The knock-on effects of the riots may even extend to Britain’s AAA credit rating

FOR MORE than 140 years, through two World Wars and the Blitz, the sprawling House of Reeves furniture store stood on the corner of Church Street in Croydon.

The landmark shop, which sold sofas, beds and mattresses, was so well known in this part of southeast London that the site on which it stood was renamed Reeves Corner.

When the Croydon Tramlink from Wimbledon opened 11 years ago, the nearby stop took the same name too.

Five generations of the Reeves family have made their livelihood from the store since Edwin Reeves founded the business in 1867. The current owner, Trevor Reeves, great-great-grandson of Edwin, had hoped a sixth generation would take their place in time.

But now House of Reeves is a smouldering ruin, razed in the mayhem of arson, looting and robbery that engulfed London on Monday night.

“It’s just gone,” said a devastated Trevor Reeves, who arrived at the scene as a mob of some 100 youths ran amok, burning and looting other stores.

Nearby, in Church Street, a woman was forced to leap from her first-floor flat as the building went up in flames.

Barely a retailer was left untouched as the violence spread throughout the capital. One of the first casualties was a Carpetright store in Tottenham, scene of the first outbreak of violence at the weekend. Since then, hundreds of stores have been hit, from small independent premises to larger chains such as Boots, Argos, Currys, Comet, Halfords and HMV. Sports shops, jewellers and mobile-phone retailers have been particularly hard hit as looters, mostly teenagers, sought to grab whatever they could fill their pockets with.

Restaurants and grocery stores have suffered too. High-street bakery group Greggs, which has 1,500 shops throughout Britain, saw one of its stores torched in Peckham, south London, and another looted in Enfield. Other outlets, including some in the Birmingham area, were forced to close early. Greggs chief executive Ken McMeikan, reporting a fall in first-half profits on Tuesday, was grateful the group had not suffered as much as retailers with higher-value stock.

One of the biggest blazes was in Enfield, north London, where the Sony CD and DVD warehouse was destroyed on Monday night. The depot is Sony’s only one in Britain and the company warned that deliveries would be affected.

Yesterday, retailers throughout London and in other parts of the country were making plans to secure their premises, with many opting to close early. Many office workers in the capital were also sent home early to escape any trouble.

The cancellation of all police leave in the capital, with the promise of 16,000 officers on the streets overnight, did little to reassure shopkeepers after the anarchy of recent days, and the fear is of worse to come.

The British Retail Consortium demanded urgent action from the authorities and said it was inevitable that some smaller shops would not open for business again. And all this when one in seven town-centre shops is already shuttered because of the recession.

The bill for goods lost and livelihoods destroyed already runs into tens of millions of pounds. But the knock-on effects, impossible to estimate at this stage, will be even greater and will cascade well beyond the struggling retail sector to the wider British economy, the tourist industry, prospects for the 2012 Olympic Games and perhaps even as far as Britain’s AAA credit rating.

As pictures of London burning were beamed around the world, foreign investors are becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of UK plc, touted only the other week by British chancellor George Osborne as one of the few safe havens in the global financial storm.

The coalition government is coming under increasing pressure for its failure to deal effectively with the widespread civil disorder, and the apparent reluctance of British prime minister David Cameron to tear himself away from his holiday in Tuscany did not go down well with the nation.

Analysts warned that any sign that the coalition might be breaking apart, which would derail the deficit reduction programme, could threaten Britain’s coveted AAA rating.

Parliament is being recalled tomorrow to discuss the riots and Osborne, who has flown back from his holiday in California, will also address the house on the state of the economy.

Even if the police succeed in restoring order to London streets overnight, he won’t have any good news to tell MPs.

The London share market officially entered bear territory yesterday as it slumped to 20 per cent below its February 2011 peak.

Today, the Bank of England is widely expected to slash its growth forecasts for the economy when it publishes its quarterly inflation report.

And that’s before taking into account the damage done by the tumultuous events of the past few days.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London