I’m not a fan of the Daily Mail but they’ve put together a pretty fascinating collage of the London Riots. It’s impressive how much of the city has been destroyed. It’s worse than the Rodney King riots. I think you have to go back to the late 1960’s to see any comparable destruction in this country. The causes of these riots are hard to understand. The immediate problem was that the police shot and killed a civilian under hotly disputed circumstances. So, in that sense, it is similar to what happened in Los Angeles in 1992. It’s hard to explain the way the riots have expanded into other parts of London, and now into other cities in England. The simple answer is that austerity measures and difficult economic times have enraged a big segment of the public. That has to be part of the explanation, but at the same time it’s not like the people who are setting fires and looting stores have any political demands. It’s just a breakdown in social order.
That kind of display usually empowers the Right by uniting the middle class against the underclass and in support of stronger law and order measures. Yet, true fear, if it rises high enough, empowers the Left, as the well-to-do opt to share more wealth rather than have their stores burned to the ground.
Could this kind of stuff happen here? Absolutely. Our wealth disparity is almost as bad as the U.K.’s. With the right kind of spark, we might find ourselves in the same boat.
Best piece I’ve seen on it:
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html
Second, flashback to 2010: Theresa May: We can cut police budget without risking violent unrest
They cut their police force 25%.
Don’t forget that Nick Clegg predicted the riots if austerity passed(of course that was before he joined the Gov’t).
London Spring…
cuts in services and the austerity government are certainly part of the context. race is also a factor here. don’t overlook it. largest groups are african and caribe. there are 300 languages spoken in Tottenham and the area has a high unemployment rate.
Britain has more young people than it has jobs, and the austerity measures have brought that point home, harshly. The problem is Britain – like the US – may have this sort of situation permanently, because today’s private industry just doesn’t need the average worker as much as it used to.
The only solutions I see are to help people retire early, fund all sorts of programs that hire people, WPA type stuff, etc, fund the arts, fund recreation, fund anything that hires actual people. The government will have to expand as an indirect employer via nonprofits and other programs like that. Taxes will probably have to be adjusted to pay for it. Britain had some of that going on, though from what I understand a lot of it is taking a hit with austerity.
Long term, we will all have to find a way to manipulate labor markets to match the number of jobs with the number of people that want to work. Otherwise, those riots are coming here to the US in the next few years, and they won’t be confined to poor ethnic neighborhoods.
The riots here aren’t confined to poor ethnic neighbourhoods either. Ealing is a fairly posh area, and today I was reading about looting in Ruislip, where my husband works (wasn’t as severe as some tweets made it out to be, thank goodness).
I definitely think the spark for these riots was the killing of Mark Duggan, now, it turns out, probably unlawfully, since he was unarmed and did not fire on police officers, as they hinted before. This isn’t unusual, unfortunately. Lately it seems like every month or so there’s a report of corrupt police or unlawful shootings or police brutality. Which, ironically, may have made most of them more timid about stopping the looting when they could have.
Correction: a loaded gun was found, but Duggan hadn’t fired it, so he likely was armed.
FYI.
Regardless, it seems to be the incident that set off the riots the first night.
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International friendly soccer match canceled due to London riots: England – Netherlands. British inconvenience …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."When I was younger I read a book by Fritjof Capra called “The Turning Point“. The basic premise is that periodically we have paradigm shifts in how the world functions (like the industrial revolution) and you have this period of turmoil when the switch over occurs.
I don’t think these switch overs necessarily need to be violent… but they tend to come out that way because we (humans) have yet to put in place the structures that allow these switches to happen without the violence. The American electoral system was an attempt at putting place structures to regulate the turmoil in the transitions of power at the level of the state. Definitely better than the old system of deposing kings or fighting things out when the ruler dies.
We’ll see what happens…
The scale of destruction is certainly massive, but unlike LA in 1992, there’s only one riot-related fatality (so far). In the US, with its concentration of guns in urban areas, and much more heavily armed police as well, the body count for something like this would be much, much higher.
And yes, it could happen here. Almost certainly will, at some point.
I don’t believe it.
Americans have been too broken, and the country is too large geographically and demographically to have an impact.
Look at who riots.
As rickyah notes below, in the US (and, in recent years, in Europe) it’s almost always communities of color, and almost always a police shooting sets it off. I’d add that it’s almost always poor communities that reach some sort of tipping point, and the rioters are almost all young and male.
I don’t care how broken most Americans are, there will always be testosterone-fueled rage among some. That’s all it takes. Social conditions provide the tinder, cop violence the match. Our social conditions are getting worse, the cop violence is in many places unchecked, and we have plenty of pissed off young men (or people willing to opportunistically loot) who don’t think they have anything to lose.
Such events are most often local, though in 1965-68 the conditions that made riots likely were everywhere, and as the economy continues to tank in coming years we’ll see that again. Unemployment among young non-white men is already epic. So is a sense of hopelessness. And political science tells us violence is most likely after expectations have been raised, then dashed (c.f. the civil rights era, and read into Obama’s current arc whatever you like).
Will riots improve the social conditions? Of course not. It will ruin (and occasionally end) lives, and destroy neighborhoods; commissions will be convened, and life for most residents will continue to be a struggle. But that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen. We have all the ingredients. Don’t kid yourself.
We don’t have a class system like Britain.
No?
Tell me more about this idea. I am so surprised!!!
AG
Are you trying to be clever? If so, you failed.
If you have no answer to my request, feel free to not answer.
Again.
If you do, I breathlessly await your answer.
AG
their classes are more rigidly defined, more permanent, and permeate every aspect of life. they have nobility and commoners. it is different
Bullshit.
We also have “nobility and commoners.” The only difference? Ours is totally money-dependent while theirs is only partially so. Their “nobility” can stay semi-broke for a while and still have a tiltle; ours sinks like a stone as soon as it’s not wealthy. But wealth generally makes more wealth, and the truly wealthy in the U.S. sustain over many generations.
They have a working class; we have a working class.
They have a middle class; we have a middle class.
They have a “manager” class…upper-middle class…and so do we.
They have a mostly non-white “slave” class…as far as wages go, anyway…and so do we.
The class lines are somewhat permeable in both societies. One can move up or down, but not very successfully unless one adopts the outer trappings of the new class. As long as you can pass for upper-middle class, you are upper-middle class. Ditto above and below.
Where are the differences, other than a crown or two? The Kennedys, Bushes and Rockefellers don’t wear crowns, but they sure as hell stay at the top of the heap for generations.
Where is the difference?
AG
frankly, they are not the same at all. GB has divisions of wealth as well and as you note they do not overlap completely with ranks of nobility – divisions of rank, the peerage is something else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerage
the ranks of nobility are completely hereditary (except for lifetime peerages, granted to some).
From that same Wikipedia article:
“…occasions of its exercise have now diminished into obscurity.”
Yup.
Translation:
Empty titles w/almost no privileges attached to them.
That’s not a “class system,” it’s a Monty Python routine.
A “class system” is something entirely different…a system where the economic class into which you are born dictates to a large degree the extent of your educational and employment prospects. And in that sense the two systems are nearly identical.
Lords and Ladies? A medieval farce kept active in Britain to convince some (rapidly disappearing) portions of the lower classes that they really belong in those classes due to their own innate genetic inferiority.
The rest of the Brit class system?
Almost identical to that of the U.S.
I repeat:
Why are you splitting hairs here?
Nothing better to do?
Yawn.
Meanwhile, similar class systems produce similar tensions.
We’re next.
Watch.
And if it goes down over here…it’s going to be bigger.
Nastier on every level.
Why?
Because the U.S. is bigger.
And also because its underclasses are much better armed than are those of Great Britain.
We do the riot thing really well.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. My own bet?
It will start in Newark or Philadelphia. New York and Boston are too gentrified and DC has too many immediately available troops. It will start in the scuffle cities first. Watch. Then it will spread.
Chicago is prime explosive material right now. Watch. LA too. St. Louis. Memphis.
And if there is an urban blackout during a heat wave? All bets are off.
Watch.
show me a riot that doesn’t have at its origins:
the brutality and/or killing of a person of color at the hand of law enforcement.
just want you to explain it to me real nice and slow
Unless you think James Earl Ray was “law enforcement”, the riots after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther Kind qualify. And they were probably most widespread riots in the past 100 years.
But I’m just being picky with this. Virtually every other riot after the riot at the University of Mississippi (all white) after that university was segregated has indeed been as you outlined. That was probably the last riot that could succeed in keeping people of color in their place. Prior to that you had “race riots” that were mostly white intimidating and brutalizing black neighborhoods, such in Wilmington NC and Detroit.
dude,
you honestly believe James Earl Ray killed Dr. King?
come on.
The NYC power blackout looting riots of 1977.
I knew that this was coming in June, 2009. I spent a week in London and what I saw on the streets…and particularly on the trains and underground… was nothing short of appalling. Barely restrained anger and hostility towards all who shared the same spaces. Car after car of people all reading the same type of tabloid sensationalism…papers that made the execrable NY Post look like the International Herald Tribune in comparison. Bump into someone? Snarl, grimace, defensive/offensive posture immediately. I live and work in NYC…a supposed jungle of hostility…and compared to what I saw in London NYC is some kind of behavioral nirvana. Believe it. I saw more fistfights and potential dustups on the street in after-dark London in one week than I have seen in NYC in 40 years. Really. Drunk, stoned 20-somethings in tattoos and piercings just begging for some action. It’s not a coincidence that “A Clockwork Orange” was set in Great Britain. My man Anthony Burgess…like all real artists…was writing prophecy, not fiction. Poetic prophecy.
And this contemporary version of the old ultra-violence was by no means confined to minority people.
It was totally media-fueled, in my opinion. I have lived and traveled many places and I have never, ever seen an underclass…again, white, black, brown, you name it…so totally media-hypnotized into an ongoing emotional state of such barely suppressed violence.
Below is a comment I published here soon after returning from London in the summer of 2009.
Surveilled to within an inch of their lives, working class Londoners are now having their say.
Arab Spring?
London Summer.
Who’s next?
Guess.
My guess?
American Autumn.
Or even sooner.
Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
Funny you should mention the show MI-5 (“Spooks,” in the UK; retitled for BBC America.) A lot of successful British shows spawn US network versions (The Office, et al), but MI-5 could never cross over. Beyond the usual authoritarian meme almost every cop/spy show suffers from, it also crams in far more social critique than any US broadcast network would be comfortable with. US officials are almost always corrupt, craven, duplicitous, and/or murderous, and senior British govt officials often so. And its terrorist bad guys often get the space to mount articulate expositions of their grievances. Yeah, it’s slick, escapist, and utterly implausible entertainment, but it also raises far more questions than most US network dramas. An interesting combination.
I agree…as long as you do not get sucked into its real message…high tech surveillance systems are good for you!!! They protect you from the bad guys. The good guys always win in the end (after much melodrama, of course) because…
Well, because they’re the good guys!!! They have computers!!! They are good-looking. They are smart. They are better than you and also better than your enemies. Thank the godless God that they are on your side!!!
Only of course…they are not on “your” side. They are a corporate wet dream. Nothing more. Where were they when these riots started? Where were hey when almost the whole Brit culture went Murdoch?
Nowhere.
Because they do not exist.
They are the result of cultural algorithms produced by the controllers. Nothing more and nothing less. The real reason that they are untranslatable to U.S. TV? The Brits are even more media-hypnotized than are we. More seriously media-hypnotized at the very least. A similar program could easily be spun off here minus the “U. S./CIA as bad guys” routine. But it’s too slick. Even more dehumanized than U.S. control mechanisms, which concentrate more on funky stupidity…”Jersey Shore” is a perfect example…than an overarching higher intelligence that is keeping us all safe.
Long story short…? The U.S. audience is overall simply not smart enough to buy into something like that. There’s something to be said for stupidity. Bet on it. I wonder what Snooki thinks? Or even if she “thinks” in any way that would be recognizable to you or me.
Later…
AG
I wonder whether she will treat this comment.
Who cares?
Not me.
AG
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I lived in London for about a year. At one party that lasted until the wee hours, a group of us were sitting around the living room of a friend. The booze ran out, and all the shops were closed,hence, no more alcohol. With everyone’s beer and gin buzz threatened with extinction, one of the English yobs perks up, “Look, why don’t we just smash in the window of that Indian c–t’s shop across the street? We can ‘elp ourselves to everything in ‘is shop.” Another partier chimes in, “Yeah, that might work.” (no sarcasm in her reply.) Finally, someone collapses on the floor, and murmurs, “I’m too fookin’ tiahred to do it.” And the prospect of smashing and looting a liquor store gets tabled for one evening. The next morning, I wake up with a horrible hangover, and say to myself, “Dude, you got to make some new friends.”
More pictures http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/08/london_riots.html
No, you don’t have to go back to 1960s. I remember very well the New York City looting riots of 1977, which were due to nothing more than a massive power blackout — on top of bad vibes at the time in the Big Apple. The destruction was unbelievable. It devastated and permanently changed the ethnic and economic makeup of many neighborhoods, including the one my parents lived in in Brooklyn. Many of these neighborhoods were not on the road to recovery until 15-20 years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977
good point. The summer of ’77 was crazy. Son of Sam was on the loose. Reggie was in town. Disco and Studio 54 were at their zenith. The Bronx was on fire. Strange times.
Strange times?
Not as strange as these times.
The strangeness is now just ramped on up into the mainstream.
Son of Sam murdered a few people. Our leftiness peace president has murdered thousands. The far right has almost completely ruined the economy and yet they are winning elections. Instead of Reggie Jackson we have the almost totally passionless Alex Rodriguez folding in the clutch.
How much “stranger” can it get?
Yes, the Bronx was on fire. I was there, playing in the latin clubs. It was burning on every level.
Now?
The fire is gone. Hypno-mediaed and gentrified out of NYC, into the smaller scuffle cities like Paterson and Newark, up the Hudson to places like Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, out into the bleaker suburban areas of Long Island.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
It’s blowing down.
Watch.
AG
I hope this will be resolved soon. This will worsen the economic condition.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."