THE RIOT ACT.

So it finally happened, if one looks back over these entries from as far back as a year and a half, it was being strongly suggested that there could be riots. Now there have been, and for commentators and politicians to pretend that this is not connected to the political decisions of this government nor the prevailing utterly discredited economic policies is simply stupid and insulting to ones intelligence. I have consistently said that this would almost certainly be the result of the policies being implemented with no regard for their effect on the most marginalised and poorest in society ( see articles published in Tribune : 7/08/09 - 23/10/09 ). I have heard merchant bankers boasting in bars that ‘ the English don’t riot.’ ( See ‘ The Chimera of the City ‘ 12 May 2010 ) They obviously have short memories as well as a inflated sense of their own worth, an inoperative moral compass and breathtaking arrogance.

Today, the first uttering by a corpulent Tory backbencher after the Prime Minister’s completely predictable statement praising the police and admonishing the rioters was, incredibly enough, to suggest that the actions taken against anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in Washington when the then American government sent in the Army to forcibly round up thousands and hold them in a football stadium were an admirable example of how to deal with the current unrest struck a particularly bad note. Even if this remark by this pompous ass was meant as a joke, and thus one both ill-judged and deeply unfunny, it just shows how far removed some members of this government are from reality. The Prime Minister smiled dimly.

What remains surprising is that the areas with the greatest concentration of wealth in the capital have, so far, remained unscathed. It is remarkable how it is in similar places that riots have flared up as in the early to mid-eighties, that period so often dutifully presented as a sort of boom time with the obligatory pictures of ’yuppies’ quaffing champagne. I lived through that period in London and can categorically state that it certainly was not so for the majority of people, quite the opposite.

Until a few years at the tail end when a few people made inordinate amounts of money largely out of the sell offs of our industries and speculative property investment, the period was marked by public squalor, private greed and increasing social tension. News International and Mr. Murdoch were invited into No. 10 by Mrs. Thatcher, explicitly to break print union power and American ‘advisors’ brought in to oversee the break up of the mining industry, again an attack on unions and working class communities. In a clear parallel with the current situation there was growing social inequality and a Tory government who imposed their ideological certainties of letting the free market rip and the devil-take-the-hindmost with no regard to the social disintegration that inevitably resulted.

Everything was suddenly required to work as a business, even when its original purpose and structure had been to have other goals than only to make a profit. Thus Building Societies became banks with shareholders, public services and utilities were privatised, all activities and organisations that had a broader social good as part of their aim were made to appear out of date and unnecessary. It simply shows how little has actually changed both in the Conservative party’s lack of understanding of society and its being willing to sacrifice social order and scapegoat those that give vent to their frustration to maintain their wicked and discredited so-called philosophy of a market led ‘recovery’ which is not happening. They then say the society is sick : so what caused the illness ?

There is no recovery and even if there were the measures being taken will benefit the rich first and the poor last. Good God, Boris Johnson has as recently as a few weeks ago been suggesting tax cuts for the most wealthy to ‘stimulate’ recovery. You really could not make it up. If you wanted to inflame an already volatile underclass this is precisely what a person in a position of power might say. That begs the worrying question did these Etonian cronies that are running the show actually want this to happen to then excuse taking further coercive steps and imposing more controls on our increasingly divided societies’ disenfranchised and dispossessed ? Who instructed the police to stand back and observe ? They used more aggressive tactics against the peaceful G20 protesters than against the rioters. Very strange.

The fact that both the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London were both on holiday at the same time was an extraordinary situation and that Parliament is shut down for two months of the year seems increasingly untenable in the 21st Century. Neither of these things would have prevented the riots but is Boris Johnson going to brush this off with a perky quip ? A load of codswallop dreamed up by the Labour Party ? That was his aside on the phone hacking non-investigation a mere few months ago. Maybe he will now wake up to realise that being Mayor of London is a serious job and cannot be a part-time hobby and a jolly good excuse to give cheap advertising to your chums at Barclays.

I am astonished by the lack of understanding of the inevitability of these riots, and the complete failure of the mass media to begin to grasp what is happening. The continual emphasis on ‘criminality’ and violence, the reduction of these issues to a series of repeated images, like highlights from a football match, the contraction to and singling out of a random mugging, which could have happened any night of the week and would have gone unreported, the slightly ridiculous middle-class broom wielding clean-up brigade, (coincidentally appearing while Johnson was visiting Clapham Junction, in Conservative controlled Wandsworth ) which though they do no harm cannot resolve anything by sweeping up some broken glass.

First, there were widely different actions taking place. The reporting concentrated heavily on some smaller shops that were attacked and this was certainly reprehensible and easy to condemn. However, the attack on a massive Sony warehouse was clearly a different matter. This was targeted as were other multinational corporations and banks for reasons other than looting. Looting happens in the aftermath of the attacks, as in a war after attacks on specific targets. It was almost entirely attacks on property not on people. The violence was violence against property and those tasked with protecting that property, the police, with one tragic exception. It appears that the police took a less than enthusiastically aggressive attitude when confronted with what were indeed aggressive and unorganised crowds than they did when dealing with predominantly peaceful and organised demonstrators in recent protests. Obviously it was extremely difficult to restore order but the fact remains that very few people were attacked and that this was at root an inarticulate but nonetheless vehement outburst of rage against a social and political system that is manifestly failing. To suggest otherwise is simply denying this reality. It is the corrupt free market capitalist system and the so-called politics that sustain it that has been shown to be so utterly inadequate, unfair and is ultimately socially destructive, empty and unreal to many. It is these violent and chaotic reactions that have been forced from part of an often supine and apolitical population that are real and have meaning, despite all official attempts to deny this. Everything is being viewed through a prism of two competing political parties, or rather brands, that both want to maximise their market share of the vote. This distorts open debate and obscures social realities.

The drivel that has been broadcast by the mainstream politicians and commentators in the wake is incredible. Except for a handful of community workers and a few others close to the people who took part there has been almost no coherent commentary. Only in England could this be discussed in the way it has been, under an assumption that there was no political dimension and that it is all down to individual responsibility. The point to grasp all you well paid political commentators and members of ’think tanks’ is that this was people coming together because of a barely articulate but absolute necessity to express anger, frustration and impotence. Of course if you lead a life that has never even brought these things close you will not comprehend it, and the lack of imagination in the political classes in this country is staggering. I am certainly not enthusiastic for more violent disorder, and it is not to be praised, but having predicted exactly these sort of actions and having seen the peaceful protests by such as UK Uncut largely ignored (for example in Croydon the weekend before the riots ) and having to hear the endless, meaningless litanies of what is happening on the God damn stock market and the blank refusal of this government or indeed the opposition party to move from their position of maintaining the current nexus whereby the banks and financial institutions ( this over-dignifies them ) are calling the terms and everyone living in the real world has to deal with the consequences, there will be more of the same to come.

And so as the BBC and ITV set up their little tents on the lawn opposite the Houses of Parliament in the rain, no longer cluttered up with the peace protester Mr. Brian Haw after he died, and everyone in the chamber jumps up on their hind legs to condemn more and understand less than next person for fear of being seen to be ‘soft’ and the newer residents that pay hundreds of thousands to live in ‘vibrant inner-city London’ stick little post-it notes on the boarded up broken windows saying ‘ I (heart symbol) Clapham ’ when they are actually in Battersea, the fact that all is not well in this city and in this country must surely sink in, and some changes had better happen soon or there is little doubt that more of the same will be coming soon to a street near you.