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The chain of events set in train would end in the murder of a community beat officer PC Keith Blakelock.听听It culminated in two deaths that would change the face of modern policing and stigmatise Broadwater Farm for a generation.

The following weeks and months were a time of deep trauma in the Black community in Tottenham as the rage of the police turned on the very people who might have helped them solve the crime.听

Understandably the police were also in shock and they wanted to find those responsible for the murder of a fellow officer.听听 Unfortunately their methods delivered the wrong people to justice.听 Eventually Winston Silcott, Mark Braithwaite and Engin Raghip had their convictions for PC Blakelock鈥檚 murder overturned.听

Raghip and Braithwaite were released while Silcott carried on serving a sentence for killing another man.听听 He has always claimed that boxer Anthony Smith died in a brawl where he, Silcott, was trying to defend himself听听听听听听听

Shortly before his release from prison in 2003 I visited Winston Silcott in prison.听 He was still seen as the 鈥渕onster鈥� of Broadwater Farm captured by the lurid photograph released to the press by the police on his arrest.听听 Neither he nor the Farm had completely overcome the reputation that the riots had bestowed upon them.

Kurt Barling with Pc Tim Allpress

On his release we agreed that I鈥檇 make a film about the riots and how they came about.听 On the day of his release myself and two of his closest friends including Stafford Scott went to fetch him.听 The press were officially told of his release two days later and all hell broke loose.听听 The tabloid newspapers laid siege to his parents鈥� house and it seemed as if the nightmare they鈥檇 endured all those years before would be re-visited.

There was a real concern on the Broadwater Farm estate that all the good things that had happened on the estate in the 1990s would be overlooked once Winston returned to Tottenham.听 I鈥檓 happy to report that broadly speaking this has not been the case.

Built in 1976 by architects who had more vision than common sense, it soon deteriorated into a crime zone with police no go areas and poor investment by a local authority starved of funding for social housing by central government.听

Despite the local borough commander at the time feeling it was still the haunt of thieves, by early 1985 a series of initiatives had started to get the Farm noticed again for its constructive work in nurturing youth development.听听 Even Princess Diana decided she wanted to pay it a visit, which she did to the delight of most of the families on the estate (white and black) in February that year.听听听

One of the people at that day of celebration and who is still a youth development worker at the farm is a man who has used football as a way to nurture discipline, purpose and life skills.听 Clasford Stirling believes the riots put the estate back several years and it bestowed on it a reputation which to this day has not been entirely eradicated.

Despite all this Broadwater Farm has had the best part of 拢33 million pounds spent on it over the past decade and this has transformed the architecture and feel of the estate.听 It got rid of sixties utopian walkways which had become a policing joke.听 This forced everyone back to ground level to get around.听听 A concierge system means that the street starts at the door to the block rather than the doors to the flats.听听 Burglaries are now virtually unheard of on the estate.

Extensive landscaping has given the whole place an airier feel.听 Perhaps most significantly all the residents themselves have been involved in prioritising the changes.听听听

And it鈥檚 amongst the residents themselves that some of the most significant adjustments have taken place.听 It is now Ghanaians and Turkish Kurds who are in the majority and not Afro-Caribbeans.

The families of many of the young men who took part in the riot moved away.听 What that means is the numbers who were around twenty years ago are for outnumbered by those who have no association with that past.

I don鈥檛 get the sense that the team that helps run the estate are at all complacent.听听 They recognise this can still be a challenging place to live.听听 Objectively speaking, though, the Farm is probably one of the safest places to live in that part of North London the transformation is pretty much complete.

There is possibly no better proof of this than Broadwater Farm Primary School which I visited last week.听 It has improving standards and Ofsted described it as having a caring school environment.听 Its Head Stephen Spooner grew up on the estate and even went to school with Mark Braithwaite, one of the men wrongly convicted of PC Blakelock鈥檚 murder.

Of course outsiders鈥� perceptions mean that staff can still struggle to get cabs to pick them up.听听 But Head Spooner shows how insiders have helped to transform their own community.听听 A new 100 place nursery is opening at the beginning of October for pre-schoolers funded largely by Sure Start money.听听 The key to all this change is that the community has found its voice and people in authority often (if not always) listen and respond.

The Farm also made a huge stride this summer in exorcising the ghosts of the riots in the shape of a summer programme for local young men.听听 The scheme was supported by the local police and Winston Silcott helped deliver a message of diversion to young men who are angry and frustrated about their circumstances and inclined to stray beyond the law.听 There was some opposition to this cooperation, particularly from some sections of the tabloid press.听听

Kurt with Stephen Spooner

The brutal reality though is that Silcott has perhaps the strongest, most sobering and authentic voice of the 鈥渨here I went, you too could go鈥� variety.听听听听 He has told me he feels the least he can now do in Tottenham is divert vulnerable young people from a path of self-destruction.听 I doubt there are many individuals better qualified to know about such things.

Looking back on the riots it seems to me that Broadwater Farm was a parable of what 1980s Britain had seemingly become.听 A society where many had turned their backs on deep seated social deprivation and there was widespread official denial about police racism.听

The events of 6th of October transformed the Broadwater Farm into an urban myth.听 But that鈥檚 all the public perception of the place was - a myth.听听 The difficult for the residents is that myths are difficult to combat with the facts.

The Met learned many lessons from the Farm.听 Community policing got its first outing in the wake of the riots although the idea that is was a 鈥渟ervice鈥� rather than a 鈥渇orce鈥� took a little longer to take hold.听 And that one night of mayhem that I witnessed twenty years ago, left a stigma that鈥檚 been hard for some police officers (although not the local ones) to cast off.听听

In recent weeks it鈥檚 been reported that riot police vans have been seen on the Farm again. Some believe in the run up to the twentieth anniversary some officers are trying to make a point.听 Although, if true, its difficult see what point they are trying to make. The urban myth lives on even though the facts militate against it.听

Negotiations are currently underway with Transport for London so that a bus service might soon run once again through the Farm.听 The symbolism of that departure needs no explanation.听听 Perhaps then people from the outside will literally start to see it for what it is rather than what it is supposed to be.

There is one note of abiding sadness and injustice which no amount of physical transformation can completely remove.听 Two people died twenty years ago.听 No-one was ever held accountable for Cynthia Jarrett鈥檚 death and no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted for either the murder of PC Keith Blakelock or the attempted murder of PC Richard Coombes.听听听

Perhaps the best chance of ever solving these cases was lost when the police treated many Tottenham residents as suspects rather than potential witnesses in the wake of the riots.听 It could also be that those who know who did it, can only know who did it, because they were a party to it.听 Admitting knowledge would also be a confession of guilt.