#RiotWombles on the march: 200 rioters caused this mayhem...500 offer help to clean up mess

By NICHOLAS MCDERMOTT and WILLIAM JAFFRAY

#riotwombles: Volunteers wait to clear up after overnight disturbances in Clapham Junction, in south London

They came armed with brooms and the odd wheelbarrow.

Where youths had roamed the streets with bricks and bats just hours earlier, a new army had appeared.

Invoking London’s famous ‘Blitz spirit’, volunteers responded defiantly to the worst violence the city has witnessed in decades by rolling up their sleeves and helping in the clean-up.


Armed and ready: Local residents with brooms and bin liners volunteered to clean up following rioting in Battersea


Clean sweep: Brooms at the ready, people brought together through Twitter gather to clear up Clapham Junction, devastated in the riots last night


'London hates looters': More volunteers in Clapham Junction, where they have congregated after call outs on Twitter


Helping hands: Part of a group of about 300 volunteers help clear the remains of destroyed vehicles in Hackney, north London


Communicating on Twitter – the same social network used by the rioters – hundreds gathered in riot-ravaged neighbourhoods equipped with a mishmash of household cleaning brushes, gardening gloves and rolls of bin bags.

Outside Clapham Junction, 500 people brandished their brooms in the air as they waited for a police cordon to be lifted so they could begin healing the wounds of Monday night’s rampage.


Ready: Volunteers spilled on to the streets of Clapham with brooms eager to get the clean-up under way after the devastation in their community


Residents of Hackney club together to clean the streets outside their homes


'RiotWombles' sweeping to victory on the Walworth Road in Camberwell


Clapham clean-up: Volunteers don rubber gloves to sweep the streets and pick up broken glass following the riots in the London suburb


Burnt out cars are removed from a residential street in Hackney this afternoon as the clean-up begins


Aftermath: A fire fighter douses a burnt out building in Croydon, Surrey, following a third night of civil unrest on the streets of London


source: dailymail