British Riots: Elites "Shocked" The Poor Are Rising Up Against Brutal Austerity Measures

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Laurie Penny

British Riots: Elites "Shocked" The Poor Are Rising Up Against Brutal Austerity Measures
Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it.

August 9, 2011 |


This article is crossposted on Laurie Penny's blog, Penny Red.


I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?

In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator has opened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in any doubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That much should be obvious to anyone who watched Croydon burn down on the BBC. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder 'mindless, mindless'. Nick Clegg denounced it as 'needless, opportunistic theft and violence'. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge - declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was "utterly unacceptable." The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. In one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/world/151952/british_riots%3A_elites_%22shocked%22_the_poor_are_rising_up_against_brutal_austerity_measures/

[dipsydoodle]

1. Drivel

.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alarimer]

7. In order to correct the problem we have to know WHY.

Of course you can bury your head in the sand and prefer to blame the powerless. But they are powerless for a reason. 20% unemployment among young people is no joke. Personally I wish they had taken a few bankers hostage rather than setting fire to stuff, if only because it would have gotten the attention sooner.

[bhikkhu]

8. I agree somewhat...

I think the truth of the matter is that a whole generation has been sold the hope for a life that will never be delivered - not for the great majority, whether in England, or Egypt, or the US. If one believes in the possibility of endless economic growth, then perhaps it is just a matter of dysfunctional politics and mismanagement of things; but if you see that energy and resources have real limits (not to mention real consequences, if you consider climate change), and we are up against those limits even trying to maintain the current rates of economic activity, then "doing with less" is something everyone will have to get used to.

I don't think governments have done much of a job with that message, and certainly it goes against the grain of any corporate perspective on things. Interestingly, the chaos of current stock market plunge is, at its core if you read the analysis, basically a correction to a lower expectation of economic growth.

[oldironside]

10. Agree 100%

I've never seen such rubbish posted here as over the last few days.

[Number23]

11. Agreed. I think it's interesting that most international DUers are disgusted by this behavior

And the comparisons of these people to the protestors in Egypt, Syria and even the Civil Rights Movement shows a cluelessness that is beyond inane and ridiculous.

[BlueMTexpat]

14. Also agreed. And as an international DUer with good British friends

who are not just left-leaning but Very Much of the left, I can tell you that they too are disgusted.

The behavior is disgusting and is most harmful to those in the most vulnerable communities.

Frankly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it isn't being orchestrated by elements of the BNP - the group from which the murdering right-wing thug from Norway took his inspiration. http://www.bnp.org.uk/

[Number23]

16. Wow. Thanks for that link

I had heard about the group but hadn't read anything about them. Terrifying. And of course they already have a 'solution' to the riots.

Here in Australia, the coverage has centered on the parents of many of the looters saying how ashamed they are of their children. Sympathy is also high for the father of one of the boys killed by a group of looters.

Front page of the Sydney Morning Herald is disproving the claim that many of the rioters are "underclass." http://www.smh.com.au/world/stereotype-of-the-underclass-does-not-apply-20110811-1iowa.html

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I loathe them for destroying their neighborhoods and community homes/businesses

but given this, I understand and would encourage them to relocate their outrage to Downing Street.

They are out of control hoodlums, but you have yet attempted to address the root cause of the issue, David.

Let them eat cake?

[TxVietVet]

4. Let them burn and loot the finanacial markets.

Maybe someone will see that their globaloney could be the cause of it all. They are obviously not creating jobs, like they are not creating jobs here. Store bought democracy isn't doing so well. Putting earrings on that pig don't help.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[starroute]

6. I think this falls under the heading of "Getting the Mule's Attention"

http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=192

A man sold a mule to a farmer and promised that as long as the farmer was nice and polite to the mule, the animal would perform any task without hesitation. For months the farmer politely tried to get the mule to work but the stubborn animal wouldn’t do a thing. Finally, fed up, the farmer called the man who sold him the animal and complained that no matter how polite he was he got no cooperation. The man told him he’d come over to help.

The man showed up at the farm and asked the farmer what he wanted the mule to do. The farmer said he wanted the mule to plow his field. As the farmer watched, the salesman walked up to the mule hit him on the head with a two-by-four — hard. He then calmly and politely asked the mule to please plow the farmer’s field. The mule went right to work.

Shocked, the farmer exclaimed to the salesman that he told him to be nice and polite to the mule to get him to do anything, yet he had hit him on the head with a chuck of wood. The salesman replied that he was polite, but he first had to get the mule’s attention.

[dorksied]

9. I am JUST enough of an anarchist at heart...

... to hope that this happens in the USA should the Repubs and their extreme anti government austerity ideology takes hold.

Signs, slogans and screaming send a message.

So does a Molotov.

"No one expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter."

Best part of the article.

[GliderGuider]

12. Brilliant insights and great writing. Recommended without hesitation. /nt

[fasttense]

13. They did it peacefully and no one paid attention.

"In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.""

So to all of you who think this is simply about stealing some crap from a few shop keepers, listen to the people themselves. What are they saying about the riots?

[Mosaic]

15. Another excerpt from the article

No one expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.

Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.