While most reports of the social unrest in Britain focused on the looting in London’s Tottenham district and other major industrial towns, civil disturbances also affected the lesbian and gay communities within some areas hit. Rioters egged and vandalized London’s historic Gay’s the Word bookshop, opened in 1979, and gay-friendly film distributors Pecadillo Pictures had their warehouse torched, with all stock destroyed in the blaze.
In Birmingham, staff at Missing Bar in Birmingham’s gay village, reportedly the scene of much looting in that city, said that a gay man was assaulted by a gang of rioters who allegedly pulled him to the ground and stomped on his head. There have been no other reports of targeted attacks on the LGBT community during the rioting.