LONDON - Not long ago, London was all about the royal wedding, Harry Porter and the countdown to a grandeur Olympic Games next year.

But the fairy tale broke last weekend, when Britons woke up to images of the streets of their capital littered with smashed glass, bricks and burnt cars, and of looted shops and blazing buildings.

The riots which turned London and a number of other major British cities upside down began on Saturday, when a peaceful protest led by relatives of 29-year-old Mark Duggan, who was shot dead on Thursday last week in a police raid in Tottenham, north London, turned violent.

The rioting rolled across the capital on Monday night after two days of violence, looting and clashes with the police with the speed and unpredictability of a firestorm. It was the worst rioting in living memory.

By Tuesday, the rioting had spilled over to other cities including Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.

For Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short of his vacation and returned to London early on Tuesday, the "sickening scenes" caused by the rioters were merely "criminality pure and simple."

But as the last of the broken glass is swept up, many have questioned if that is the whole story.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES UNHAPPY WITH POLICING

For decades the British minority ethnic communities have said they felt excluded and victimized by the police force in a country where racism is still a dangerous presence.

The Metropolitan Police force has a notorious record in this category: the beating to death of a peaceful protester Blair Peach at an anti-racist rally in 1979; the botched investigation into the death of a black teenager Stephen Lawrence who was knifed to death at a bus-stop by a gang of white, racist thugs in 1993; and the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of a policeman in London when G20 leaders met there in 2009.

Thus it came with little surprise when anger and suspicion flared when Duggan was shot dead by police as they tried to arrest him last week.

A peaceful protest was held on Saturday night outside the police station in Tottenham, hours before the demonstration turned violent.

The family of Duggan and local leaders all condemned the violence and rioting, but it was too late and a fury sprung from discontent had been sparked.

However what followed had little to do with the death of Duggan, or racist policing.

There was no political organization and no agenda with which authorities could negotiate. It was just an opportunity for thugs to control the streets in the vacuum left by the police, and the result was lootings, muggings, arson attacks, and in the end four deaths.