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There Is a Context to London's Riots that Can't Be Ignored
Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture
Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.
The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.
One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.
Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)
Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.
As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllThe Chicago School Doctrine... the insidious message that went 'round the world to bring about the same deplorable conditions wherever it took root. Apart from the fires, the articles speaks of conditions that are also in evidence here, in the Homeland Security state.
Some would not be satisifed till they hold the power of pharaohs... and they happen to be the same ones who own corporations, the media, banks, and the strings to the MIC... suggesting real fun for all...
Only 100 times? The study cited in the article is not comparing the power elite, ie the capitalists, with the masses, but the petit bourgeoise with the working class.
But otherwise, a fairly good article.
If you look at the average net worth of the top 10% , that is skewed up by multibillionaires, the 100X is understated. If you look at the bottom rungs of the upper 10%, the 10X comparison is valid if you limit your comparison to the poor that have SOME net worth ("the poorest" have zero net worth).
A more revealing and relevant comparison is income levels of managers and executives in the US and UK financial industries whose incomes, prior to the ascent of Ronny Raygun and Maggot Thatcher 30 years ago, were about equal to managers and executives incomes in other industries...manufacturing, health care, construction, transportation, etc.
For the past 20 years (or more) the incomes of financial industry managers and executives have indeed been 50X to 100X the incomes of their counterparts in other industries.
Indeed. Average is a poor measure when there is bi-modal distribution.
At today's counterpunch website, under " Website of the day" is a BBC interview with Darcus Howe. He helps give a perspective that is rarely seen in the media, it's an "insurrection and not a riot". And as the caption says, it's an interview that won't be replayed by the BBC.
Darcus Howe was also interviewed on DemocracyNow today.
Through the 16th, 17th, and 18th, and even into the 19th century, riots were very common in England. People would riot over the price of bread, and the government would make the price go down. Same with the price of other commodities. I don't know that anyone has done a study on this, but I think these periodic riots that gained positive results for the rioters may have forestalled an actual revolution in England, like occurred in France. Slowly but surely, the English gained more and more through localized violence. Maybe they will gain again.
Interesting. Support is provided by the rise of the Labour Party. Effectively, in a still class based state, the working classes were sent off to fight in World War I. Upon returning home after the war, they were treated in the class based manner as preceding the war. This triggered the reaction which became Labour. Effectively, it was to express, "You dirty rotten b______ds, you sent us off to fight your war, and upon our return, do not have the good graces to even tip us your hat!"
Actually, the modern Labour Party had its roots in the Independent Labour Party founded in the early 1890s, but it only began to get representation in Parliament with the collapse of the Liberal Party in the late 19th Century. The rapid growth of the Labour Party in Parliament, to the point that it was voted into office after World War 2, was largely the result of the Great Depression, the Jarrow hunger marches, the very real threat of bloody revolution and the return of the troops (after World War 2) who were determined that, THIS TIME, they really would have the country "fit for heros" which had been cynically held out to their fathers in 1918--and then yanked away.
Good analysis. I especially liked this sentence:
"Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures."
I've been thinking in terms of "what is the spark that starts the uprising." Now I'm thinking there won't be just one thing, but that many, many injustices committed across economic and political lines will each contain a spark, and then the fire will catch and the revolution will begin.
I think the wealthy and political elite are unnerved, but being fat and lazy, they aren't really aware of what might happen. If they were fully aware, they would stop these draconian cuts that will trigger further unrest, for the sake of their own well-being and security. Then again, the wealthy and political elite may have riches beyond our imagination, but they certainly don't possess any common sense.
If you are right, and I fear you are, when change has been suppressed for hundreds of years and it finally breaks out it's like the French Revolution. Nobody is safe.
This is like an earthquake that everybody knows is coming, but this is not the big one. This is merely a tremor. The big one could happen at any time. And it is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'. Unfortunately this time it is not merely the French or the Russians but the entire globe that is headed for revolution at breakneck speed.
The news media don't seem to notice, or if they do they dare not admit it for fear of hastening the blood bath. The rich could prevent this. After all, most, but not all of the blood will be working class.
Was I right or what about racism and poverty as well as police brutality being in the mix in London?
The American elites have learned a few things since the French Revolution. One is that you can always launch another war and gin up the USA! USA! USA! response. Any dissent becomes treason, if not legally then socially and politically. Works every time, particularly as we now maintain a "volunteer" military which, as an added bonus, is full of poor sods who can't find work or afford higher education without joining up. That was the lesson of Vietnam.
Many people are getting wise to that shtick.
You’re operating under the assumption that the elites fear social unrest for their own protection, and that’s a big assumption. I happen to believe that they have very carefully studied the operations of revolt and have decided that this is a most propitious one, as is any revolt likely to come out of the US based on the fury of the poor, the outrage of those who seek justice, and the dim future we offer our children. This can easily be spun into fear of and antipathy toward the poor, for one thing; a criminalizing of the noncompliant, for another; and pave the way for greater and greater cessation of civil liberties, for a third. I don’t think they’re worried about people storming the gates.
Reading responses to articles on the British riots, sadly I find matters, "spun into fear of and antipathy toward the poor, for one thing; a criminalizing of the non-compliant, for another." Some of the commentary on Pennie Quinton's accompanying CommonDreams article, "Running Through Riotous London," illustrate this. As for, "people storming the gates," well that is always a problematic matter. My suspicion is neither Louis XVI nor Tsar Nicholas II expected the "people storming the gates," and both behaved accordingly. When the "people storming the gates" happens, everyone is taken by surprise, except for the pundits, who always have 20/20 hindsight.
Astute observation leftown.
I ran into this phenomenon while studying the Fukushima situation and the ongoing "kill" through radiation. Some commentators claim it is a NWO-inspired operation, but how could this be if those folks know what the real effects of radiation are? Are they stupid?
Who wants to live in a granite bunker for the rest of their life? (Their children and grandchildren will have to live in that same bunker and never step out, and so on, for thousands of years).
So, the answer to are-they-stupid is yes, but also ill-informed - and that even includes Obama who, (quoting a certain well-known nuclear engineer) "...has terrible advisors." They all think there is a kind of "acceptable risk" to all the leaking nuclear plants in the world and have currently shut down monitoring and readings worldwide (almost on the same date).
So, this degree of global collusion does exist and may prove the existence of a private global club at the top which controls governments (the same way TEPCO and the yakuza control the Japanese government). Citizen groups are now springing up all over the world to try and get geiger and other readings from air, water, ocean, fish, soil, vegetables - but nobody can get any information out of any government.
The elite in the U.S. and Britain, with a wink and a smug-designer-drug-politician-i-know-more-than-you-do-and-can-get-the-cops-to-beat-you-up kind of look think they're being awfully smart by funding new reactors.
We have the same thing here: no attempt at fine-tuning the analysis of cause and a predisposition to act the bully.
The they're-only-thugs-and-criminals attitude means that at least someone has got their attention. Hopefully, the learning curve as to the real cause and intent will be surmounted as time goes on but the "stupid" bit has to be hurdled first.
I think the word 'protest' nails it. They may also be unwittingly (or wittingly) picking up on the the vibe from people-protests elsewhere in the world. They don't need Blackberries to do this - shouting over the garden fence is about the best unencrypted private peer-to-peer network there is.
I saw some fat cat with a patrician tone and his nose in the air standing in a London street and announcing that searching for socio-economic roots to the riots was ridiculous: "These people are common criminals."
I was reminded of a Marie Antoinette-like Herbert Hoover watching demonstrations from his office window and wondering aloud why those people didn't go get a job.
We, over here, bear approximately the same relationship to England, as does Ireland-to-England. That's what everyone misses (who isn't self-consciously an Irish-American), and that's why the harsher measures are used over here. We're colonial peons in the eyes of city-of-london ( THEIR wallstreet AND senior partner in the global financier oligarchy). This is NOT to be confused with the English nation (google the venetian party),who have the same fight on their hands as we do.
Simon Schama has written a convincing work on the beginnings of the French Revolution. It was neither the "people storming the gates of the Versailles palace" nor the budding middle class but some dissatisfied aristocrats in liege with "troisiemes" who spearheaded the revolution. There was very little looting and arson during the early days and very little when the truly hungry masses began to get involved. Every comparison of what is happening in London with true revolutions is ridiculous. Revolutions are political affairs which are in nearly every case well prepared by a political elite or when they break out more spontaneously as recently on "Tahrir Square" in Cairo very quickly result in political awareness. What is happening in London and other English cities is not revolution. In fact, I do not think that there is even a valid explanation other than "they could do this because there were more of them than police". This is a leaderless apolitical mob which will as always cause less than more freedom and justice. Because of this there will be absolutely zero transfer of power from the "corporations, banks, media" in England to the less powerful classes. None. Zilch. The real danger for England is that its small but well-organized fascist groups, supported by "corporations, banks, and media" will co-opt these mobs for their objectives. A true revolution, if there will be one in "Merry Olde England", will be led by upper middle-class students together with politically aware and educated working class. I hope that will happen soon. I hope that they will understand that they must ruthlessly suppress any mob rioting, arson, and looting because their revolution will lose broad popular support and fail if they don't.
"A true revolution, if there will be one in "Merry Olde England", will be led by upper middle-class students together with politically aware and educated working class."
I don't know if it will be an either/or situation. The violent and the nonviolent protests might occur together: People whose families don't have enough to eat will not wait to be led by "upper middle class students" and an "educated working class." Their anger is different from the anger of those who still have food and shelter, yet feel betrayed and powerless. Because the elites have stolen from both the impoverished and those with means, there might be side-by-side revolutions.
I think none of us--including the government and the wealthy 2%--know when spontaneous revolution will occur or what form it will take, but I think there will come a time when all people who call themselves good citizens and good human beings will feel compelled to make their grievances public.
Violence of any type has no place in non-violent protest. Violence will do only one thing: justify a violent retribution.
"Violent protest" is not a revolution. It is just that, violent protest. During the existence of the Confederate States of America there were food riots by truly hungry, armed women. If you are hungry you steal food. You do not steal TV sets, clothing, shoes, blackberries, etc. Point me to a single looting of a supermarket for food and not for beer. Then I will accept that at least some of the hungry Brits were trying to feed themselves and their families. Most of the looters looked pretty well fed to me.
Shows how much you know about living on the street Crowsnest. When you're homeless, you have to work hard and be imaginative.
That means stealing TV sets - to exchange for money or food. That or starve. TV sets are not TV sets, they're money, barter.
To say that these people are not truly hungry is rather too much of an assumption. You can slap a hungry person around as much as you want, and shout at them that they're not hungry, but eventually you'll realise, and you won't like yourself afterwards.
I'd have to agree. This is nothing but a group of overstimulated adolescent males thinking they've been given carte blanche to misbehave, rob and pillage. This has nothing to do with a real social revolution. It's mob mentality at it's worst.
Spot on, if you had written "unequal societies" (and left out the ad hominem attack).
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/marek.kohn/unequal.html
""social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world."
That's straight talk - and it's a relief to see it stated. But when rest of the main media talks of how "it's incomprehensible that people can be such vandals", and even The Guardian runs front page with how the riots "sparks debate over reduction in police numbers", this article's sane message easily drowns in the insanity. - And that's the main descriptions named "insanity", not the riots themselves, althoug they're full of emotional insanity too. But even if the emotions run insane, the impulse triggering the emotions is not.
Police repression in the west is a fact unacknowledged in the public sphere of the main media. That denial can only cause problems.
"There Is a Context to London's Riots that Can't Be Ignored", Nina Power claims. The main problem is that it can be and has been ignored, by denial. And there's only the degree of destruction to society to determine how far it can keep being denied and ignored.
When the ignorers can no longer function due to the destruction from their denials, the denial will end. As the direction of the current attitudes point, it won't be before.
This was from Siouxrose and is worth repeating:
"The Chicago School Doctrine... the insidious message that went 'round the world to bring about the same deplorable conditions wherever it took root. Apart from the fires, the articles speaks of conditions that are also in evidence here, in the Homeland Security state.
Some would not be satisifed till they hold the power of pharaohs... and they happen to be the same ones who own corporations, the media, banks, and the strings to the MIC... suggesting real fun for all..."
What struck me was just how close the UK situation was to the US situation. Yet in the USA most of the protests go unreported, ignored unless those protests turn violent. Here, where even with Murdoch's power there are still independent news sources, you did get full reporting of every one of the events described above.
The American Media tries to make the place look like Disneyland.
Consider that the oligarchs favorite instrument of domination is the totaliatarian corporation; private tyrannies run like ruthless kingdoms that are, in many cases, richer, more powerful and influential than entire countries.
.
These private tyrannies are almost entirely unaccountable to the public yet exert massive control over our lives ... even if we're not directly employed by one. The media, the economic system, the food supply ... and even into the "public sphere" they rig elections, purchase politicians, write their own legislation ....
.
The pharoahs could only wish they had possessed the power of the capitalists.
The biggest context is post colonial immigration and de-industrialization amid the movement to an overly financialized economy, which like america, is producing poverty and despair for the many. Running a society for the un-common greed always leads to consequences.
Marx 101.
Not to mention that the English are more racist than American southerners!
While the British government's focus "is getting on top of the situation, making sure that the streets are safe again, getting people into court and getting them behind bars where appropriate" (BBC - Cameron), - there's really not much chance that the social pressure behind the rioting is going to abate and the situation improve.
The denial increases, the suppression increases, the pressure increases. Expect more blow-outs.
"When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people."
I find it hard to believe that in not one case was a police officer at fault.
Once upon a time English Bobby's did not carry guns. Ask yourself why that changed, then write again.
This worth watching - eerie similarities:
History Repeats: Detroit Riots of 1967
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHfJFWxz4T8&feature=digest
[15 min video]