Singer Emmy The Great on riots response
Published: September 15, 2011
by ROISIN GADELRAB
CELEBRATED singer-songwriter Emmy The Great has told how the community response to the Camden riots made her proud.
She was among those who took part in the clean-up operation the day after last month’s disorder which saw shops in Chalk Farm Road looted.
The singer, whose real name is Emma-Lee Moss, considers Camden as home after living in St Augustine’s Road for five years.
She said: “I often bitch about London because we’re mean to each other on the tube, everyone’s in a hurry, but if you ask them what they’re in a hurry for, they won’t say.
“But that was the most positive thing I’ve ever seen. I was so, so proud to have been in the midst of it. We could’ve been wringing our hands and going ‘get them’ but nobody was doing that, everyone was out on the street with a broom, people on their way to work.
“This is one of the things I really didn’t want to get political about because it’s really hard to say what the reason was or whether it was anyone’s fault, but the politicians in charge didn’t say anything that was particularly rousing so the people had to take on the message – and the message most people gave that I could see was, ‘OK, we don’t know why this is happening but we’re not going to sit down and take this. We’re not going to fight back, we’re going to do the most practical, constructive, most unjudgmental thing, which is cleaning’.”
• Emmy The Great plays Cecil Sharp House in Camden Town on Saturday.