It may be five years ago tomorrow, but barely a day goes by when I don’t think of the night that Tottenham was engulfed in violence. Walk down the high road today and you see everyday things – chance meetings, friendly conversations, family shopping trips. But I can still smell the thick black smoke, see the burning buildings lining the streets. I can hear the crunch of broken glass beneath my feet and the cries of local people mourning the loss of their homes and livelihoods.

In the days that followed the 2011 riots, the world’s media descended on north London. Reports were filed, conclusions were drawn and then the spotlight moved on. To an external observer, the events of those August nights passed in the blink of an eye. For those who live in my community, it has taken years to rebuild.

At the time, I urged the government to learn the lesson of the 1985 Brixton riots, which had taken place during my childhood. Then, the community had felt forgotten and abandoned. The TV cameras moved out and government ministers stayed away. Out of sight, out of mind. We couldn’t let that happen again.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Lammy and former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg assess the damage after the riots. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images

In response to the 2011 riots, the coalition government set up the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel. Its job was to listen in good faith to people in the communities that had been torn apart. The idea was that local people, many of them victims, might well know better than the politicians how future riots could be prevented.

I was one of the London rioters. In 2011 we didn’t know how to express our anger | Bryn Phillips Read more

The panel’s final report made 63 specific recommendations. The vast majority of these were rejected or went unimplemented. The government’s response to the report was snuck out of the back door during the 2013 summer break without even a press release to announce its publication. It was an insult to the victims and their communities. To conclude, as the government did, that they were already doing enough to “build stronger, more resilient places” was frankly laughable.

I published a book myself, trying to draw out the lessons from the riots. I argued that society had become freer in different ways since the 1960s, but that we had lost many of the things that bind us together. This included the loss of family and community ties, but also the fact that many had no economic stake in society. When you have few people who care and no job or house to lose, it seems less of a risk to loot shops for a new pair of trainers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘People tried to dismiss the riots as black v white, but the truth is far more complicated.’ Photograph: Ferdaus Shamim/Getty Images

But when I look back now I wonder what has really changed. Since 2011, biting austerity has left its own grim legacy in places like Tottenham. Youth centres have closed their doors a stone’s throw from where the riots broke out. Huge cuts in police budgets mean that officers and the communities they serve have drifted further apart. Young people increasingly only see the flash of blue lights, not the door-to-door policing that builds trust.

In London young black men are still three times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts. Social housing has all but collapsed in the last five years, meaning that thousands of families are living in overcrowded and inadequate housing without any real prospect of improvement in their situation, never mind affording a home of their own.

Far from being unique to Tottenham or the capital, this a familiar tale across the country. Five years ago people tried to dismiss the riots as black v white, but the truth is far more complicated than a racial divide.

Despite the post-Brexit rhetoric about a north-south divide, across the length and breadth of the nation we are seeing the gap between an asset class and an underclass growing ever larger. Last year 38% of workers earned less than the amount the average homeowner “earned” from the increase in the value of their home. This chasm between the haves and the have-nots looks set to become increasingly vast for future generations.

When it comes to a “legacy”, I think of the people of Tottenham who have rebuilt our community, the businesses that have reopened and gone from strength to strength and the young people who have shrugged off the stigma and gone on to great things. But if millions still feel as though they have no stake in society, social order becomes fractured and the peace is fragile. A sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that spans generations and defines entire areas does not breed respect for society or its rules. When people have so little to lose, desperation can quickly turn to anger and violence. This was the lesson of the riots – let it not go unlearned.

• The headline on this page was amended on 5 August 2016 to better reflect the content of the article

