The Tottenham riots: the Big Society and the recurring neglect of community participation Denis Dillon and Bryan Fanning * Abstract This paper locates responses to the 2011 Tottenham riots within a historical analysis of planning, regeneration and the politics of community participation in the London Borough of Haringey. It examines understandings of the role of such participation and related recommendations within three 2012 reports: North London Citizens, an alliance of mostly faith organizations, The Tottenham Community Panel established by Haringey Council and the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel set up by Parliament. Introduction The 2011 Tottenham riots coincided with the end of an era of British urban policy, occurring as they did at a time when various community-centred regeneration programmes, implemented as part of National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) introduced by the previous New Labour Government, were being wound down or had come to an end. The NSNR sought to tackle the problems in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods by building the leadership and capacity of their communi- ties while improving the quality and responsiveness of the public services they received. One of its flagship initiatives was the New Deal for Commu- nities (NDC), which was launched in 1998 to ‘help turn around the poorest communities’ (DETR, 2001, p. 2). The NDC was a ten-year programme which invested £50 million in each of the thirty-nine localities where it *Address for correspondence: Bryan Fanning, School of Applied Social Science, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland; email: bryan.fanning@ucd.ie & Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. 2012 All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/cdj/bss056 Community Development Journal Page 1 of 16 Community Development Journal Advance Access published November 19, 2012