AS the Star Wars credits begin to creep down my TV, the first yells of the evening pierce through my living room walls. The London riots had spread to Ealing.

Looters were suddenly flocking to our road just off the high street, hiding stolen goods beneath parked cars.

News reports said residents were being forced out of their homes but we were lucky, those lingering on our street were harmless.

The raucous night culminated in armed police vehicles driving rioters away from the borough.

I woke the next morning to find news agencies swarming my town.

Most of the damage had been cleaned up pretty quickly by professionals alongside the community’s own troop, armed with brushes and pans.

However, a quick tour of the the high street revealed cones were still lodged in shop windows and buildings remained charcoaled from being set alight the evening before.

There was no hiding that Ealing had experienced a devastating night.

On Monday August 8 2011 more than 1,000 emergency services calls were made in Ealing alone.

About 300 people were involved in the distruction in the Ealing Broadway area that spread to Greenford and West Ealing.

Tragedy struck as one resident, Richard Mannington Bowes, was killed by a blow to his head as he was putting a fire out in a bin.

Nine residential properties were affected with two set on fire and six looted. Furthermore, more than 100 shops and businesses were damaged.

By the middle of October 2011, 236 people were arrested in connection with the riots of which 61 were juveniles with an average sentence of eight months. The majority of rioters were from outside of the borough.

This August will mark five years since that fateful evening.

In this time Ealing has unquestionably changed with the riots becoming a fragment of its history.

Bridj Seghal’s West Ealing shop, Seba Electronics, is proof of that.

It made headlines when rioters ripped through his place and stole £200,000 worth of stock.

Yet the events never dismayed Bridj — if anything they only helped strengthen his philosophical resolve more.

“You know there is a very nice saying, which I write every day — one thought — opportunity and crisis can knock at your door any time,” he tells me upon reflection of that hectic night.

“But we should be more ready for crisis than the opportunities.”

Fortunately for him, he was ready. His property was insured and when his stolen items were returned he could even afford to donate them to needy people.

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His business bounced back and looters who robbed his store were handed sentences for their offences.

Bridj, who writes a philosophical thought each day and has lined his office with inspirational quotes, was quick to forgive them.

He invited two offenders to join him for tea and it was then they informed him of their immense regret for their actions.

They explained they were following the orders of others and have now greatly disadvantaged their own lives.

Bridj acknowledges this and places the blame squarely on those who provided the vans and instructions for the looters.

For businesses not as protected as Bridj’s, council help was offered.

On August 16 2011, the council announced a £250,000 fund to help independent businesses affected by the riots and by early September £100,000 of assistance had been provided.

Small traders were given £1,200 payment each while a £20,000 interest free repayable grant was given to the worst affected traders who were likely to remain closed for six months.

Council leader Julian Bell said he was proud of this assistance.

He said: “Our speedy response and reassurance to people meant there was less impact as a result of this one bad night.”

Yet he was also quick to lambast the actions of the rioters.

He said: “I have no other way of describing what I saw than that it was criminal.

"It was an opportunistic, criminal act.

"It was kind of riot tourism in that they were making use of the good public transport connections that Ealing had and they liked the quality of our shops and thought we’ll have some of that.”

Councillor Bell witnessed the infractions first hand.

He spent the evening visiting and warning businesses, shops and restaurants of the impeding danger and coordinated responses from Perceval House. 

His experience taught him one thing, he said: “It’s a very thin line between law and order and anarchy and it’s very easy to go over that line.”

Businesswoman Liz Pilgrim agreed with some of the sentiments expressed by the councillor.

She made the news when her baby wear shop — BabyE— was looted.

It inadvertently resulted in her becoming a spokeswoman for the Ealing businesses hit by the riots.

Liz found the evening chaotic, she explained: “When I drove down in my little Mini that’s when I faced them and I saw with my own eyes just hundreds of youths on the street.

"Just setting fires to cars. It was just mayhem.

"That’s when I reversed and nearly ran one of them over. I just got out of there, it was so scary.”

When she returned to inspect her shop the next day she was understandably emotional and this was when she famously labelled the rioters as 'feral rats' in a national interview.

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Despite recieving death threats, she doesn’t regret her words, she said: “Because I think they were out of control.

"Out of control young people that just took that opportunity to be wild.

"That adrenaline moment of that decision between right and wrong and they took that decision to go down the wrong way.”

Although the mother-of-two was inundated with offers of help, her business soon closed in the aftermath.

Liz claims she lost the heart to continue, but now as an industry blogger for maternity wear she harbours hopes to possibly become a campaigner.

During our interview she advocated the need for better education to help young people realise their potential.

Perhaps this way of thinking comes from Liz’s own experience with an offender who looted her shop.

The offender in question was put through a restorative justice program after her conviction and was therefore scheduled to meet Liz as part of the program.

She came from a difficult background and Liz explains that the riots for her were a consequence of mixing with the wrong crowd at the wrong time.

“[She] was one of those forgotten, invisible people,” Liz said.

“Probably had no hope, no sense of what to do with their lives.

"She had to really look at herself, look at what she done, face me, look me in the eye and I think that it probably was that defining moment for her that she was now in a system of some sort.”

It’s suffice to say that Liz believed the offender’s life soon recovered after joining the program.

I point out to her that it feels like there is a disconnect between many aspects of society in modern Britain which the riots encapsulated.

Divisions were highlighted by consequent 'us' vs 'them' rhetoric.

She nodded in agreement and said: “I live in a bubble. Very privileged.” 

She continued to point out it was mainly women who stole from her shop while it was men who took the TVs and the trainers.

She concluded: “Didn’t attack the bookshop did they?”

Oxford University sociologists in 2015 conducted research that showed rioters were more likely to come from boroughs where residents felt the police did not respect them.

A spokesperson for the St Giles Trust said: “Many sections of our communities felt locked out of society where there was – and remains – a huge gap between those who have and those who have not. 

"In such a vacuum, discontent and anger can spill over. These riots were a wake up call. 

"Some businesses and areas of government responded through offering increased support to society’s most disadvantaged but some of it has since ended and there is still a need.”

One Croydon rioter I spoke to pointed out there were a variety of reasons rioters partook in events.

He said: “Of course some people’s mentality was the government are taking away from us so why don’t we take away from them?”

Nevertheless he admits he acted rashly. 

He said: “The reason at first was just for the sheer fact it was there, it was happening and I had a few friends that were interested in doing it.

"So I thought to myself why not? I was young at the time.”

It is widely believed the shooting of Mark Duggan, from Tottenham, on August 4 2011, sparked protests that triggered the London Riots.

The reformed rioter continued: “You have people who say they done it because of the shooting, you know because the police killed this guy, but 90% of the people didn’t know this guy.

"They just done it because the opportunity was there.”

He regrets his participation in the riots — especially as he went to prison — but is grateful for the redirection it provided him afterwards.

After volunteering for charity magazine Limelight he felt empowered to achieve more and, having been told before that he would not amount to anything, is proud of who he is now.

He said: “I am working, I have a beautiful girlfriend, we are going to be trying for a kid soon.

"I have got money in my pocket. All legal and all earned fairly. Everything is really looking good now.”