Both of these events say more about the booze trade's manipulation of young people than it does any 'Social Uprising'. A culture of binge drinking has been skilfully developed by pubs, clubs (restrict dance floor space, no chairs = people drink more) and the brewing industry. Drinking of this type during hot weather nearly always leads to fighting, minor riots and the like. The Police are of course the ones society turns to for the clean up.


The youth of Britain today is probably the least political for a hundred years. Politics, Social Justice, Ecology etc and just not part of their world. Sure there are exceptions and on Indymedia we see youth who are far more commited than most but they in no way represent any more than a tiny minority. For example I have a 21 year old daughter, she has been raised in a Socialist household with parents commited to issues that would find strong support on Indymedia, despite this her interest in politics is zero. Teenage rebellion against parents ? Yes I thought so until I realised her friends are exactly the same, they just don't care. They are better educated than either my wife or I, have travelled far more than us at their age and seen the reality of the world and yet have no desire to change it.

Has the dream of world Socialism died in the crucuible of consumption ?

Take a look at the below link to the Liverpool Echo.

The youth who live in my area, which is a joke £62m New Deal for Communities area, are destroying the CCTV cameras.

The Echo states that the community has £300m regeneration funding, but the truth is it is as stated above just £62m, which is now being used to socially cleanse the area of working class RSL tenants so that mass demolition can take place so as to build expensive houses for the upper working classes and the middle classes, in effect the regeneration money is being used to gentrify the area.

Remember though, the Echo is an extremely right wing newspaper, like most of the local newspapers throughout the UK it is owned by the state supporting media group Trinity Publications. Most of the Echo’s mainly middle class, with a few working class turncoat intermingled amongst them, journalists where indoctrinated at the obnoxious right wing John Moor’s University journalism faculty. John Moor owned Littlewoods Pools and shops. The Littlewood's family (about 30 of them, many of them in their early thirties, all have a stake in the family fortune worth about £3b) sold all their business interests off and have now retired to a life of the idle rich.

Whilst one can become disturbed at the behaviour of these vandals one must try to understand why they do what they do. These socially excluded working class kids are indoctrinated at school by a hidden curriculum. This hidden curriculum subtly contains within its centre a neo-liberal ideology, which serves the dictates and agendas of the dominant culture that exists within civic society.

The kids unconsciously react to this subtle indoctrination through vandalism and the people who suffer the most are the working class people who live in the areas were these angry youths live. Just like the vandals, the working class adults were indoctrinated in the same schools that the vandals were. So what can be done? Get shut of the hidden curriculum and introduce a curriculum that contains an empowering emancipation ideology rather than a curriculum and teaching methodology that strives to oppress, indoctrinate, subjugate and domesticate are youth in to becoming compliant automatons.

Link to Echo article:

 http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/page.cfm?objectid=14520881&method=full&siteid=50061

OK, John Moores and his family are very rich and probably obnoxious. The education system is set up to repress not liberate. But that doesn't mean, Mike Lane, that John Moores University is obnoxious or that every student that studies at John Moores University is "indoctrinated" by the right any more than they are at the University of Liverpool or Liverpool Hope University College, to name a couple of other Universities in your area.
Groucho Trotsky

Mick Lane's comments indicate why we have the inner city problems we do. A view which seeks to blame others for the behaviour of a minority is just plain nuts !

Behaviour is a matter of personal discipline, a person chooses how they behave, free will is what elevates us above the lower primates after all. People's behaviour is dictated by their perception of the consequences of those actions. Many young men living in the poorer communities know the consequences of minor vandalism, grafiti, street robbery etc is next to nothing. The Anti Social Behaviour Orders so slated here by other contributors (probably because they work) are the first step in providing meaningfull unpleasant consequences to actions.

If you believe they don't answer the following question:

You and some friends are considering the vandalism of a bus stop, in the past nobody would have seen you do it and even if the police had been aware it was you the result would have been a "caution" or possibly a fine you wouldn't have needed to ever pay. Now the bus stop is monitered by a CCTV camera meaning that shortly after vandalising this community rescourse some police will arrive and arrest you, the court will place an order on you prohibiting you visiting the town centre after 7pm EVERY DAY for a year. . . . . . Still want to vandalise the bus stop ?

"Up to 150 youths pelted police with bricks and bottles after an under-18s party at Hackney's Ocean music venue early today."


This was no revolutionary event just a bunch of largered up tossers. most of the little shits looked like they'd never had drink before and it went to their heads. it was all over when the majority were picked up by their parents. just as well as a lot of local Hackney people were getting very pissed off.

"CCTV camera meaning that shortly after vandalising this community rescourse some police will arrive and arrest you, the court will place an order on you prohibiting you visiting the town centre after 7pm EVERY DAY for a year. . . . . . Still want to vandalise the bus stop ? "


Unless you live in village like I do of course. We can't even remember what a "policeperson" looks like.

Meanwhile our little shits run riot every day vandalising everything in sight.

Ian is spot on here. I am sick of the way some individuals think they have a right to behave in a way that the majority finds unacceptable. I will always campaign, march and do what I can to help those affected by poverty and social exclusion but even if some start out with less advantages than others it doesn't excuse their behaviour.

Standing outside a house, drinking cheap lager and shouting is not a politcal statement

"You and some friends are considering the vandalism of a bus stop, in the past nobody would have seen you do it and even if the police had been aware it was you the result would have been a "caution" or possibly a fine you wouldn't have needed to ever pay. Now the bus stop is monitered by a CCTV camera meaning that shortly after vandalising this community rescourse some police will arrive and arrest you, the court will place an order on you prohibiting you visiting the town centre after 7pm EVERY DAY for a year. . . . . . Still want to vandalise the bus stop ? "

No, now I want to burn down the police station, the court house, the bus company HQ, sabotage all the CCTV's, burn down the HQ's of the companies that make the CCTV's, lynch all the cops, and maybe lynch Ian into the bargain for supporting my persecution. Plus I'll want to get a gun so if the cops come for me, I can blow their heads off.

See, anti-"crime" bigotry doesn't work.

Deterrence theory is fascist filth. Label someone a criminal and they become a criminal. If the youths were thinking rationally about the consequences, they probably wouldn't want to smash the bus stop in the first place - they'd want to do something constructive.

"A view which seeks to blame others for the behaviour of a minority is just plain nuts!"

"Nuts" is normalist abuse, and offensive to the mad. I am mad and proud of it, and therefore offended by this remark. Mike or I should now be able to get an ASBO against you and ban you from ever using a computer again or from going within a mile of our home cities, yes?

Blaming "minorities" for social problems is part of majoritarian bigotry. Do you really think your life, with all the complicities with capitalism and the state, is utterly harmless in every way? It takes two to make social conflicts and problems most of the time. There are no simple solutions because the causes are complex. Anti-"crime" idiots are not able to explain why deviance occurs, except to come up with idiotic outdated assumptions that actions emanate from "individuals" performing cost/benefit analyses of behaviours as if they're a bunch of stockbrokers. And in fact, the capitalist bean-counting mentality is at the heart of this whole idea of imposing "consequences" and the rest of the anti-"crime" crusade, which is simply capitalist monoculture imposed through state violence.

You don't like graffiti. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of graffiti is very artful. Some is politically necessary. And some is necessary assertion of identity by people who are dismissed by rightist idiots as "little shits" etc. and rendered voiceless. Corporate billboards, on the other hand, are an eyesore, incite harmful activity (consumerism) etc. - yet putting up a billboard isn't "vandalism", and yet trashing a billboard IS "vandalism"! This is just a bunch of normalist racist class-biased money-driven inegalitarian shit which anti-"crime" morons reinforce with their idiotic fixation on social conformity/normality and their ignorant rantings.

“I am sick of the way some individuals think they have a right to behave in a way that the majority finds unacceptable.” (Peter Watson)

I am sick of the way some individuals think that just because they think like everyone else, this means that they and their conformist buddies have the right to impose their way of life on everyone else. Just because you’re the biggest gang doesn’t make you any better than all the little gangs. In fact it makes you worse. Why shouldn’t people defy your prejudices? Because as often as not that’s all they are. Is blood drinking justified because mosquitoes outnumber humans? Fuck the majority.

"The youth who live in my area, which is a joke £62m New Deal for Communities area, are destroying the CCTV cameras."

Where I live, the CCTV camera are mounted on 25ft poles and are protected by razor wire.

Coming to a place near you.

Cameras on top of poles can usually only see the tops of people's heads... And can still be reached by airguns, supersoakers etc. if these have decent range

Razor wire makes a good place to attach materials to cover the camera and limit its range of sight

Poles are not immune to hacksaws, chainsaws etc

The government want a police state, they'll stoop to any level but let's not give in without a fight

Disclaimer: of course I'm not advocating that anyone DO any of these things - that would lead to anarchy which of course would be a crying shame, wouldn't it?

The youth, and I mean most youth, behave in ways that emulate what they see in the rest of society. That fact that the oppression and arrogance (read veiled aggression) are all around us while at the same time we have a culture of make-believe which most adults have slowly ingested and taken as truth, is good enough reason for the kids to riot. They haven't yet swallowed the lies and they are resisting in whatever way they can, even if they aren't consciously aware of the cause and effect. They see marital infidelity, lying and cheating in pursuit of filthy money, governance that appears corrupt and which probably is, and we expect them to grow into well-socialised people - by well-socialised I do not mean compliant but honest, peaceful and unselfish, and with inward and outward personal integrity. Given the social conditions that kids from all backgrounds face we can expect to see greater alienation and many more of them lashing out from sheer frustration at the evil they see around them. And when they grow into adults some of them, most likely the middle class kids, will become extremists. They have few other options. Whoops better end it there, I think I may have just written in support of terrorism.