I took a stall in a Village Fair weekend event in Brockwell Park in the early 1980's, booked up well in advance and then a week before the actual date the riots broke out, they didn't call off the event and not knowing how far Brockwell park was from the actual rioting, we went.
It was a great weekend though I do not remember doing much business, from one place in the park we could look down the street and see all the burnt out cars and buildings, but the atmosphere between all sections of the community was very friendly.
There was one instance when a local gang started to work on a jewelry stand, owned by a young couple, we were in the next stall and having worked antique fairs for some time I recognised the 'modus operandi' and got a few other stalls holders to mark the opposition players. We were all country lads and were not going to take any nonsense from city scruffs.
When they realised that their game was sussed, one kid, all hyped up with attitude, slouched off calling out "Whitey's onto us", Policeman came up to me shortly after and said they had their eye on us but saw how we contained the situation and did not want to move in!!
Thing that stuck in my mind, newspapers at the time made out it was complete breakdown of race relations, but that gang was multi ethnic and the bit of business I did do got me into a very multi cultural situation.
Interesting TR, sparked off flash backs