‘We got failed by the police’: how veterans of Leeds riots stepped in to defuse disorder

Nadsy Qurban bent his neck to show how the crown of his head was ­covered in a number of burns, each the size of coins. “The smell was like I’m burning some goat or something, like I’m cooking some goat. That’s how bad it was,” he said.

Needless to say, it hurt. But a week on, the burns he gained while putting out fires during unrest in the Harehills area of Leeds are ­starting to heal.

He was one of more than a dozen people, mostly Muslim men, who stepped in to de-escalate tensions on 18 July, when disorder was ­triggered by police and social ­services taking children from a Roma family into care.

A police car was flipped on its side, riot police were pelted with missiles and a double-decker bus was completely burnt out. But nobody was seriously injured, thanks to the efforts of members of the community.

For Qurban, the scenes were ­horrifyingly familiar. In 2001, he took part in violent unrest in which 26 cars were set ablaze, a flat was looted and a laundrette trashed. The Harehills riot , as it became known, started when police were accused of being heavy-handed in an ­altercation with a Muslim man over a suspicious tax disc.

The incident became a flashpoint for bubbling anger at the police, who it was felt were unfairly targeting working-class residents, particularly black and Asian men, in what was and still is one of the most deprived wards in the UK.

The ensuing clashes involved about 200 people, and a number of police officers and members of the public were injured.

A total of 25 young men from Harehills and further afield were imprisoned for their part, ­including Qurban, who was 21 at the time.

He was convicted of violent ­dis­order, arson and riot, and sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served more than four. “Prison is not a place to be,” said Qurban, who is now 44.

So when it appeared that history was about to repeat itself two decades later, he was determined for the young men in his community not to suffer the same fate.

“We didn’t want to see it happening again because we learned from that. We never knew that was something, the first time it happened, so we learned from that,” he said, speaking after a community event at St Aidan’s church in Harehills.

He had just received a round of applause, alongside the young men who put their safety at risk to ­protect their community.

As the unrest unfolded, those who could remember 2001 stepped up to protect police from being injured, to re-route buses, collect water in wheelie bins to put out fires, and – most importantly – to warn the younger ones.

“We were telling the kids, don’t do riots, don’t do riots,” he said. Initially, “no one was listening but then when these lot came, these youngsters, they started listening,” he said, of the young men ­surrounding him, aged between 22 and 30, who were born and raised in Harehills. Most of them, like Qurban, work as fast-food delivery drivers.

Reflecting on 2001, he said: “Something happened and we got involved with it. We were as young as these kids. But I’m proud of these kids that they didn’t do what we did then,”

Zane Rashid, 27, said: “One bad [choice] does not make a person bad. The past is the past, people change. You can’t label someone as ­something over one mistake they’ve made in their life.”

But, though they did not turn to violence, there is anger among the younger generation. Rashid said it was a “scary experience” in which he felt let down by the police, who early in the evening withdrew from the immediate area of the unrest.

“We got failed by the police. The police made a poor decision to retreat and leave the community to basically rot,” he said.

Related: ‘We’re in it together’: how unrest in Leeds escalated – and was defused

In the aftermath, West Yorkshire police said officers were withdrawn “as it was evident that the police were their sole target. This allowed for further community mediation to take place in order to calm the ­situation.”

Some of the group say that a police presence might have further escalated the situation, as “their problem was with police and social services”, as 24-year-old Nazam Qurban said. “Their problem wasn’t with no civilians.”

Rashid said, of the disorder: “It was thuggish behaviour. Harehills isn’t like that. We just had to do what we had to do.”

Saeed Hussain, 30, who works for HM Revenue & Customs, agreed, adding that the men who stepped in to calm the anger did it “for the community and to show that we’re peaceful people”.

Rashid lamented the amount of racism online both during and in the aftermath of the disturbances – including from high-profile figures such as the rightwing antagonist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson – in which those who had calmed the situation were accused of rioting.

“It’s sad for us that we risked our lives that night to still get a bad name.”