevelopment in the New Deal for Communities programme. [1] Along with Walsgrave and Potters Green, these six areas make up the Henley ward. [1]
Wood End was built by the city council in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to rehouse families from inner-city slum clearances as well as people moving into the city to work in the city's then-booming car industry. However, by the 1980s, Wood End was soon recognised the as the district of Coventry with the worst level of social and economic deprivation, with some of the city's highest rates of crime and unemployment. Some £34million was invested on improving the estate between 1987 and 2002, with many homes being refurbished and some being demolished, as well as new community projects being launched, but crime rates remained high and Wood End was unable to shake-off its unwanted reputation. [2]
Many of the homes are now owned by the Whitefriars Housing Group, a housing trust which took over the running and management of Coventry's council houses in 2000. In 2024 time 19,000 homes are to be owned by Citizen Housing Group for Coventry's council houseś.
In April 2004, it was announced that Wood End, along with three other neighbouring districts, was to be extensively redeveloped. The outline plans stated that a large percentage of the estate's homes would be demolished and replaced with new homes to which existing tenants would be entitled to live. [3]
It was reported on the 6 July 2006 Coventry Evening Telegraph that the Severn Trent water company had revealed that the Wood End area is inaccessible without a police escort, even for emergencies, due to earlier attacks on employees. It was also revealed that Wood End is the only estate in the region which has a danger warning especially on Yewdale Crescent which is usually home to a serious issue of Wood End drug dealing and unfriendly behaviour. ; [4] [5] there has been civil unrest on several occasions.
On 12 May 1992, a wave of rioting which persisted for several days began in Wood End. Gangs of youths hurled petrol bombs at riot police after a crackdown on local youths using scrambler bikes. Passing vehicles were stoned, and nearby Wyken Infants School was badly damaged in an arson attack. The following night, 16 people were arrested after police were targeted with bricks and petrol bombs in a disturbance outside 'The Live & Let Live' public house. The rioting then spread to the Willenhall district in the south-east of the city. The third night of disturbances in Wood End saw rioters rip metal shutters from the frontage of a newsagents. On the fourth night, the rioters turned their attention to firefighters, who found themselves being stoned by a gangs of youths, while further disturbances in the Willenhall district saw police being targeted by missiles thrown from upstairs windows and balconies of flats. The rioting ceased on 17 May. Newly-elected local Labour MP Bob Ainsworth condemned the violence, but was keen to highlight that it was almost inevitable due to the lack of opportunities available in the area, particularly unemployment which stood at around 25% locally, as well as family breakdown, poverty and child neglect. Witnesses even reported seeing middle-aged men cheering on the mostly teenage rioters as they rampaged and attacked the police. Other residents blamed the local police for their "harassment" of local youths, and defended the estate's reputation by praising its supposedly strong sense of community. [6]
On 18 June 2009, around 30 people set fire to rubbish and debris around Ashorne Close and then threw missiles at police and firefighters. [7]
The 1981 Brixton riot, or Brixton uprising, was a series of clashes between mainly black youths and the Metropolitan Police in Brixton, London, between 10 and 12 April 1981. It resulted from racist discrimination against the black community by the mainly white police, especially the police's increased use of stop-and-search in the area, and ongoing tensions resulting from the deaths of 13 black teenagers and young adults in the suspicious New Cross house fire that January. The main riot on 11 April, dubbed "Bloody Saturday" by Time magazine, resulted in 279 injuries to police and 45 injuries to members of the public; over a hundred vehicles were burned, including 56 police vehicles; almost 150 buildings were damaged, thirty of which were burnt out, and many shops were looted. There were 82 arrests. Reports suggested that up to 5,000 people were involved. The Brixton riot was followed by similar riots in July in many other English cities and towns. The Thatcher government commissioned an inquiry, which resulted in the Scarman Report.
The Battle of the Bogside was a large three-day riot that took place from 12 to 14 August 1969 in Derry, Northern Ireland. Thousands of Catholic/Irish nationalist residents of the Bogside district, organised under the Derry Citizens' Defence Association, clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and loyalists. It sparked widespread violence elsewhere in Northern Ireland, led to the deployment of British troops, and is often seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles.
The Broadwater Farm riot occurred on the Broadwater council estate in Tottenham, North London, on 6 October 1985.
Keith Henry Blakelock QGM, a London Metropolitan Police constable, was murdered on 6 October 1985 during the Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham, north London. The riot broke out after Cynthia Jarrett died of heart failure during a police search of her home, and took place against a backdrop of unrest in several English cities and a breakdown of relations between the police and some people in the Black community.
Broadwater Farm, often referred to simply as "The Farm", is an area in Tottenham, North London, straddling the River Moselle. The eastern half of the area is dominated by the Broadwater Farm Estate ("BWFE"), an experiment in high-density social housing, loosely based on Corbusian ideas, dominated by concrete towers connected by walkways, built in the late 1960s using cheap but fire-vulnerable pre-fabricated concrete panels. The western half of the area is taken up by Lordship Recreation Ground, one of north London's largest parks. Broadwater Farm in 2011 had a population of 4,844. The estate is owned by Haringey London Borough Council.
The Toxteth riots of July 1981 were a civil disturbance in Toxteth, inner-city Liverpool, which arose in part from long-standing tensions between the local police and the black community. They followed the Brixton riot earlier that year and were part of the 1981 England riots.
The Oldham riots were a brief period of violent rioting which occurred in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester, England, in May 2001. They were ethnically-motivated riots and the worst riots in the United Kingdom since 1990.
The St Pauls riot occurred in St Pauls, Bristol, England on 2 April 1980 when police raided the Black and White Café on Grosvenor Road in the heart of the area. After several hours of disturbance in which fire engines and police cars were damaged, 130 people were arrested, 25 were taken to hospital, including 19 police and members of the press.
Willenhall is a suburb of Coventry, in the county of the West Midlands, England.
During 12–16 August 1969, there was an outbreak of political and sectarian violence throughout Northern Ireland, which is often seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles. There had been sporadic violence throughout the year arising out of the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign, which demanded an end to discrimination against Catholics and Irish nationalists. Civil rights marches had been attacked by Protestant loyalists, and protesters often clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the overwhelmingly Protestant police force.
Henley Green is a former council estate in Coventry at grid reference SP366815 adjacent to Wood End, bordered by Deedmore Road, and about a mile from the area of Bell Green. Henley Green now consists of a mixture of private and social housing. The neighbourhood is part of the Henley ward.
In April and July 1981, there were riots in several cities and towns in England. The riots mainly involved black English youth clashing with police. They were caused by tension between black people and the police, especially perceived racist discrimination against black people through increased use of stop-and-search, and were also fuelled by inner-city deprivation. The most serious riots were the April Brixton riots in London, followed in July by the Toxteth riots in Liverpool, the Handsworth riots in Birmingham, the Chapeltown riots in Leeds, and the Moss Side riots in Manchester. There were also a series of less serious riots in other towns and cities. As a result of the riots, the government commissioned the Scarman Report.
From 6 to 11 July 1997 there were mass protests, fierce riots and gun battles in Irish nationalist districts of Northern Ireland. Irish nationalists/republicans, in some cases supported by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), attacked the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army. The protests and violence were sparked by the decision to allow the Orange Order to march through a Catholic/nationalist neighbourhood of Portadown. Irish nationalists were outraged by the decision and by the RUC's aggressive treatment of those protesting against the march. There had been a bitter dispute over the march for many years.
In early August 2011, England was struck by riots, the worst in the country in decades. The timeline of the events of the riots spanned from 6–10 August.
On 3 December 2012, Belfast City Council voted to limit the days that the Union Flag flies from Belfast City Hall. Since 1906, the flag had been flown every day of the year. This was reduced to 18 specific days a year, the minimum requirement for UK government buildings. The move to limit the number of days was backed by the council's Irish nationalists while the Alliance Party abstained from the vote; it was opposed by the unionist councillors.
On 19 May 2013, violent disturbances broke out in Husby, a suburb dominated by immigrants and second-generation immigrant residents, including a substantial number from Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq, in northern Stockholm, Sweden. The riots were reportedly in response to the shooting to death by police of an elderly man, reportedly a Portuguese expatriate, armed with a puukko knife, after entering his apartment and then allegedly trying to cover up the man's death.
The 2010 Northern Ireland riots were riots and civil disturbance in Northern Ireland in July 2010, orchestrated by Irish republicans.
Large civil disorder broke out in north Belfast, Northern Ireland on Sunday 11 November 2001. The trouble started when republicans clashed with loyalists during a Remembrance Day service. Up to 400 Protestants and Catholics were involved in rioting in the afternoon on North Queen Street.
A series of riots in loyalist areas of Northern Ireland began in Waterside, Derry, on 30 March 2021. After four nights of rioting in Derry, disturbances spread to south Belfast on 2 April, where a loyalist protest developed into a riot involving iron bars, bricks, masonry and petrol bombs. Following this, civil unrest spread to Newtownabbey on 3 April, where cars were hijacked and burnt, and petrol bombs were also used against police. Carrickfergus in southern County Antrim also saw serious civil unrest on the night of 4 April and morning of 5 April, where loyalists created roadblocks to keep police out of local estates and threw petrol bombs at police vehicles.