the eventual collapse of the soviet union issued by the self-proclaimed hard line state of emergency committee the announcement stated that mikhail gorbachev's efforts to reform the soviet union have gone into a blind alley and also declared a six month state of emergency in various regions of the country by that time. had already been removed and detained in his villa in the crimea would motivated the plotters to overthrow the existing order was the new union treaty designed to decentralize political power within the u.s.s.r. and indirectly weaken the position of that all powerful communist party little did they know however the coup attempt would encounter strong resistance from many in the military as well as the general public who by that time had begun to save or change as often happens in russia's history when the when these reforms start accumulating from the top. there's a sense of. society there's obviously the sense there's no way things are going to go back to the way they used to be it was in order to some control of the russian parliament building the committee ordered tanks to ro

convincing on the nineteenth of august vice president kennedy and naive on the other members of the emergency committee sat in this very spot as he delivered his statement the assembled journalists noticed that his hands were shaking then one twenty four year old journalist blew his official words right out of the water. go to the bottle tell me do you realize that you've conducted a coup de tat they were very convincing and. they just got mad meanwhile on the streets the russian supremes soviet building the white house had become the center of resistance to the coup boris yeltsin the president of the russian part of the u.s.s.r. had convinced some of the tank crews to switch sides people flocked to join him and demand gorbachev's return but if yeltsin tells you that was the yeahs of in your command traitors and enemies whose always will you have be as night fell on the. twentieth of august the curfew ordered by the cool denies is raised fears of an assault on the white house when armored vehicles began moving through a row tunnel in the night protesters disillusioned with the communist party rose up t

david cameron has called the riots pure criminality speaking after a meeting of the country's emergency committee a promise that looters will face before force the law well joining us live now is gerard battens a member of the european parliament. thank you for joining us some sixteen thousand officers are expected tonight on the streets of london do you think that will be enough. well i think the police have been outnumbered so far and what this is criminality i agree with the camera norm and i think that the point has come where we have to call in the armed forces what we're seeing now is chaos and chaotic criminality across the whole of london it's not confined to one place as it when we've had riots in the past for example in brixton in the 1980's this is now spread across spreading across the whole of london even my area for this is rumored to be targeted tonight i've told my assistants to leave the office early and people about . now what we should do in my view is pull our troops back from these pointless wars in afghanistan in iraq where we should never be in the first place their only fu

david cameron has called the riots pure criminality speaking after a meeting of the country's emergency committee he promised that looters will face the full force of the war but the telegraph's andrew gilligan was one of many caught up in the war with. i was mugged i was pulled off my bike and my bike was stolen by. i spent most of the day in scotland which is where it all kicked off interviewing people who had lost their homes as a result of these riots and they are furious with the writers they say that what happened to mark duggan the man who was shot by police is absolutely no excuse at all for what happened to them they blame the police for not being quick enough to contain the trouble in tottenham in the first place and quite clearly what's happening in hackney and. croydon and all the other places where disorder has broken out tonight there's absolutely nothing to do with the police shooting of a man ten miles away in north london it's purely up it's purely opportunistic it's not anger at all i think it's pure criminality and people are taking advantage of what they see is a lawless situa