on the uk riots

First of all: I am fine. Everyone I know is fine. The area I live in is fine, and so is the area in which I work. None of that is likely to change, because I am living and working in middle-upper class areas. Everything does seem to be calming down now, too, though we'll see how long that lasts. I don't imagine the peace will keep forever if some big changes aren't made, but for now, don't worry about me. I'm safe. I'm alternately sad and furious, but safe and unharmed.

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:

“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.’’

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.

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.

Nina Power: There Is A Context to London's Riots That Can't Be Ignored

Laurie Penny: Panic on the streets of London

BBC: Riots timeline

Leninology: several recent posts, including A Crisis of Ideology and Political Leadership, Tottenham Calling, and Enfield Calling

Tariq Ali: Why Here, Why Now?

dreary, dark, and damp city. and wolves.

I love this weather. I really do. Cold and wet has always been my favourite, even over snow.
I'm tired. I'm a little worried, despite still believing everything will work out. I had a job interview on Saturday, but I don't think I got it. I haven't heard anything. I'm a little disappointed, too: I had hoped to be able to take a course here, starting in the fall, but because you sign up for full years of study at British universities and not terms, the one I had my heart set on is not legally viable. There's a host of other options I can look into, of course, but the thing that made this one so perfect, aside from the actual things I'd've been studying, is that it would have actually have been a first year of uni in credits.

Right now, though, I’ve got my cosy sweater and a quilt. I’ve got tea, and spinach & chickpea soup, and walnut cake for later. I’ve got Dylan Thomas, and Alan Garner if I finish him, and Seth Lakeman. I’m in lazy, cozy, easy, soulfood mode.

On the way home today my umbrella got turned inside out and in the few moments it took me to right it I went from vaguely dry to absolutely soaked. I squelched and shivered (it is cold for July - I had been worried it would be too hot!) myself the rest of the way to a hot shower and an hour with my notebook that turned into two-and-then-some. I've been forcing myself to spend at least six hours every day doing nothing but jobhunting. I've also been trying to force myself to get fuller nights of sleep. It's paid off in at least one way: as Eliot once said, having a limited amount of time in which to write leads to discipline in doing so. You don't faff about as much. I'm writing a lot right now. In the evenings, when I come home. A lot of it in notebooks, a lot of it probably never to be shared, never mind published, a lot of it more about experiments in figuring out my writing, my ideas, and my thoughts around it than actually producing something whole, but there is, too, quite a bit that will work its way into other things. Honestly, even if nothing ever comes of it, it's still what keeps me sane, and most days it's enough of a gift just to have this part of my voice back.

Vaguely relatedly, I'd really like to share something. It's this story:

The Wolves of Brooklyn

The wolves have eaten people. Why be coy about it? Not a lot of people. But it’s happened. As near as anyone can figure, the first one they ate was a Russian girl named Yelena. They surrounded her and she stood very still, so as not to startle them. Finally, she said: “I’m lonely”—it’s weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can’t help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you’re confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: “I’m lonely,” and they ate her in the street. They didn’t leave any blood. They’re fastidious like that. Since then, I know of about four or five others, and well, that’s just not enough to really scare people. Obviously, you’ll be special, they’ll look at you with those huge eyes and you’ll understand something about each other, about the tundra and blood and Brooklyn and winter, and they’ll mark you but pass you by. For most of us that’s just what happens. My friend Daniel got eaten, though. It’s surprising how you can get used to that. I don’t know what he said to them. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know Daniel that well.

This excerpt is amazing and beautiful and just the thing on a cold rainy evening all on its own, and I knew from it that unless the author completely let me down I was going to love the story, and then I clicked through, and…

This story? Is written by Catherynne Valente. Only one of my absolute favourite writers not only working right now but ever. And even though some of her works resonate differently for me, she has never ever let me down (in what I’ve read, which is not all, but I have faith).

This story does more than just not let me down. One of the reasons I fell in love with Valente is that she so often seems to write stories tailor-made for me, for my obsessions. (There was Palimpsest, with its trains and its maps and its dream cities and its bees, for instance.) I feel like I was meant to read this tonight, here, curled up in my grey wool and drinking tea and thinking long and hard about this city.

This is a story by Catherynne Valente about Brooklyn and the huge, uncanny wolves that live there, and a girl that is very much not Little Red Hood. It is about cities and the villages and wildernesses within them, about the way some of us are called to them, and how we don’t belong until we do (or at least we don’t belong anywhere else, either), about fashion and self-presentation and the feeling of being looked at, about tribes, about how we move apart and fall together. (I won’t tell you any more, for fear of ruining it, but please, if you read one story on the internet this month, let it be this one.) It is, on some level, exactly what I needed to read right now.

(And I mean, well, is it any surprise that a story like this would mean a lot to me?)

an addendum:

Writers write.

things I have learnt

No matter how far and how fast you run, you're always going to be right behind yourself. That's just how it works. Stop running.

Relatedly, there's not much point in beating yourself up. Not only will you be battered and sore in the morning, you'll be the one who has to patch yourself up.

ca·thar·sis (k-thärss)

n. pl. ca·thar·ses (-sz)

1. A purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.

2. A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

eu·pho·ri·a (y-fôr-, -fr-)

n.

A feeling of great happiness or well-being.

I'm being crushed against the metal barrier in front of me by the several thousand people behind. The girl next to me's hair is in my mouth, and I am sticking uncomfortably to the leather jacket of the man behind me. (In two hours, when we peel apart, my skin will be embedded with zipper and leather wrinkle marks, but he gets a pass on this because he will spend the evening protecting my head.) The arm that's not hanging over the barrier is stuck awkwardly by my side, my feet are going numb, and I would be literally dripping with sweat if I wasn't too crowded for that to be possible. Someone's arm is around my neck, and another is propped on my shoulder; partway through the concert, someone else will snake theirs around my waste, and I will wrap my previously trapped arm around the back of a French girl's head. We are too stuck together to even jump properly to the music, and so instead we all surge as one, back and forth, back and forth. Six feet away, Jarvis Cocker writhes on top of a stack of amps and peers out at us as we all sing along to every song so loudly it's a miracle we can still hear the band.

I know, I really do know, that amazing concert experiences are not just something that happens to me; that music inspires faith like religion, and that lots of people have had similar moments in their life. This isn't about the uniqueness of my experience. But: five years ago, I went to a concert with one my best friends, a small local band playing outdoors. I couldn't even stand at the back of the crowd, it was too much for me, I was going to have a panic attack - I had to go and sit in the bleachers. Now, compare.

What this is about is healing, and how we do it. It's about realizing something about yourself that maybe you should've known a long time ago, but only just figured out. It's about lightning-bolt moments. It's about growth. Don't get me wrong; I'm the last person to take me seriously. But sometimes I'm forced to.

An important part of any concert experience is the crowd, and this one was the best I've ever been a member of. Pulp have been apart a long time, and they've been around for more than twice as long as that. They've meant a lot to a lot of people, and a lot of those people are here tonight. Everyone knows every word of every song intimately. People shout teases and quips at Jarvis like he's an old school friend. This is pure love of pop music.

The experience shook me so much that it's taken me ten days to write about it. Even now, I don't think I'm properly expressing how strongly the concert touched me - and not just the bands, but the realizations I had that night. I'm having trouble writing about it evenheadedly, as you can see. The adverbs and adjectives are piling up all over this post, and I'm at risk of sounding like some trippy new-ager when I talk about healing.

But the week before last something snapped inside of me. Leading up to it I was the unhappiest I've been since I moved here, I think. I wasn't talking to people much because I didn't have much to report - I was looking for work. I hadn't found any yet. That was about it. And then suddenly I woke up one morning, and went to the National Gallery, where I spent a long time glaring at Van Gogh's Sunflowers as Japanese tourists and a group of schoolchildren all tried to shove around me. There was no reason for me not to, after all. I was unhappy. I needed to do something to be less unhappy, or I was going to go mad. I figured that much out. The next evening I took myself to a performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and laughed so hard my cheeks hurt, and when I stepped out of the theatre into the warm Piccadilly night I felt lighter than I had since February. The day after that was the Arcade Fire show, and then Friday was Canada Day (though I only paid a brief visit to the celebrations.) Saturday was the Pride Parade, and even more dancing in Trafalgar square, and then Sunday was the night described above. So it was all a slow build of experiences, even though the tipping point was singing along to Disco 2000 with everyone else in Hyde Park that night.

I've somehow grown into the type of girl that dances, and screams, and has emotional breakthroughs rather than breakdowns in a seething crowd of strangers.

paper journal paper journal

some excerpts. a l'expédition francaise.

03/04/11 -- Paris, France

There is a strangeness to learning how to lose someone that you already missed. How do you deal with grief and loss when you've gotten so used to living with the absence of loved ones? Right up until N. cried in front of me for the first time, I didn't really believe that he was gone. It felt untrue, like a badly-told story, like an infinitely cruel joke. But he's gone. And I'm not confronted with the shock of that every day because I've already been practicing missing him for eight and a half months.

05/04/11 -- Paris, France

I didn't notice last time how many cats there are in Pere Lachaise. Feral little things the lot of them, but oddly charming. There's one black one in particular that's been following me around the place. I'm sitting next to Oscar's tomb right now, and he [the cat] keeps peering around graves to watch me, disappearing for a bit, and then checking in again. It's almost like he wants me to follow him.

06/04/11 -- Auvers-sur-Oise, France

The song might be about Paris, but it feels like spring for the first time here. Everything is golden and bright, and flowers are blooming everywhere. I got up early this morning and caught the train here, changing at Pontoise where I basked in the sun for half an hour, soaking the heat into myself like a cat. The train ride here was charming, in a carriage I shared with a raucous group of boys on their way to school. When I walked out of the station onto the main street, the bells of the Eglise were chiming 10 in the morning, and I knew instantly, the way you do, that this was the right place for me to come.

...

On the hill about the Musée Daubigny (where Van Gogh lived and died), there is a concave cliff. It is clay-coloured, but wreathed in the green of the surrounding forest, and dotted with the reds and yellows of wildflowers. In a shelf set into the cliff near the top, there is a small white statue of the Virgin Mary.

...

(written on the train back to Paris) The last place I visited was the grave of Vincent and Théo. It's in a graveyard just outside the town, past the Eglise. It is not a famous Parisian graveyard; there are no markers on how to find certain of its inhabitants, and despite being clear of weeds the graves themselves are mostly badly upkept. I was the only one there. I have visited a lot of dead people here, and I do so again tomorrow in the Catacombs, but none of them have moved me like this. The brothers' grave is on the edge of the graveyard, and the simplest but strangely beautiful thing: two white headstones, and a thick patch of green ivy rather than stone. Even in death, even as one of the most famous and important painters of all time, Vincent is modest and practically uncelebrated. I stood at the foot of it for a long, long time, and cried.

08/04/11 -- on the bus ride back to London, primarily the Chunnel

Last night I drunkenly wandered the streets of Montmartre at 2am, looking for crepes. Paris, Paris, you will always hold a piece of my heart. Maybe one day I will even live inside you. For now, though, it's London that's home.

autobiography through popculture

my face is unappealing, and my thoughts are unoriginal. i did experiment with substances, but all they did was make me ill. i used to do the i ching, but i had to use the meter. now i can’t see into the future but at least i can use the heater. it doesn’t get much better than this ‘cause this is how we live our glory days.

and i could be a genius, if i just put my mind to it. and i? i could do anything, if only i could get round to it. we were brought up on the space race, now they expect you to clean toilets. when you’ve seen how big the world is, then how can you make do with this? if you want me, i’ll be sleeping in. sleeping in throughout these glory days.

&

strange little girl.

There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sing, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway that looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again.

Whenever it rains you think of her.

&

The fairy Tink who is bent on mischief this night is looking for a tool, and she thinks you the most easily tricked of the boys.