”A one-man riot is a tantrum.” (source BBC NEWS)
Coming from a country where rioting happens at least bi-annually, ok, I admit, it’s somewhat less than it used to, but it’s still a familiar sight. I empathise with those in London (and various other UK cities) who are helplessly watching their neighbours, cities and country currently go down, quite literally, in a blaze of ‘glory’.
Joining the party (it’s a turn of phrase, I don’t actually think this is a party at all!) later than most (the 6 hour time delay to Texas is a killer for ‘breaking news’) I was, at first confused. As far as I could see, this had come out of nowhere! Was I wrong? Had I missed some huge political movement in the UK?
But ‘why?’ was really what I wanted to know…Is it cause of the Economy? Another policy change that left the elderly without their winter fuel payment? Was David Cameron funding his vacation with proceeds of some illegal act? Was he the latest in the slew of MP’s fiddling their expense reports? What?
What could be so heinous, that it would drive people in their droves out on the street, to ‘protest’, and, as a show of their protest…steal electrical goods?
Come now, are we so naive to think that they are stealing this stuff because they *need* it? Because times are so hard, desperation has kicked in?
Oh please!
You know that no matter how tight times get, in the UK many families are more likely to go without petrol for their car, or food in their fridge, than they are to go without Corrie, Family Fortunes and having that state of the art I-phone for them and each of their kids.
No, it’s nothing of the sort!
After a little digging, and asking some questions, I discovered that none of this insanity, not one little bit of it, is in anyway ideological.
Here’s what I’ve managed to piece together so far,
This whole thing started over an accusation of ‘police brutality’.
August 4th 2011 Mark Duggan a suspected cocaine dealer and gang member was shot and killed by a police man – sparking investigations, accusations of foul play and questions over the officer concerned.
(On another note, just an FYI, even if he didn’t shoot at the policeman, that doesn’t mean the policeman didn’t have ‘just cause’ to shoot him, but I wouldn’t know, cause I wasn’t there – and either were you. But I’d like to have faith in ‘the system’ that police men are trained to not just go around shooting people…)
August 6th 2011 a peaceful protest (organised by friends and family members of the deceased) sparked a string of scattered incidents. People were attacking police cars, buses, local businesses, it multiplied, snowballed, and, to date, has continued for 3 solid days, growing in geography and severity, and thus the hash-tag #londonriots was born.
This didn’t come about because of the failing economy, loss of jobs, our stance on any kind of war, domestic or foreign policy, adopting the Euro or any other referendum, off the wall proposed law (like everyone having to wear costumes on a Sunday or something ridiculous), abortion, health care, education concerns – nope.
It didn’t stem from any kind of ’cause’ (not that that’s much better, but it’s at least understandable to an extent!).
It’s nothing more than an excuse to steal things and break shit.
Parents in SUV’s parking round the corner on side streets, sending their kids down the street to the shops and telling them to grab and carry as much stuff as they can carry back to the car?
So far 563 people have been arrested and 105 charged in connection with violence in the capital.
Some 111 Met officers have suffered injuries including serious head and eye wounds, cuts and fractured bones after being attacked by rioters wielding bottles, planks, bricks and even driving cars at them. Five police dogs have also been hurt. (source BBC NEWS)
Can’t we save our forces and energies for the *real* battles? the *necessary* battles? Our enemies will lie in wait until we are at our weakest and then strike…don’t look now, but killing each other and members of our police force kinda looks like we’re getting weaker.
Our attention is most certainly not on ‘defending against enemy lines’, considering our enemies are now the 15 year old kids beating shop-front windows in with baseball bats and setting fire to people’s cars!
I fear, for London, for England, and for anywhere that looks to the UK as a leader, setting an example for other countries. I hope they get a handle on this, and soon, I hope every face in the pictures and videos all over the web, is identified and every single thug brought to justice.
I also have to say that filling a water canon with blue dye and spraying the rioters is a crackin’ idea – whoever thought of it, gets a high five! Dye them, then they can’t deny they were involved!
My plea?
If you see a face on the web, on the news, or in the papers, and you recognise them – I don’t care if it’s your best friend, your parent, your child or your husband – pick up the phone and do the right thing.
This has got to stop!
As funny as it might be that Waterstones Ealing today put up a sign to say “We are staying open and if they steal our books they might learn something”, it’s true. These thugs are so stupid and they think just because it’s a group of people throwing a tantrum, they’ll not get caught.
Just you wait! Your time will come!!
My personal favourite was a sign up in Subway near Piccadilly station – “due to the imminent collapse of society, we regret to announce that we will be closing at 6pm”
Manchester was horrific tonight… less damage than was expected with the amount of people, but a real scene and something close to hysteria. Less fire though, which is good, though still a lot of damage and a lot of goods have been stolen. No idea if public transport will be back up tomorrow, but it’s been down since around 6 tonight and we literally got out just in time. GMP really aren’t taking any crap though, which is nice to see… even if they have sent a load of officers to London to keep it calm there. Our police force have more experience dealing with riots *eyeroll*
This whole thing wouldn’t seem so bad if a) it wasn’t swathes of teenagers with nothing real to bitch about and b) if there was just *something*, some trigger that they were fighting for. Their parents have a LOT to answer for. The original family members in the peaceful protests have distanced themselves from everything. You’re absolutely right – this is opportunists knowing the police are emasculated and can do nothing. It’s been a very dark week 🙁
I know, right? I know that fighting for a cause is still fighting. But seriously? Fighting for a cause is *something*, this is just making people’s lives miserable, destroying shops, cars and peoples lives just cause they can.
I’ve seen video footage of people robbing a guy on the side of the street bleeding from his face – what the hell is wrong with society?!?!?!
I swear, the parents of these people should also be locked up! Grrr! Makes me so mad!!
It has started off ideological, a primal scream in the face of all the cuts that the government are making in this country in an effort to undo all the damage that has happened in the recession. Look at the neighbourhoods where the rioters have come from. They have nothing. Yes we call them chavs and joke about sterotypical families watching their soaps and being on the dole, but that is their one highlight, their hope, the things that sustains them. The government is taking all that away in the cuts. It started off peaceful yes but the message people were trying to get out got lost because once something started everyone got sucked in. It’s not about destroying and smashing and stealing, it’s control. These people are in control and they know it and finally someone is listening to them, their neighbourhoods were ignored and never had any media attention unless there was a crime. Now people are being interviewed, they’re being shown on the telly, issues that they have been screaming to be fixed will now be addressed because of this.
Do I condone the violence? Hell no. Do I understand how so much rage and hopelessness can spill out in the need to destroy everything you see just in the hope that for once something will be done? Yes. I still feel though that the people who have done all this damage should face the consequences of their actions and some people are just taking advantage of a bad situation by taking all they can get.
Oh and in case the 6 hour time difference means you haven’t heard this yet, the gun they found in the minicab where Mark Duggan was killed had a chambered bullet, but all evidence points to it having not been fired.
They appear to be in control, they think they are in control and they think that people are listening to them, but they aren’t. All I’ve seen over here is person after person, regular, on the street people, on tv, on Twitter, on FB outrightly condemning this senseless violence, they want it to stop and hopefully now the Government has gotten it’s trousers back on, they’ll be brought under control fast. People are ashamed of the way this lot are behaving – they’ve had days and days to stop it themselves and resort to peaceful protest but they haven’t.
The first protest was not in the least bit about government cut-backs, it was about the death of a man by the hand of a police man, from there, people were angry and decided to ‘take the law in to their own hands’. If this was about government cut-backs, there’s have been something to prompt it, to provoke it, an action, a bill, a final cut – something. I’ve come from one of those neighbourhoods, we had nothing. Some nights my parents had to make big sacrifices to ensure my siblings and I ate dinner, but never, not once would they think to trash up our own neighbourhoods, or do to something as counter-productive as destroy businesses that provide the people they live and work with, with food on the table. There’s no organisation, no spokesperson, just occasional mouthy teenagers, thinking it’s class being interviewed on TV saying, ‘oh, it’s cuz we ain’t get’n no ressspek innit? Wen dey give us resspek we’ll resspek dem’ they haven’t a clue about ideology, they’re teenagers, being sent out by their parents, to take advantage of a situation because they know the police are low in numbers and can’t be everywhere at once.
I completely disagree that this was a necessary action on their part in order to gain attention by the media or anyone, throughout history many people and groups with nothing have managed to make themselves heard without the use of violence and destruction.
As for the gun, like I’ve said in my blog, whether it was fired or not is largely irrelevant. There are a number of situations in which a policeman (or anyone else facing a gun pointed at them) has the right to shoot someone, kill or be killed, to protect people standing around, for all we know he was waving that gun around like a crazy person threatening to kill people. From what I understand the key witness (cab-driver) is currently suffering from severe shock and isn’t in a state to talk about it yet. What IS a concern, is if the police fired one of their own guns at this policemans radio to make it LOOK like Mark Duggan had fired the gun, whether killing him was justified or not, lying about how it happened is disgraceful. If it was a mistake, the policeman concerned should own it, not try and cover it up – we’ve all seen enough episodes of CSI/NCIS/whatever other TV show’s with random letters as a namd, to know that with forensics and ballistics, he’d have been found out eventually!
If this was a peaceful protest about the government cuts, fine, I could deal with that, if there was a petition – there’s been a lot of them recently and 100,000 names on a piece of paper gets you a shout-out in the commons – fine, I could deal with that. But there hasn’t been a mention of the government cuts or any kind of ideology on any coverage we’ve gotten here, and people throwing a tantrum, demanding respect, and wanting things to go their own way is unacceptable. Don’t criticise the problem unless you have a suggestion for a solution – these people are making the problem worse and they know it, there’s no excuse for it, they’re wasting time, money and resources on a tantrum cause they aren’t getting their own way? I can’t see, in any way shape or form, how that’s going to make anyone more inclined to listen to them.
I think that any ‘child’ under the age of 18 who has been, is or will be on the street rioting, stealing, attacking the emergency services should receive the appropriate punishment (Like Cameron said, if you’re old enough to do the crime, you’re old enough to serve the time!) and further than that, their parents should serve the same punishment!
I understand desperation and hopelessness, but counter productive, senseless violence is inexcusable in my opinion!
I don’t think I worded my comment very well, I was basically trying to say this:
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html
http://rosamicula.livejournal.com/540476.html
In my mind I compare these riots to when you’re having a REALLY bad day, it’s started off as one particular thing that’s upsetting you. But once you’ve admitted you’re annoyed/frustrated/upset/angry it spirals down and EVERYTHING that has wound you up over the past few days/weeks/months come spilling out. It may have started off as a protest about Mark Duggan’s death, but it’s spiralled and now it’s about everything. His death was the spark on the very very dry forest floor. It’s a very trivial way to see them and no where near as detailed a look as they deserve, but it’s a way for my brain to rationalise these horrible events so that I can process them.
also this: http://milenapopova.eu/2011/08/in-the-words-of-the-kaiser-chiefs—some-musings-on-the-riots.html
I understand a need to rationalise and process events, I just can’t see what you do, maybe I’m just a lot more cynical than you!! lol
PS thanks for the links 🙂