The public disturbances in south London, achieved by social media link-ups, have their precedents. “You can imagine what an exhilarating week this has been,” wrote Harold Nicolson in 1945, “the surrounding of Berlin; the link-up with the Russian armies.”

Link-up, first recorded from 1945 by the Oxford English Dictionary, has since been applied chiefly to military connection and that of spacecraft.

On the same day as the first Clapham disturbance,........

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