By Sean Matgamna
The rioting, looting and burning that is sweeping across London and outside of London - so far, in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Nottingham and Liverpool – can have no directly positive effects on the lives of those who riot or on the lives of their families. The very opposite is true.
They are destroying some of the social facilities they rely upon, as for instance, firing a block of working class flats in Tottenham and buses in Peckham.
In politics the effect will be to strengthen the ‘law and order’ Right and push a lot of new people in their direction.
Many of those who have learned to loathe the swindlers who run our society will feel themselves pushed into supporting those who serve the rich, the looters at the top, in horror at the rioting, burning and looting at the bottom.
They will be further alienated from the young people in Lewisham, Peckham, Nottingham.
The rioting will alienate the organised labour movement, even those large sections of it which will instinctively sympathise with the plight of the people in the riot hit areas.
These outbreaks in areas with large black population, and involving young black people, cannot fail to stimulate and strengthen racism. They will help those such as the EDL in fomenting a ‘them and us’ view of British society. The fact that Asian and Muslim shops have been burned out and looted and that many of the rioters were white will not lessen or off-set that.
The current explosions demonstrate yet again that there is a large segment of the working class – almost an underclass – that feels itself to be outside society and radically at odds with it. The looting and burning can only deepen that sense of separateness on both sides.
But denouncing the riots as ‘pure criminality’ is simply stupid - the refuge of those who don’t want to understand. However many gangs exist in these areas and however much opportunist looting contributes to the outbreaks, it took more than criminal gangs to ignite these explosions.
Those who are loudest in condemning the rioters and looters – the media, the politicians, the police, the racist and ‘anti-foreigner’ agitators and, soon, the vengeful magistrates - bear much of the blame for these outbreak.
And they serve those who carry the main blame for the state of the British society in which this is happening – the bankers, the factory owners, the giant store owners and the stock exchange gamblers. They are responsible for creating the conditions and the mind-set that has led to the rioting and looting that is sweeping through Britain like an August grass fire.
The deprived young people who have come out on the streets to fight those they see as their enemy, the police, and to grab a little instant prosperity have good reason to feel that they are outsiders, that they have been excluded.
Many are either unemployed or working in dead end, unskilled, low paid jobs.
They have come through the education system maimed and semi-literate. They live in a society where great robbers and swindlers are admired whether they are legal, semi-legal or downright criminal. Where they enrich themselves without any regard for other people.
Why, many of them will think, shouldn’t we help ourselves by looting shops and great stores, in a world where bankers can loot and get away with it? Where the politicians who serve them have looted society to bail out the bankers.
No matter how inattentive to politics many of the young people may normally be, they will have gained a general impression about what has been going on at the top of society.
That the politicians, the press, the police and the courts that will soon send god knows how many to jail, serve those looters at the top of society - the young people know that too.
Many of the rioters in London live side by side with the very wealthy – the towers of Canary Warf are visible from half the London riot zones.
But there is nothing for the left to romanticise in these outbreaks, by giving them titles such as ‘insurrection’ and ‘rebellion’.
The irony in the situation is that if anything at all positive comes out of the riots for the people in the riot-stricken areas, it will be to scare the Government into increased investment in these areas. The outcome of the widespread rioting in 1981 was to stimulate Government attention. They bought-off local leaders, and put money into social facilities in the affected areas.
That did not change anything fundamental.
The labour movement must defend those young people who will now be hauled into the legal system. It must insist against the capitalist Establishment – the politicians, the press and the courts - that the responsibility for their blind raging anger lies squarely with those who run the Establishment that will now seek vengeance against them.
9 August 2011
Comments
SWP
The SWP have totally condoned the riots and they have no acknowledement of the harm done to innocent ordinary people who's homes have been destroyed. I think it's dangerous for the Left to completly condone the riots because they are in danger of alienating working class people who have been affected.
Riots
Excellent analysis by Sean Matgamna.
riots
I dont have any answers- just want to comment on a point about young people being maimed by education.I cannot accept this as bearing any resemblance to my experience and this was experience gained in a secondary school not too far away from the horrific social experiment at Crown Woods. The resources put into the school where I worked, in addition to teachers that is, whether in alternative projects for dissafected young people, counsellors, art therapists, inclusion workers, Special needs assistants and Learning Mentors was staggering. Still there are many young people who this doesnt touch for a variety of reasons. Some are so damaged by what has gone on in their early childhoods etc but many reject it because they are the chldren of a well established entrenched underclass. There are estates up and down the land, on the outskirts of pretty towns and rubbing up against richer neighbourhoods in cities, abandoned by the decline in local manufacturing employment which has been replaced over time by benefits supplemented by partcipation in an illegal economy, from minor crimes to full blown gang involvement and drug dealing. Some of these young people are so damaged in their own way they are fearless and believe themselves untouchable.
This underclass has been left un-attended as a non voting non powerful section of society which if we are lucky we retreat from or drive quickly by at the end of the day.Until that is the last few days.
How to involve these young people who are growing up in a world withot a moral compass provided by anyone ( and remember we all have one - from significant adults and relationships, events and their effect on us and our reading and discussing of politics and trying to make sense of the world ) I think that is the major challenge that has been thrown down for us
Rioting in Nottingham: a different pattern?
Whilst rioting in other parts of the country continued to focus on looting and disruption in city centres, Nottingham witnessed a slightly different pattern of events.
The first round of rioting sparked in the St Ann’s area of Nottingham on Monday night, with cars set alight, houses pelted with bricks and stones and the fire-bombing of the car park at the local police station. The trouble spilled into town where youths attempted to break into the Victoria Shopping centre and the JD Sports outlet inside. This attempt was swiftly halted by the police.
On Tuesday morning, the centre of Nottingham appeared very much as normal. Shops were open, the outdoor furniture – much of it metal – remained outside coffee shops, restaurants and bars. Nottingham’s ‘Riviera’ – a fake beech and amusements in the central Market Square – remained in operation. The only signs of disruption were to be found in a small area of the Victoria centre and on the streets of St Ann’s where many cars had been set alight.
This quiet situation started to change after 4pm when barriers were erected around the ‘Riviera’, tables and chairs started to disappear from the square and shops started to be boarded up.
The events that unfolded throughout the evening did include some attempts at looting – the most ‘successful’ of which was an attack on a small jewellery shop – but none of the large stores suffered the same fate as other parts of the country. One pub on Mansfield Road was also attacked but potential looters could not get inside.
The first major incident came when up to twenty youths took to the roof of Nottingham’s Girls High School, a private school sandwiched between Forest Fields and city campus of Nottingham Trent University. The police response was swift and overwhelming. Bystanders were kept well away and within a short space of time the roof was cleared. Ten young people were arrested.
A short time later, a group of 30 to 40 men marched up to Canning Circus Police Station -which will be familiar to fans of crime fiction from John Harvey’s ‘Resnik’ books – and threw fire bombs (footage of this is circulating on Twitter). The entrance to the station was engulfed in flames but no substantial damage was done. There were further attacks on police stations in and around the city.
Later still, windows were smashed at Clarendon College – a further education college very close to the city centre – and fire bombs thrown inside. Damage here was more significant.
The main focus of the riots was not looting but symbols of prestige – the High School – and power – police stations. To what extent these actions were planned and premeditated is unknown but the wherewithal required to prepare, carry and use firebombs seems to suggest some sort of ‘plan’.
So, something ‘different’ happened in Nottingham last night. The ‘difference’ was not just the targets chosen but the numbers involved. Available reports indicate that those involved in rioting moved in small groups, no more than 40, in contrast to the hundreds gathered in other parts of the country.
The reasons for this ‘difference’ must include the history of the last round of rioting almost exactly thirty years ago, as well as the nature of city today. The exact reason remains unknown.
Joebie's comments about education and some other things.
"The resources put into the school where I worked, in addition to teachers that is, whether in alternative projects for dissafected young people, counsellors, art therapists, inclusion workers, Special needs assistants and Learning Mentors was staggering".
I agree with you that the work inside schools is staggering, and that it does not reach some kids. Maybe the reason is that the incredible work is being done, by very dedicated people, despite the education system, rather than because of it. Teaching Assistants and Learning Mentors spend a lot of their time, not assisting in the academic learning, but in trying to convince the kids they work with that they are not 'crap' or 'losers' or 'failures' or any other amount of derogatory terms they pour on themselves. This is a very good use of a teaching assistant's time. But it is done against a backdrop of other messages. "If you don't get 5 A-C's", "if you don't pass your SATS", "if your school is not at the top of the league tables", "if you don't achieve now, you will miss your chance", "this is your only chance, don't throw it away". For a child coming from a home where learning is not the norm, or who won't, for whatever reason, make the grade, the message is 'you're crap'. And that message starts right from primary school. Such kids come to secondary school already with an overwhelming feeling of failure and a deep desire not to be there. Add to that the general message given by the media, advertising and government propaganda, that 'making it' means owning things, being rich and everything else that is out of reach, then the self-loathing is reinforced. Add to that those kids whose families, for whatever reason, are not able to be a source of support, then some of these kids are in free fall with no "moral compass" pointing the way. I thought the picture on the TV of the Malaysian boy being supposedly helped whilst actually being robbed was awful. There was no getting away from the fact that this was an incredibly two-faced, anti-social act rather than a kick at the face of authority or the establishment. We don't have to like the behaviour, and we certainly don't have to support it or make excuses for it. But we should try to understand it. Why are more kids falling into the underclass? I remember, when the cuts were being put through my local council, talking to one of the council officers responsible for social services. It was very clear that, though on the face of it, the council could claim that they were not hitting front line services directly, they were, by removing other back up services, pushing many families who at the moment hovering on the brink of coping, down into the place where statutory need is acknowledged. Since then, last October, when we had no academies, we now have three. That is three schools who will reinforce the whole ideological notion that there are kids who are 'crap'. What a terrible indictment of our education system that is. Kids aren't crap. Society creates the conditions in which kids do crap things. And our society is doing so with ever-increasing vigour and then wringing its hands with anguish at these terrible kids who have "lost their moral compass".
who is to blame for the riots
I felt compelled to add my views on the rioting after reading Sean Matgamnas views, which I found very refreshing. We have known for a while now that the universe in its entirety is entirely deterministic, we are part of that universe. The up and coming sciences of the mind have indeed shown this to be true for human beings. (We are not an exception to the rule). From the day we are born we are molded by our physical and mental experiences, these experiences no matter how small or infrequent build our perceptions. This sentence explains it quite well. “I as the product of my experiences can not know what I will say or do until a thought or intention arises, and thoughts and intentions are caused by physical events and mental stirrings of which I am not aware” Dr Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape. There is lots of evidence for the lack of free will in us, or any other living creature, and no evidence for its existence. Free will is an illusion. Scientific facts are now proving that you can never blame an individual. You can as an individual entirely blame your upbringing as a whole, but you can not even blame the parents, as individuals as they too are products of there own experiences. What this means, is that, as we know our criminal justice system is doomed to incarcerate a certain percentage of the population that IT LETT’S DOWN. We are each and every one of us to blame for the riots to the same degree. I feel ashamed that we have the knowledge but not the inclination to use it for the general well-being of our nation. I speak not as a professional scientist but as a hard working father of three.