People have been in touch with me asking about the riots going on in the UK. Unsurprisingly, information about the context and background seems to have been thin on the ground, and pushed aside in favour of the many striking photos of London (and now Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other places) burning.
And is has been burning. None of what I have to say is meant to belittle the state that the affected areas have been left in. Many are completely gutted. People have been left homeless, without livelihood, injured, and dead. But everyone seems to be forgetting that something like mass rioting doesn't happen for no reason, no matter how badly it devolves. I don't claim to be an expert, and this post is meant only to inform those people back home who've been asking about what's going on. I'll link to some good, informative articles at the bottom, too.
Begin at the beginning. That's a hard one. Real life isn't a story, not some neat linear narrative.
The "beginning" that most people are looking for, in this case, is this: where the riots started, when, and why. Again, not as easy as you might think to answer.
Here are some variants on that answer:
1. The bare-bones facts.
Last Thursday, a man named Mark Duggan was shot and killed by a police bullet. He was black, and from a poor area of London. Officers originally claimed that he fired first - later forensic investigation has shown that he never fired any weapon, and that the shot claimed to have been made by him was from a police weapon.
On Saturday, there was a peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station - park vigil for Duggan, part call for justice over his death. Despite starting off harmless enough, something got triggered in that crowd (unconfirmed reports cite a confrontation between a teenager and a police officer), and the violence and vandalism started. It began with the torching of two patrol cars. Riot police and officers on horseback were sent out to deal with the crowd, which responded with further violence. Eventually, the vandalism started to spread throughout Tottenham. Rioters began setting buildings and vehicles - including a double decker bus - alight, throwing petrol bombs, and looting shops. This continued throughout Sunday, with most of the violence staying local to North-East London, in Tottenham and Enfield.
Monday is when things start to spread throughout London, and the looting and vandalism becomes completely impossible for the police to deal with. Croydon, Clapham, Brixton, Ealing, Peckham, Lewisham, and Hackney are all sites of vandalism, fires, looting, and/or confrontations with the police. There are a few minor issues reported in other areas, but these are the hot spots. It is also the first night that any sign of the troubles spreading beyond the capital is given, with few minor incidents in Nottingham reported. Something to note, here, for those people who don't know London well: every single area majorly affected is primarily working class, with a long history of being both poor and racially mixed; many, like Brixton, also have a history of racial and class tensions erupting. Eventually, though, the unrest does move into better off areas near to the flash points - Islington, for example.
Tuesday day sees a massive cleanup effort by local residents of affected areas, and Tuesday night is much calmer in London, probably due at least partly to an unprecedented level of police presence (16000) in the streets, and threats of harsh punishments. People throughout the city are sent home early whether they work in affected area or not, and businesses are closed and boarded up. There are groups of primarily young men gathered in different areas to "protect their communities," and the motives behind them seem varied - chillingly, there is at least one group of white vigilantes on the prowl, chasing Asian youth and shouting various slurs. Late into the night, unrest seems to erupt again in the previous areas though to a lesser extent than on Monday. Tuesday is also the night that riots really kick off throughout the country - Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and other cities all report vandalism and looting throughout their cities, with at least one police station set on fire.
Today, people in London seem a lot calmer during the day, though we've yet to see how the night will go. PM David Cameron has okayed the use of baton rounds by police if necessary, as well as water cannons. Accused rioters have been appearing in court all day - the number of people arrested in London alone is now over 800, and 251 so far have been charged. Courts are staying open all night to process the sheer amount.
2. The background
The fact of the matter is, anyone who's genuinely surprised by these riots is either an idiot, or willingly blind. I've been living in London since September, and there's been blatant unrest here since then - protest upon protest, including the one I took part in in March. Some of these escalated into violence and vandalism, and thus caught the attention of the media. Others went almost completely unremarked upon. All of them have had absolutely no effect on the government. There's only so long people who are angry and disenfranchised will let themselves be ignored until they just explode. London's been a classic pressure cooker situation.
NBC reports, via Laurie Penny:
"A young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:The gap between the rich and the poor in Britain has been growing for several decades now, starting, arguably, with the Thatcher years. The Labour government was just as bad for the poor, invested as it became in big business and neo-liberalism. And its not getting any better. In an attempt to fix the national deficit, the Conservative government is cutting spending left, right, and centre, making life even harder for those who already found it hard. The people baring the brunt of it are young, poor, and many are people of colour - in short, people already written off by society. People who have grown up not only having nothing, but being consistently told that this means that they are nothing.
“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.”
Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.’’
Again, I'm not condoning vandalism, violence, or looting, but it's hard to say it's not happening for a reason. Many of the people involved may be unsure of the politics behind their actions, but that doesn't make those actions any less political. Without condoning the actions themselves, I can understand the motivation behind them; as Owen Hatherley said on his Twitter:
it's an incoherent, horrible scream from those who are justifiably furious
3. Class War
Let's talk about some success stories in the UK, shall we? In particular, two distinct examples of very big, very current success, which I've chosen both for those reasons, and for me being/having been a fan of them myself, to even out any bias: Mumford & Sons and Benedict Cumberbatch. Both are very talented acts, there's no denying that. Both are also undeniably posh. Why does that matter? Well, if it was just them, it wouldn't. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of those who are successful in Britain come from well-to-do or at least middle class backgrounds.
Class is still very important, and very strongly felt in Britain, to an extent that is honestly baffling for someone like myself - Canadian, with a vague awareness of being middle class, but only in that I'm neither poor nor rich, and an implicit understanding that your place on the social scale is changeable, depending on circumstances, effort, and luck.
Social mobility is nearly non-existent in Britain. Mumford & Sons, for all they play roots-influenced music, are privately educated and well-to-do - as are almost all of the musical gang they hang around with (Laura Marling, etc). Actors, comedians, writers, politicians - again, the majority of the most successful come from at least upper-middle class backgrounds and went to good schools (the amount of Oxbridge-educated celebrities is frankly staggering), to the point that those who didn't tend to stand out like a sore thumb. It is not very likely that someone born working class in Britain in the last few decades will ever be anything but working class. They're born without a fighting chance.
And it's not just in the creative professions where this lack of representation exist - probably more importantly, it's just as rampant in politics. The current Prime Minister was educated at Eton and is worth several million. Nick Clegg went to Westminster. Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition, is an Oxford graduate. None of these men know what it's like to grow up always wanting, in an atmosphere of urban degradation, ignorance, and violence.
There's another layer to it, too: watching a Terrence Rattigan documentary hosted by Benedict Cumberbatch the other week, I was struck hard by a scene where Cumberbatch returns to Harrow (a boys school in London, attended by Winston Churchill among others, and matching Eton in its exceeding poshness), where both he and Rattigan were educated. In a voiceover, Cumberbatch comments something to the effect of, "many royals, politicians, and greats have walked these halls - and even the odd commoner, like me." It immediately brought to mind the commentary surrounding the royal wedding, which insisted on classifying Kate Middleton as common - even though she'd grown up a millionaire. There's a powerful suggestion underlying this - if these people are common, the rest of us must be lucky if we're even dirt.
4. The (frankly quite terrifying) reactions.
Here's a neat trick to try: put everyone you know into even the most glancing contact of riots in their city or country, and watch how many lose all pretensions of lefty-liberal beliefs and turn into the ugliest parts of their grandfathers. There's already been a sharp swing to the right in many people's political thinking.
It's horrifying, the reactions I'm seeing, and the popularity of them. At the top: the suggestions and threats that those involved in the riots should/may be evicted from their council tenancies, and have their housing benefits revoked. There's a stunning lack of understanding of poor lives at work in this thought process, not least that making someone homeless and even poorer is a good way to discourage them from rioting again. But also, the strange thought process that seems to think of housing benefits as some kind of bonus; people are refusing to grasp the concept of necessity, of having (next to) nothing.
There's also the call for violent escalation in dealing with the riots, okayed by the PM - baton rounds and water cannons. A lot of people seem to think the army should get involved. Nevermind the fact that upping the force used in dealing with rioters is just as likely to cause them to do the same as it is to stop them; these tactics could quite literally turn the cities of the UK into war zones. And I can't help but think that the last time these tactics were used by British police, it was in Northern Ireland.
There's other, more banal reactions, too. These do just as much, if not more, as the above to expose the class gaps and mindsets of the privileged in Britain. There's the scolding tones, the accusations of parents not raising their kids properly - in neighbourhoods where many parents will be single, and likely working multiple jobs just to feed those children, or where its an accomplishment just to keep your family safe. The racist backlash, not just from the bile-spewing BNP, but gangs of primarily white male vigilantes in the streets of London - both tonight and last night, now. The hysteria on the internet and suspicious looks in the streets regarding where the rioting's going to happen next - focussing, almost without fail, on solidly bourgeois communities like my own Hammersmith, or even Chelsea. All of these reactions reek of a "them" vs "us" mentality. Of "them," with their undereducated, badly treated, cast aside selves coming for "us" in our rightful middle-to-upper class safety and security.
