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primitivepeople at Thoughts on #LondonRiots, reposted with permission.
I am sharing this because, as I toldprimitivepeople, I think that understanding what is happening in London right now is terrifically important in the UK, but elsewhere as well. Furthermore, I think he's hit the nail on the head in terms of where the anger and backlash is really coming from. There are some of the same pressures building here, the same frustrations and inequities, and it would be really nice to imagine that we might learn from what we are seeing in the UK. Slim chance, I'll allow, but it would be nice...
primitivepeople at Thoughts on #LondonRiots, reposted with permission.A few months ago, I visited the rather excellent army surplus store in Coldstream, where I bought a pair of equally excellent boots. The owner was highly informed and enthusiastic and we spent ages chatting to him - he obviously thought we were into the same stuff as him, as he invited us to have a look around his basement, which was full of genuine Nazi relics. Oo-er.
Anyway, we ended up talking to him about using the army to control civil unrest, which seems like a very relevant topic at the moment. The scenes from London are pretty scary, that's for sure, and there's calls for action from frightened and angry people. A lot of people think we should send in the troops.
Oh, dear me, no. The opinion of the shop owner, and several other military people I've met, is "sure, send them in, if you're willing to risk a bloodbath". The military are highly skilled and trained and good at a lot of things, and I take my hat off to anyone willing to risk their lives for their country, but they are NOT good at crowd control, and will shoot first and ask questions later.
The authorities in Detroit sent the army in to deal with rioters in 1967, and 43 people ended up dead. Closer to home, Bloody Sunday was the extremely ugly result of the army dealing with unarmed protesters. Do we seriously want to see this happen?
I don't think curfews will work either, especially because there's a whole range of legitimate reasons for being on the streets at night. When I worked on the Underground, I used to work nights fairly often and would be travelling to work at 10.30pm - would I risk arrest for doing that?
Thing is, I'm not sure there's any easy answers for this. What's happened is worrying because it's so sustained and seems to be getting worse. People have worked out that the police do not have the resources to deal with so many separate serious incidents, and that's encouraging more of it. Apparently, every single police cell in London is full and arrested people have had to be sent to neighbouring police forces.
I've lived through eras of serious civil disorder before - the Poll Tax riots being pretty nasty - but this is unprecedented.
I think it deserves closer analysis than most people are giving it, though. I know there's absolutely no excuse for it, especially things like torching the Reeves furniture store in Croydon, and also making people homeless on a wave of wanton destruction - but, criminality as it may be, we need to ask why it's happened, and why it's out of control. People seem to think that by trying to understand it, you're condoning it, which is ridiculous - how do you solve a problem if you don't know why it's happening?
The only thing that surprises me - apart from the scale of it - is that it hasn't happened sooner. This has been brewing for thirty years. If you implement economic policies that sharply increase inequality, and take away people's stake in society, and then go on to treat these disenfranchised people like a feral mob, you shouldn't act surprised when they act like a feral mob. The government has spent so long demonising those at the bottom of the pile that they feel like they have nothing to lose. Youth unemployment has shot through the roof, local services have been cut back to the bone, EMA has been withdrawn, university is completely unaffordable...the list goes on. When you can't see a way out, you're creating tinderbox conditions, and over the last three days we've seen the results - bored, frustrated and angry people with no legitimate channels for their grievances, who feel they have no-one on their side, go crazy and do some stupid things.
I'm not condoning it, of course. These people are picking the wrong targets, and the phrase "shitting in your own back yard" springs to mind. There's a lot of innocent victims out there who have lost everything and are very unlikely to get any help from insurance companies, who conveniently exclude civil disorder from most of their policies. This is a terrible and distressing thing to see.
The anger needs to be directed at the people in charge, who have spent decades ignoring and tolerating the social problems that have resulted from a neo-conservative, money-grabbing agenda that has stolen everything away from a lot of people. The sheer lack of pride and ownership people feel towards things in this country is something I find very depressing. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of just a few people, who flaunt it regularly, it's no surprise people feel they've had enough. Looting does nothing to make politicians take notice and do anything worthy, but when they've spent years telling us that the market and the profit motive are the only things that matter, is it any surprise that people measure their worth in material terms?
I often wondered if the 2008 banking crisis, and the events that followed, would start making society collapse, and perhaps it's belatedly happening. If David Cameron had any sense, he'd be bricking it right now and trying to come up with sensible solutions that put power back into people's hands, and gave them something worthwhile to live for, but I very much doubt he'll do it. He'll continue steering the course that successfully sucks money out of the pockets of the people at the bottom, while barricading the rich safely within a compound of low taxes and no regulation. Then he'll act surprised when the angry mob scales the barricades of Downing Street and brays for his blood.
We need jobs. We need hope. We need decent, affordable housing. We need justice. We need pride. We need proper public services. We don't need the army on the streets, and we don't need Etonian PMs lecturing us about how naughty we all are. This is serious, and it should be making all of us think about what sort of society we want.
Is this government going to help us get it? I doubt it somehow. :(
Anyway, we ended up talking to him about using the army to control civil unrest, which seems like a very relevant topic at the moment. The scenes from London are pretty scary, that's for sure, and there's calls for action from frightened and angry people. A lot of people think we should send in the troops.
Oh, dear me, no. The opinion of the shop owner, and several other military people I've met, is "sure, send them in, if you're willing to risk a bloodbath". The military are highly skilled and trained and good at a lot of things, and I take my hat off to anyone willing to risk their lives for their country, but they are NOT good at crowd control, and will shoot first and ask questions later.
The authorities in Detroit sent the army in to deal with rioters in 1967, and 43 people ended up dead. Closer to home, Bloody Sunday was the extremely ugly result of the army dealing with unarmed protesters. Do we seriously want to see this happen?
I don't think curfews will work either, especially because there's a whole range of legitimate reasons for being on the streets at night. When I worked on the Underground, I used to work nights fairly often and would be travelling to work at 10.30pm - would I risk arrest for doing that?
Thing is, I'm not sure there's any easy answers for this. What's happened is worrying because it's so sustained and seems to be getting worse. People have worked out that the police do not have the resources to deal with so many separate serious incidents, and that's encouraging more of it. Apparently, every single police cell in London is full and arrested people have had to be sent to neighbouring police forces.
I've lived through eras of serious civil disorder before - the Poll Tax riots being pretty nasty - but this is unprecedented.
I think it deserves closer analysis than most people are giving it, though. I know there's absolutely no excuse for it, especially things like torching the Reeves furniture store in Croydon, and also making people homeless on a wave of wanton destruction - but, criminality as it may be, we need to ask why it's happened, and why it's out of control. People seem to think that by trying to understand it, you're condoning it, which is ridiculous - how do you solve a problem if you don't know why it's happening?
The only thing that surprises me - apart from the scale of it - is that it hasn't happened sooner. This has been brewing for thirty years. If you implement economic policies that sharply increase inequality, and take away people's stake in society, and then go on to treat these disenfranchised people like a feral mob, you shouldn't act surprised when they act like a feral mob. The government has spent so long demonising those at the bottom of the pile that they feel like they have nothing to lose. Youth unemployment has shot through the roof, local services have been cut back to the bone, EMA has been withdrawn, university is completely unaffordable...the list goes on. When you can't see a way out, you're creating tinderbox conditions, and over the last three days we've seen the results - bored, frustrated and angry people with no legitimate channels for their grievances, who feel they have no-one on their side, go crazy and do some stupid things.
I'm not condoning it, of course. These people are picking the wrong targets, and the phrase "shitting in your own back yard" springs to mind. There's a lot of innocent victims out there who have lost everything and are very unlikely to get any help from insurance companies, who conveniently exclude civil disorder from most of their policies. This is a terrible and distressing thing to see.
The anger needs to be directed at the people in charge, who have spent decades ignoring and tolerating the social problems that have resulted from a neo-conservative, money-grabbing agenda that has stolen everything away from a lot of people. The sheer lack of pride and ownership people feel towards things in this country is something I find very depressing. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of just a few people, who flaunt it regularly, it's no surprise people feel they've had enough. Looting does nothing to make politicians take notice and do anything worthy, but when they've spent years telling us that the market and the profit motive are the only things that matter, is it any surprise that people measure their worth in material terms?
I often wondered if the 2008 banking crisis, and the events that followed, would start making society collapse, and perhaps it's belatedly happening. If David Cameron had any sense, he'd be bricking it right now and trying to come up with sensible solutions that put power back into people's hands, and gave them something worthwhile to live for, but I very much doubt he'll do it. He'll continue steering the course that successfully sucks money out of the pockets of the people at the bottom, while barricading the rich safely within a compound of low taxes and no regulation. Then he'll act surprised when the angry mob scales the barricades of Downing Street and brays for his blood.
We need jobs. We need hope. We need decent, affordable housing. We need justice. We need pride. We need proper public services. We don't need the army on the streets, and we don't need Etonian PMs lecturing us about how naughty we all are. This is serious, and it should be making all of us think about what sort of society we want.
Is this government going to help us get it? I doubt it somehow. :(
I am sharing this because, as I told
primitivepeople, I think that understanding what is happening in London right now is terrifically important in the UK, but elsewhere as well. Furthermore, I think he's hit the nail on the head in terms of where the anger and backlash is really coming from. There are some of the same pressures building here, the same frustrations and inequities, and it would be really nice to imagine that we might learn from what we are seeing in the UK. Slim chance, I'll allow, but it would be nice...