I am not going to post much yet on events in North London, because I do not understand them. I have a strong urge to sympathise with those rioting as an oppressed underclass, but am well aware that they come from an urban sub-culture which I despise in virtually every aspect, and has no connection to working class tradition or ethics. Nor does this seem genuinely to relate to an embattled ethnic community feeling it is defending itself, as in Broadwater Farm or Bristol. You have to look back to events like the Gordon Riots to find parallels that seem to make any sense. The arson and looting is not justified, full stop.
On the other hand, it is impossible not to note that some of the key looting targets – Aldi, Lidl, JJB sports – are themselves emblematic of our deep, dark social divide. They are places Boris Johnson and David Cameron and most of the aspirant middle classes would not be seen dead in. That the looters come from a deeply ignorant, viciously materialistic, educationless sub-culture that ought to be despised, does not mean that the individuals themselves could never have been different, given opportunities they did not have. It is not to sympathise with the actions of the vicious, to ask how we created them in such numbers.
That police kill people too readily and with too much impunity is undoubtedly true. But that is only the spark. The existence of the gunpowder is the real problem. The existence of a society in which the gulf between rich and poor grows ever wider, and there is never even the remotest prospect of socially productive labour for a great many, was always likely to have these results.
These riots are not an isolated phenomenon; but together with the excesses of the banks and the collapse of public services, are all part of a much wider malaise as the capitalist engine has stalled in a vast mesh of corruption and croneyism.
Interesting comments interesting article,a s you can see by my name I’m disabled my legs are shot, my spine is damaged and I had a stroke and my doctor said blog , if you blog you will help your brain sadly I was not to bright before my stroke.
We always seem to get the same area which tend to be London and this area has unemployment of nearly 9% which you can add a few points to that for the so calld economically inactive to 15%.
You do have a shooting which now looks more and more as what we use to call Blue on Blue, or one officer shooting another and then everyone else looking around to find the reason for the shooting and all firing.
So why the riots because we are use to the police making out it was not them it was him or him, then coming back saying whoops sorry.
The sad fact this looks more and more like people at the bottom feeling again they are being a tareget because of colour race or in fact youth.
But come on we are in the biggest down turn, the sick the poor the disabled are the tragets for government as the cause of this down turn. And to be honest Blair and his brigade have been telling us about the hard pressed middle class now you have Miliband telling us the poor old squeezed middle class.
What we need now is a party of the people not these three tory parties
http://globalciviliansforpeace.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/harlem-millions.jpg?w=400&h=517
Tens of thousands of nice middle class demonstrators carrying “Not In My Name” placards are one thing, rioting youths are another. I know which would scare the proverbial out of me.
MJ
I live backing on to Hattersley and can assure you the kids in the local school all probably think the same and the place is very, very white.
Larry: I deleted your most recent link from The Daily Kos. I find your attacking, sneering style quite frustrating – quite aside from your deliberate holding of views designed to frustrate the blog. I am however inclined to let through comments from you if they are *civil* and *constructive*, despite your theoretical ban.
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(I put a placeholder in your comment, but another mod has deleted your comment entirely. So we appear to be in consensus that you’re disruptive.)
@Robert the Crip, welcome. “Three tory parties” – yes, I agree completely. A Labour party that represents the labour class would be nice!
By the way, here’s Nick Griffin’s contribution to the riot commentary:
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“Riot footage shows it a joint black/Jewish affair. Now that is strange. Wonders of multi culturalism!”
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https://twitter.com/#!/nickgriffinmep/status/100135489859895296
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Unbelievable.
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Here’s another bit of Alf Garnett-esque wisdom:
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Nick Griffin MEP
One other thing: while I have no sympathy for black gangsters, I’d only deport them, not use hollow . . .
point bullets on them. Dum dum rounds v Geneva Convention. Met tough in wrong ways.
Wow. Theresa May breaks off her holiday to return to London to meet police chiefs. Now remind me. Who is in charge of the Met at the moment?
London riots: Theresa May to meet police chiefs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14442935
Jon: just how relevant was Mary’s plug for the Answer Coalition?
“I live backing on to Hattersley and can assure you the kids in the local school all probably think the same and the place is very, very white”
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And have almost all of them actually been stopped and searched by the police? I’d also like to know whether any of these children are having DNA samples taken.
Silly me. One of them is Cressida Dick, formerly of Operation Trident and of Gold Command, Stockwell and Jean Charles de Menezes fame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cressida_Dick
@Craig
“Aldi, Lidl, JJB sports” local targets for local riots.
Were you expecting them to hit Harrods, Fortnum and Masons, Harvey Nichols.
Don’t think you will get many of them in Tottenham.
> Who is in charge of the Met at the moment?
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Errr… Rupert? 😉
Angrysoba: and you know Nick Griffin’s response to the objections to his racism: “You can’t ever say anything bad about Jews in this culture …”
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That’s because them Jews control the media. Griffin even wrote a book exposing them called, “Who Are the Mindbenders?”
“LondonBurning
Not quite sure why stealing adidas trousers and laptops would make anyone proud, I really am not.”
Have as go, Craig; try. It may not be easy. Perhaps the looters see these things as tokens of membership in a community which they look at from the outside, like starving kids peering hungrily through a baker’s window?
In a society in which people are constantly being indoctrinated to honour and respect the tokens of wealth, the display of which is designed to remind the poor of their insignificance and impotence; and in which the accepted wisdom is that there is, for the poor man, only one way out, which is to steal, these people are, surely, just doing what the oligarchs (in making) did in Yeltsin’s Russia. Before they began their progress to the House of Lords.
I would love to live in a world in which people did not steal from each other and make a proud display of their plunder. But I don’t. I live in a world in which the weak are constantly being pillaged and bullied by the strong. Who sometimes forget that, when the stars are aligned in certain ways, the weak might find themselves, temporarily, in a position to do unto others as they have been done by, and join the lap top owners club.
Let’s spare each other the Samuel Smiles meets Monty Python nonsense about how working class communities used to be….they were always much as they are now, which is to say, in periods of political reaction, in which class organisations are in a state of (politically hastened) decay, the criminals have more credibility than the socialists. In fact even the religio-masochists have more followers than the social reformers.
If, as seems quite possible, this affair was triggered by the ‘execution’ of a ‘suspect’ then the angry reaction of the community was not just understandable but laudable. They were discharging a duty to protect themselves- and all of us- from similar fates in the future.
And if, as seems probable, the actual violence began with an illegal assault by police personnel on a distraught young woman, it makes far more sense to assume (in the absence of unbiassed enquiry) that those employing the police prefer violent rioting to purposeful peaceful protest, than that the blame in this matter should be attributed to the ‘rioters.’
How many Youth clubs, how many millions in benefits, how much in educational allowances has Tottenham lost in the past year? How many young people have seen their dreams of University dissolved by the tuition increases? How many have seen their hopes of domestic comfort- their own homes, marriage, steady employment, security within a Full Employment economy- blown away by neo-liberal realities?
As the rich get richer the poor are getting much poorer, absolutely as well as relatively poorer; and, as they get poorer, they become ever more powerless. Nobody listens to them, they have no voices in Parliament, a very large part of society they are regarded as an exotic, sinister swamp beyond the pale, without anything to offer. Deserted by their own political parties, the Trade Unions and Coops, which they built, cuckoos’ nests for others to eat away, the poor are treated shamefully. The Police do what they wish to them. And they have no recourse-the courts are inaccessible, most of the time their neighbours are intimidated and look the other way from flagrant injustices.
No wonder then, that, in certain circumstances there are explosions. There will be many more. They are very ugly but uglier still is the land in which victims have forgotten that they have the capacity to fight back.
Angrysoba, how long ago was Griffin’s book? BNP and EDL support Israel now, don’t they? Did their policy change, or what? Breivik supported Israel and Jews. The attitude of the Far Right to both Jews and Israel seems very convoluted.
You often get looters mingling with genuine protesters, as there are good profits to be had with little risk. Agent provocateurs are also often use to discredit genuine protesters. I suspect there were no agent provocateurs involved here though.
For the record, David Aaronovitch is an irrelevant clown and a complete idiot with very little intelligence. Factual and not abusive at all.
“For the record, David Aaronovitch is an irrelevant clown and a complete idiot with very little intelligence”.
Seconded and carried.
Although I suspect he is not a clown and an idiot, but a rather clever man who knows exactly what he is doing – and moreover, on which side his bread is buttered (with honey and/or treacle on top).
Aaronovitch is brilliant and relevant. Loved his last book.
No, that’s what he thinks, but he really is an irrelevant clown and a complete idiot with very little intelligence. You can trust little Jaded on this one!
Lamby – ‘Aaronovitch is brilliant and relevant. Loved his last book.’
See, what more proof do you want?!
In fact, Aaronovitch does have a practical use. If you want to know what the politically correct, or approved government, line is on any topic whatsoever, you just have to ascertain his opinion. Shazzam! They’re inevitably identical.
Angrysoba, how long ago was Griffin’s book? BNP and EDL support Israel now, don’t they? Did their policy change, or what?
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Yes, they decided to try PR and hide the skinheads and use a heart logo on their pamphlets. It would be foolish to take the BNP at face value and almost all of their sites are still littered with anti-Semitism, general racism and Zionist conspiracy theories.
Jaded, the rule I apply for offensiveness is whether it is personal or not. You’re not replying to Aaranobitch, you’re criticising a public figure. That differs from making unsupported accusations against people who contribute here.
Larry Because unemployment and hopelessness is a key factor here. Mostly black youngsters have no hope of getting a job here just like those in Harlem. Tottenham is in Haringey, the poorest Borough in London.
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‘The London borough of Haringey is often described as an outer London borough with inner city problems. Almost 40 per cent of Haringey’s population live in areas that are amongst the most deprived 10 per cent in England.
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The borough is economically and socially polarised, a consequence of an extensive area of deprivation in the centre and the eastern part of the borough, with more affluent areas in the west. Tottenham is generally the poorest area of Haringey.
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Another characteristic of Haringey is the transience of a significant proportion of the population, again largely concentrated in the areas of deprivation to the east. Also, a large proportion of minority ethnic communities are concentrated in those parts of the borough where the greatest concentrations of disadvantage are found.
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Harlem – Poverty and health
‘The neighborhood suffers from unemployment rates higher than the New York average (generally more than twice as high),[76] and high mortality rates as well. In both cases, the numbers for men have been consistently worse than the numbers for women. Unemployment and poverty in the neighborhood resisted private and governmental initiatives to ameliorate them. In the 1960s, uneducated blacks could find jobs more easily than educated ones could, confounding efforts to improve the lives of people who lived in the neighborhood through education.[77] Infant mortality was 124 per thousand in 1928 (twice the rate for whites).[78] By 1940, infant mortality in Harlem was 5% (one black infant in 20 would die), still much higher than white, and the death rate from disease generally was twice that of the rest of New York. Tuberculosis was the main killer, and four times as prevalent among Harlem blacks than among New York’s white population.[78]
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A 1990 study reported that 15-year-old black women in Harlem had a 65% chance of surviving to age 65, about the same as women in India. Black men in Harlem, on the other hand, had a 37% chance of surviving to age 65, about the same as men in Angola.[79] Infectious diseases and diseases of the circulatory system were to blame, with a variety of contributing factors, including consumption of the deep-fried foods traditional to the South and neighborhood, which may contribute to heart disease.’
Angrysoba, it seems that on the Far Right, Zionism is racism against Jews – give’m a country and send’m there. Didn’t some Nazis support that?
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Angrysoba, given your attitude towards religion, how can you even acknowledge a group called “the Jews”? It seems tantamount to accepting a dogma.
“Aaronovitch is brilliant”
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Brilliant for his sloppy research and his laughably partisan viewpoint. Brilliant therefore at peddling the wrong conspiracy theories. The way he went to town on the one about WMDs in Iraq was quite dazzling.
Mary, I’m glad you answered Yugo’s criticism. I agree that your link was relevant.
Oops, typo. AarOnobitch.
Don’t see what’s so(!) wrong with a bit of looting from some megacorp myself. 🙂