From blighted inner cities to the edge of despair: As rioters clashed with police on the streets of Burnley, Blackburn and Bristol, 30 years of social breakdown found expression in violence

AT THE moment that Michael Howard, Secretary of State for the Environment, was announcing in the chandeliered splendour of the St Ermin's Hotel, London, that the Hartcliffe estate in Bristol had failed for a second year to win government money from the City Challenge scheme, another fateful act was unfolding on the estate itself.

Shaun Starr and Keith Buck stole a 1,000cc BMW motorcycle, belonging to Avon and Somerset police's regional crime squad. Three hours later, both men died instantly in a head-on collision with an unmarked police car, also from the squad.

When the pubs chucked out that night 10 days ago a rampaging mob of about 60 local youths burned shops and the library and petrol-bombed police. Hartcliffe was convulsed with violence for the next two nights.

With calm now restored, people living on the sprawling estate five miles south of Britol city centre, with its backdrop of the Dundry Hills, are not surprised at what happened. 'It was a riot waiting to happen,' is the common view. The death of Keith Buck, 19, and Shaun Starr, 32, was simply the spark that ignited the dry tinder of deep-seated discontent.

Anger and resentment are rooted in the fact that Hartcliffe is one of the two most deprived areas in Bristol, the other being the inner-city area of St Pauls, scene of violent clashes in the early eighties.

The migration of the trouble in Bristol - from inner-city to 'peripheral' estate - is a phenomenon repeated all over the country in recent years. On peripheral estates such as Blackbird Leys on the fringes of Oxford or Ely in Cardiff, both hit by rioting last year, the dominant feeling is one of isolation. Bus services are poor and expensive, and sports, recreation and shopping facilities grossly inadequate. People at Hartcliffe never tire of pointing out that since Barclays left six months ago the nearest bank is three miles away, even though the estate has a population of 20,000.

The misery of the sense of isolation is compounded by the deprivation. Among the 6,000 houses and flats planned before the war and completed in 1958, a high proportion were built of pre-cast reinforced concrete, a technique that produced crumbling walls through 'concrete cancer'. The inability of these houses to hold heat results in huge fuel bills and adds to the poverty of those on benefits.

The effect of overcrowded, damp homes has a direct bearing on the health of the residents. 'NFH' is an abbreviation for 'Normal for Hartcliffe', used in reports by local GPs. Infant mortality rates are above those of Avon as a whole, and greater even than St Paul's. Levels of asthma, diabetes and epilepsy are double the national average, while the incidence of thyroid disease is almost four times greater.

The preponderance of one-parent families, 58.9 per cent, is symptomatic of life on the estate. But perhaps the starkest indicator pointing to the hopelessness, felt particularly among the young, is that only two of around 100 16-year-olds who left Hartcliffe school recently found full-time jobs in an area where unemployment is officially 13 per cent.

A recent study found that fewer than one-third of the population were in paid work, and another that nearly 60 per cent of families received housing benefit. The loss of 4,000 jobs when Wills's cigarette factory closed two years ago, and the shrinkage of Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace north of the city, darkened an already gloomy landscape.

Drawing a link between the obvious despair and the spasm of violence is difficult, but the 'spark' appears to be the vital ingredient. On Blackbird Leys it was police attempts to curb 'hotting'; on Ely, the resentment against an Asian shopkeeper; on Hartcliffe the fatal crash involving the police.

Paul Smith, a councillor living close to Symes Avenue, scene of Hartcliffe's worst rioting, said: 'You look at the common factors in all these: deprivation, unemployment, poor health, bad housing. You could say it's just coincidence the violence erupts here, but it's not.

'Anyone who can get a job tends to move away, so you're left with a lot of kids with nothing, except a sense of hopelessness. Society's offering them nothing, so they have no stake in it. There's nothing tying them to the norms, so smashing their community causes them no problems.'

Even the police believe the despair that pervades Hartcliffe was a factor, translated into violence by the 'common purpose' of the deaths.

Inspector Peter Evans said: 'With common purpose the flashpoint will come. It appears to have been revenge against the police . . . not property. It was a frustrated attack on officers.'

John Ford, 23, tatooed with 'Patricia' on his neck and with a pit-bull terrier on a leash, said resentment had been brewing for some time, and had it not been the deaths something else would have sparked violence. 'There's nothing for the kids to do around here. They don't like the police because they're always hassling them, so it was a good time for the kids to have a go. But it's stupid burning down shops because there's little enough round here as it is. That's not going to bring Keith and Shaun back.'