LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron, grappling with what could prove a defining crisis of his premiership, will tell parliament on Thursday how he plans to tackle the “sick” pockets of society he blames for Britain’s worst unrest in decades.

He is under pressure to soften austerity plans, toughen policing and do more for inner-city communities, even as economic malaise grips a nation whose social and perhaps racial tensions have exploded in four nights of bewildering mayhem.

Cameron has ordered a rare recall of parliament from its summer recess to debate the unrest which flared first in north London after police shot dead an Afro-Caribbean man.

Britain’s finance minister, George Osborne, will also address parliament amid concern the rioting could damage confidence in the economy and in London, one of the world’s biggest financial centres and venue for next year’s Olympics.

With the public seething over the looting of anything from sweets to televisions, Cameron has dismissed the rioters as no more than opportunistic criminals and denied the unrest was linked to planned spending cuts, mostly not yet implemented.

But community leaders say inequality, cuts to public services and youth unemployment also fed into the violence in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other multi-ethnic cities.

“Blacks, Asians, whites, we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another?” said Tariq Jahan, whose son was one of three Muslim men run over by a car and killed while apparently protecting property in Birmingham.

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron will face pressure Thursday to soften his austerity plans, toughen up policing and do more to help inner-city communities after days of riots and looting laid bare deep social tensions in a depressed economy.

With the public seething over the looting of anything from sweets to televisions, Cameron has so far dismissed the rioters as nothing more than opportunistic criminals and denied the unrest was linked to the knock-on effects of deep spending cuts.

But community leaders say inequality, cuts to public services and high youth unemployment are also probably to blame for some of the worst violence seen in Britain for decades.

As the clear up continues, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government must find quick fixes to avoid further unrest while also addressing longer-term problems in what Cameron has called “broken Britain.”

“There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick,” Cameron told reporters.

A surge in police numbers helped to calm streets in London and cities across England such as Manchester and Birmingham on Wednesday night, but four days of often unchecked disorder have embarrassed the authorities, leaving communities ransacked and exhausting emergency services.

Police arrested more than 1,000 people across England, filling cells and leaving courts working through the night to process hundreds of cases. Among those charged were a teaching assistant, an 11-year-old boy and a charity worker.

LONDON (Reuters) – Days of rioting and looting across Britain looked to be cooling Wednesday after Prime Minister David Cameron’s promised a fightback and flooded city streets with police to try to restore order.

By 9:30 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. EDT), incidents were limited to isolated skirmishes and standoffs between riot police and groups of youths, after four nights when often unchecked violence had been well under way by nightfall.

The capital — host to the 2012 Olympics — looked set for another uneasy but relatively quiet night, with 16,000 police deployed across the city and local groups protecting areas torn apart by arson, looting and running street battles.

Other cities in northern and central England such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, which suffered the worst violence Tuesday night, also appeared calmer.

“We needed a fightback and a fightback is under way,” Cameron said after a meeting Wednesday of the government’s COBRA committee that deals with national security crises.

“Whatever resources police need, they will get.”

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, making deep cuts to public services to tackle a record budget deficit, has been quick to deny that the unrest was linked to austerity measures, calling the disorder “pure criminality.”

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday police will crack down hard to quell a wave of rioting and looting across London over the past three nights — the worst violence in the British capital in decades.

“This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated,” Cameron told reporters outside his Downing Street office after returning from a family holiday in Tuscany to deal with a crisis that has stunned Londoners.

“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets,” he said.

Cameron said he would recall parliament from its summer recess on Thursday to make a statement on the unrest, which has also spread to other British cities.

Politicians and police firmly blamed the violence, in which shops were looted and cars and buildings set ablaze in several mostly poor areas of London — on criminals and hooligans.

But some commentators and local residents said its roots lay in tensions and anger over economic hardship in a city where the gap between the haves and have-nots is highly visible and the prospects for many youths are dim.

“We ain’t got no jobs, no money. We heard that other people were getting things for free, so why not us?” asked E.Nan, a young man in a baseball cap in Hackney, a multi-ethnic area in east London and one of the worst-hit areas.

LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron was to hold crisis talks on Tuesday after three nights of riots, looting and arson by masked, hooded youths that wrecked shopping streets in many parts of London and spread to other cities.

Neighbourhoods across the capital faced a massive clean-up of smashed glass, bricks, bottles and gutted buildings as police reinforcements reclaimed the streets from the youths.

Politicians and police blamed the riots — the worst in Britain for decades — on criminals and opportunistic hooligans.

But residents in affected areas and some commentators attributed the unrest to local tensions and anger over economic hardship in a city where the gap between the haves and have-nots is growing.

“We ain’t got no jobs, no money. We heard that other people were getting things for free, so why not us?” asked E.Nan, a young man in a baseball cap in Hackney, a multi-ethnic area in east London and one of the worst hit areas.

The riots broke out amid deepening gloom in Britain, with the economy struggling to grow while the government is imposing deep public spending cuts and tax rises brought in to help eliminate a budget deficit that peaked at more than 10 percent of GDP.

They will also show an ugly side of London to the rest of the world less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event which organisers hope will showcase a dynamic, prosperous and cosmopoliton city.

LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Riots spread to new areas of London on Monday in a third night of violence as hooded youths torched cars and buildings, hurled missiles at police and looted shops, in the worst unrest in the British capital for decades.

Police were out in force, but struggled to stop disturbances spreading to Hackney in east London, close to the site of next year’s Olympics games, and Peckham and Lewisham in south London.

Flames leaped into the air from a building in Peckham and cars were set on fire in several areas of London as gangs of youths roamed the streets.

The disturbances started late on Saturday in London’s northern Tottenham district when a peaceful protest over the police’s shooting of a suspect turned violent, leaving parts of the high street charred and its shops looted.

Home Secretary Theresa May, who cut short her holiday to take charge of the government response to the riots, said arrests had climbed to 215 and 27 people had been charged.

“The violence we’ve seen, the looting we’ve seen, the thuggery we’ve seen, this is sheer criminality … These people will be brought to justice. They will be made to face the consequences of their actions,” she said.

The mayhem has so far been centred mainly in multi-ethnic, poorer parts of London, only a few miles from the Olympic park that will welcome millions of visitors in less than a year.

LONDON (Reuters) – Youths hurled missiles at police in northeast London on Monday as violence broke out in the capital for a third night.

Protesters threw bottles, rubbish bins and supermarket trolleys at officers, and police with riot shields responded by charging them as they tried to seal off a busy area around Hackney Central station.

There were social media reports of disturbances in several other areas of London.

Crowds of people, many wearing hooded tops, broke into a truck and pulled out planks of wood for use as missiles, a Reuters reporter on the scene said.

Some of the youths broke shop windows, including that of a Ladbrokes betting shop.

The BBC said the clashes broke out after police stopped and searched a man.

London has been hit by two nights of violence which erupted on Saturday night in Tottenham, north London, after a protest over the fatal shooting of a man by armed police turned violent.

LONDON (Reuters) – George Osborne’s “Age of Austerity” mantra was the kind of tough medicine the Conservative party and voters wanted to hear as Britain dragged itself out of the financial crisis and faced up to a mountain of unsustainable debt.

The son of a baronet and heir to a successful wallpaper business was key in placing a harsh austerity plan at the heart of his party’s 2010 election campaign and it paid off as voters turned on a 13-year-old Labour government.

But there was one glaring hole in the argument.

While avoiding credit downgrades was seen as the best way to stabilise any recovery, there was little evidence that a finance-starved private sector could make up for Osborne’s retrenchment in government spending.

But the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government under Prime Minister David Cameron knows it must stick to its guns in the hope that the economy will improve by the time of the 2015 election.

Dismal figures for the second quarter of this year on Tuesday — growth of just 0.2 percent after the economy effectively flatlined in the previous six months — may have just called Osborne’s bluff.

“We were somehow promised this double mantra of cutting debt but also miraculously sustained and ever rising economic growth — it’s in a dream world that you can achieve these things,” said Jonathan Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool.

LONDON (Reuters) – George Osborne’s “Age of Austerity” mantra was the kind of tough medicine his Conservative party and voters wanted to hear as Britain dragged itself out of the financial crisis and faced up to a mountain of unsustainable debt.

The son of a baronet and heir to a successful wallpaper business was key in placing a harsh austerity plan at the heart of his party’s 2010 election campaign and it paid off as voters turned on a 13-year-old Labour government.

But there was one glaring hole in the argument.

While avoiding credit downgrades was seen as the best way to stabilise any recovery, there was little evidence that a finance-starved private sector could make up for Osborne’s retrenchment in government spending.

But the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government under Prime Minister David Cameron knows it must stick to its guns in the hope that the economy will improve by the time of the 2015 election.

Dismal figures for the second quarter of this year on Tuesday — growth of just 0.2 percent after the economy effectively flatlined in the previous six months — may have just called Osborne’s bluff.

“We were somehow promised this double mantra of cutting debt but also miraculously sustained and ever rising economic growth — it’s in a dream world that you can achieve these things,” said Jonathan Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool.

LONDON (Reuters) – There were more than a few gasps of amazement when Ed Miliband beat his better known elder brother David to the leadership of Britain’s Labour party last September.

Many doubted the former policy wonk had the steel, vision or charm to rebuild a party struggling to come to terms with losing power after 13 years, or to mount a credible challenge among voters to the triumphant new Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

Yet this week, a phone-hacking scandal at the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has presented a golden opportunity for the 41-year-old to silence dissent, unite his party and generate the kind of momentum which could snowball in his – and Labour’s – favour.

“There’s no question this has been the best week for Ed Miliband since he became Labour leader. He’s landed a number of blows. He’s put forward a very clear trajectory, he took gambles and they paid off,” said Mark Wickham-Jones, a politics professor and Labour Party expert at the University of Bristol.

“He’s shown himself good at close-quarters political combat and outfoxed the government. All of those are major pluses for Ed Miliband.”

In this saga, Miliband has appeared one step ahead of Cameron. Where his normally confident rival seemed to hesitate, Miliband has been bold, daily giving the impression that the government was following his lead.

As Cameron accused Murdoch of wrongly prioritising his takeover bid for television company BSkyB above the need to sort out the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World tabloid, it was easy to forget the government had, only last week, opposed a Labour motion to discuss the TV deal.