London's Burning

[be-bop]

Here is a comment from my trade union site which makes some valid points,

PCS statement on the UK riots
9 August 2011

Thousands of our members live and work in the communities that have been hit by the vandalism and looting of recent days. Tragically many people have lost their homes, and many more their workplace, potentially their job and income too.

We echo the words of the Fire Brigades Union, “these events illustrate the bravery and commitment of London’s firefighters, and the entire capital will be grateful to them”. Our emergency services in London and other cities have once again shown that they play a vital role in protecting the public.

Public sector workers, from police community support officers to welfare advisers and from teachers to youth workers, will have a huge role to play in rebuilding and in maintaining a sense of community. The government has spent recent months disrespecting these workers and attacking their jobs, pensions and pay; it is time for that to stop and for them to recognise their valuable contribution to society.

As communities clear up, we have to step back and recognise these disturbances did not happen in a vacuum. It is not condoning violence to say that simply dismissing this as 'mindless criminality' is to give up on our responsibility to look for causes and solutions.

Youth unemployment is at its highest level on record, and further and higher education costs are set to soar. Public services are being slashed in many communities with councils cutting youth services and eligibility to housing. Welfare cuts and privatisation mean jobcentres are being closed and benefit cuts are causing anguish and hardship to many.

Our society is more unequal than at any point since the 1930s. There will be those who will call for tougher sentencing and more police powers, but these will not solve the very deep problems facing our country. As PCS has argued, we need investment to create the jobs and build the infrastructure that our communities need.

We should also resist attempts to demonise young people in general. They have been the biggest victims of this recession. The lawlessness of the financial and political elites is a much larger problem that our society must address.

In the coming days and weeks, we must address the complex issues that have led to the recent days' incidents across London and elsewhere, and caused so many to be rightly shocked and appalled.

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Now i have no idea if the riots were in anyway political or just something that got way out of hand but similar riots happened in Greece after some other kid got shot recently and i remember the70's and early 80's and the riots in Brixton, Toxteth and the poll tax riots, seems there was another Tory Govt then also making huge welfare cuts, history repeating itself again, who knows?

[DanaC]

There's also been some trouble in Leeds apparently.

[morethanpretty]

Whats happening is pretty incomprehensible to me. When I was a teenager, or even now, I would never think of random violence as a way to respond to an act of violence by the police, or as a way to respond to government action I don't approve of. I honestly don't see how this is going to help anything at all.
I feel bad for all of the innocent victims of this who are losing their business and sometimes their homes. I can understand it happening once and a mob just losing its ability to think rationally and go berserk, but the fact that its spreading and continuing to happen, shows to me that those involved have no rationality or empathy for those that they are hurting the most....their own peers, regular people just trying to get by.

[morethanpretty]

[DanaC]

The police said he had a gun and fired at them first. Now it would seem he never fired a gun at all. And some witnesses have suggested that the gun which was found at the scene was actually found inside a sock. If that's the case then he may not have had it in his hand at all.

[TheMercenary]

Follow the axiom of Military Intel reports.... the first report is always suspect.

[Big Sarge]

has anyone noticed the racial aspects of this? seems the victim was black and supposedly the majority of rioters are too. seems similar to the riots after the rodney king incident.

btw if somebody points a gun at me, don't expect me to wait to see if it is real or not!!

[grynch]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

has anyone noticed the racial aspects of this? seems the victim was black and supposedly the majority of rioters are too. seems similar to the riots after the rodney king incident.

btw if somebody points a gun at me, don't expect me to wait to see if it is real or not!!

Sarge, that was true for the intial riot(s) but now there is a very mixed race crowd.. mostly kids from what I see on TV, many simply out for a bit of... what was kid on TV called......fun.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by grynch

Sarge, that was true for the intial riot(s) but now there is a very mixed race crowd.. mostly kids from what I see on TV, many simply out for a bit of... what was kid on TV called......fun.

I can kind of understand what they mean by that. I think we dismiss this as simple criminality at our peril. And just because they can't necesarily articulate their grievance doesn't mean there isn't one. Whatever they think it is that they are doing, they are definately expressing something that runs very deep and has been boiling under the surface for a while now.

About three or four months ago, my ward colleagues and I were discussing a local housing estate in our ward. We were considering ways in which the various partner organisations in the area could try and off-set the growing sense of alienation and helplessness that was starting to set in. It feels like a powder keg, and one of the things that makes it feel that way is how the young people of the estate are starting to behave. There's just an intangible sense of escalation in tension. An electricity in the air, part hopelessness, part excitable destruction.

Obviously we were discussing some more concrete issues, and expected issues as the cuts start to bite and people start losing their homes and as unemployment starts to rise alongside shrinking assistance programmes. But we'd all noticed that frisson.

I was 18 when the country went into recession and the housing boom bust. I'd spent the previous few years being educated in a system that was underfunded to the point that pupils had to share text books, 3 to a book. With the flow of classes intermittently disturbed by teacher strikes. I watched tv as a kid and there were always strikes. And people shouting at each other across picket lines. Police attacking miners, miners shouting at scabs. The army on fire-fighting duty in the Green Goddess, because the Firemen were on strike. Far-right parties marching in town centres and their bootboys spraying swastikas on walls.

Major miscarriages of justice and the police implicated in racist, or homophobic killings. Trust in the police was not high. You trusted the guy who walked about your neighbourhood, but the organisation was not trusted and the racism of the institution was pretty widely accepted.

There were no jobs to go to. What jobs were on offer were awful, low-paid, insecure and hard fought for. And politicians on the telly were all sternly telling us off for not having one.

Meanwhile, the consumer culture was in full swing. The gap between the haves and have nots was at an all time high (now massively expanded). Tv and movies, adverts and schoolfriends, all high-lighted that gap constantly. Shiny, shiny, success and happiness cheek by jowl with hard-edged poverty. Somewhere in the middle where most of us lived things just felt really insecure.

At 18 was a bit of a nihilist. I wanted to tear it all down. Fuck the whole thing up so it has to be built anew. I'd have been watching these reports with a kind of horrified satisfaction back then. It would have felt right. Like, the world really is fucked up, and now we're just seeing what that really looks like. Because this is what it actually feels like.



And I remember the sense of escalation and *thinks* energy and invincibility and rightness that enveloped me when the poll tax demo turned into a riot. Scary at first but then, completely right.

This may not look political. And to many of the individuals involved it may not feel 'political'. But it is. It isn't the articulate political expression of a demonstration against political policies, it's more of a primal yell.

[DanaC]

How can this be happening in England? At some point that's a question that requires some attention.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...ngham-14471405

Three men killed in Birmingham.

Pictures from around the country. These are tiny pockets but they are happening in several major cities. The picture of Salford makes me want to cry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14471098

I saw a couple on tv being interviewed. They'd come here from Sri Lanka in the early 90s and built up a grocery store. Thye had building's insurance, but not contents insurance (maybe they were only just keeping in profit and couldn't afford it, i dunno.) and their store has been looted of everything. Including the tills. They've lost in excess of £50k and are now ruined.

They showed on the news yesterday people being helped out of burning buildings, one person seemed to be leaping from the flames.

Some of the rioters are as young as 10 and 11.

[Trilby]

Excellent analysis Dana.

[SamIam]

Thank you, Dana, for helping those of us across the pond to better understand what's happening.

[footfootfoot]

Dana, from the little I can gather about life in England it seems that there is a huge gulf between the haves and the have nots, there also seems to be a fairly strong degree of learned helplessness among the lower class. I can imagine that after a point if one feels there is no hope or point or chance of improving one's lot, then it's every man for himself and god against all.

again, I base this on nothing but inference.

[Big Sarge]

Interesting photo I came across....

[sexobon]

All this trouble, just because the Brits refuse to wear tin foil hats while solar flares generate interference affecting the minds of susceptible citizens. I watched the videos of the riots and noted that not one rioter was wearing a tin foil hat. The facts of the matter are evident.