Parts of London are still burning after an enormous third night of riots, during which the flames have spread to Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol and Liverpool. There is huge controversy over the conflagration, and the media establishment is doing its best to condemn, rather than try to understand. As a communist, this is not enough for me. These riots are the sudden bursting to the surface of social tensions that have been building up for many years - tensions that are rooted in the crisis of capitalism.
London's burning...but why?
The Toxteth riots - thirty years on
Amongst all the TV footage of buildings engulfed in flames, it's easy to forget that those flames were sparked by bullets from police guns. Last Thursday, cops shot and killed Mark Duggan on the streets of Tottenham in North London. The nation's biggest armed gang - Metropolitan Police - claimed that Duggan had been a "gangster", and it was reported that an officer had been shot during the incident. It later emerged that the bullet had embedded in the cop's radio, and it was police issue. This added credence to eyewitness statements that Duggan had been pinned down when he was killed.
On Saturday night, friends and family of Duggan gathered at Tottenham police station, demanding answers. Cops then set upon a sixteen-year-old girl with batons, for reasons which remain unclear. The stage was set for a nocturnal showdown between an angry community and the agents of the state. The violence seemed to be the living embodiment of Martin Luther King's quote that "A riot is the language of the unheard."
That was day one. On day two, the idea of rioting appears to have spread by word of mouth and - of course these days - on Twitter and Facebook. Doubtless many of those rioting had the notion that they were settling old scores with the police. Others seem to have seized on the opportunity to loot shops while the police were distracted. This pattern spread yet further on day three. There were also reports of violence against people who had nothing to do with the police.
But those paragraphs only take us so far in understanding what happened. Like any major event these days, it has to be analysed in the context of the economic crisis, which was touched off by the ultra-rich, and their losses have been steadily passed down the food chain, with the poorest suffering most. As even a Daily Telegraph article admits, this socio-economic vandalism has created the conditions in which such tumult was certain to happen sooner or later.
Two weeks ago I a visited a small exhibition at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, commemorating the Toxteth riots of 1981. Temporal distance had added understanding to the statements which lined the walls, though they went on to complacently claim that Liverpool was a very different place now. Last night, there was rioting in Toxteth's Upper Parliament Street once more.
But in a sense the exhibition blurb was right; Liverpool of 2011 is very different to the Liverpool of 1981. Back then we'd only had six years of the neoliberal assault. Now it's thirty-six. The latest crises of capitalism have created a generation of ghetto children with even less to lose.
The problem isn't that oppressed working class people are breaking the law en masse. The problem is that - justified anger at the police notwithstanding - so much of it is ostensibly 'apolitical', and many of the victims are entirely innocent politically speaking. As yet, there has been little leadership from the working class in the workplace. This apparently directionless outburst of rage and destruction is the inevitable result.
On Saturday night, friends and family of Duggan gathered at Tottenham police station, demanding answers. Cops then set upon a sixteen-year-old girl with batons, for reasons which remain unclear. The stage was set for a nocturnal showdown between an angry community and the agents of the state. The violence seemed to be the living embodiment of Martin Luther King's quote that "A riot is the language of the unheard."
That was day one. On day two, the idea of rioting appears to have spread by word of mouth and - of course these days - on Twitter and Facebook. Doubtless many of those rioting had the notion that they were settling old scores with the police. Others seem to have seized on the opportunity to loot shops while the police were distracted. This pattern spread yet further on day three. There were also reports of violence against people who had nothing to do with the police.
But those paragraphs only take us so far in understanding what happened. Like any major event these days, it has to be analysed in the context of the economic crisis, which was touched off by the ultra-rich, and their losses have been steadily passed down the food chain, with the poorest suffering most. As even a Daily Telegraph article admits, this socio-economic vandalism has created the conditions in which such tumult was certain to happen sooner or later.
Two weeks ago I a visited a small exhibition at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, commemorating the Toxteth riots of 1981. Temporal distance had added understanding to the statements which lined the walls, though they went on to complacently claim that Liverpool was a very different place now. Last night, there was rioting in Toxteth's Upper Parliament Street once more.
But in a sense the exhibition blurb was right; Liverpool of 2011 is very different to the Liverpool of 1981. Back then we'd only had six years of the neoliberal assault. Now it's thirty-six. The latest crises of capitalism have created a generation of ghetto children with even less to lose.
The problem isn't that oppressed working class people are breaking the law en masse. The problem is that - justified anger at the police notwithstanding - so much of it is ostensibly 'apolitical', and many of the victims are entirely innocent politically speaking. As yet, there has been little leadership from the working class in the workplace. This apparently directionless outburst of rage and destruction is the inevitable result.
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3/4 truth
09.08.2011 09:29
NickB
Working class or Multitudes?
09.08.2011 10:37
Anon
title
09.08.2011 11:19
I know that all of the above are part of the reason, but I am still missing out a very large piece of of the puzzle, yet I could of predicted these riots years ago.
The TV constantly stream opinions of field experts, but not a single one of a kid who rioted, why? have they got nothing to say? are they just mindless yobs who just want new plasma TVs?
I doubt it, but I am willing to bet some are.
It's easy to romanticise this riot, it's easy to put it into the context that you believe is the one social plague in modern society, it's much harder to listen to people and understand their reason for part taking.
The sad thing is, If they have got an agenda, a list of demands, or a political aspiration, they can get it.
if they said we'll stop if you legalise marijuana, tomorrow marijuana will be legalised, if they said they want all the cops involved to go to prison, tomorrow they will be in court, and if they said they wanted complete autonomy and self managed community, they will get it.
But I have not yet heard a single rioter giving any explanation that will put this in context.
I think, that for the large part of it, people just suddenly realised what power they have if they organise just a little, they become unstoppable, but they haven't yet grasped that they can do more then just burn and steal, they can actually take control over their lives, and once they understand they can get their wildest dreams realised, than a few burned buildings will pale in comparison to what's next to come.
missing
Reality for heroes.
09.08.2011 13:55
What we have here are a number of political slants placed onto events to justify varying world views. Indymedia is a great resource but there are a large number of marxist's here and also those claiming to be anarchists. There are also a large number of nationalist's using Indymedia to spread their own view.
In reality, none of these views and outlooks comes any way close to the reality of the situation as it now stands, to understand that you have to understand the global economy and the modern concept of globalisation. If you can understand that (it's the method the capitalists themselves use) then you can understand the changing face of the international scene. The United States is now in economic decline and that has an effect on the 'ticking over' rate of other economies around the world. To put it in its most simplistic form, it means that nations have become protectionist in advance of the American collapse. After the so-called 'War on Terror' resource war failed, and the financial crisis set in, many nations and government's around the world recognised that they needed other resources to attach their paper currencies too, enter the race for gold, silver and other commodities. That has now completed and a number of governments around the world are now struggling with having bloated economies that are larger than their gold and silver supplies and so cannot be maintained. So we have cuts...lots of cuts.
In the UK, the cuts agenda is fed by the artifical myth that the financial crisis has been caused by corruption and mismanagement of various sections of the global economy such as the housing and debt securities sectors. But capitalism is routinely corrupt. One can say that it is 'organised corruption'. So the idea that corruption can cause its failure is silly to say the least. If that were the case, capitalism would collapse every other day.
Unfortunately, the financial crisis was caused by the global so-called 'War on Terror'. Declare a global war, and the consequences will be global should it fail. The so-called 'War on Terror' failed, and the economies of those nations that have taken part have collapsed. What we are seeing now, is the United States in a period of post war collapse and that collapse is being felt mostly in amongst those nations that have been dependent on the United States for its wealth. In the United Kingdom, the current Government are having to manage a crisis brought about by the failure of the last Government to put distance between UK foreign policy and its US counterpart. So we now have a fairly generic problem that Parliament cannot deal. In short we don't any longer have a political party that is sufficiently distant the situation to be able to convincingly offer a solution. The Labour opposition, having nothing reliable or convincing to say on the matter...because they are the party that brought this crisis into play. The Liberal Democrats are in formation with the Conservative party and are trying to deal with the public sector that is in a state of flux competing for resources that it knows are finite.
Over the previous few days, we have seen one pattern emerge in amongst the burning buildings and rioting...lack of competent policing. Both in numbers and in operational organisation, the police response has been woefully inedaquate. This at a time when the police are facing severe drawing down of staffing levels as front and backline staff are facing job losses. So we clearly have a tragic situation in the killing of Mr Duggen, being left to rot in full view of the public in order to 'safeguard' policing funding during this period of shrinkage of public expenditure. The police are clearly allowing the Government to be placed into a situation in which officers and policing numbers must be seen to be protected...should the same level and degree of rioting occur in the future.
Of course, one could naturally criticise the police for allowing such large-scale violence on our streets, it is always a risk as somebody could have been killed or badly hurt. But one can also criticise the rioters too, as is clearly seen, the majority are itinerant wasters out for consumer goods they can use or sell. This modern day 'working class' have shown themselves once again, to be the sluts of globalisation and the constituent cogs of this repressive engine that helped bring this disastrous war into our peaceful world. This is where the modern idea of repesentation of the 'working class' breaks down. Firstly, the working class don't really exists anymore, you now have just the baseless and morally inconsequential 'consumerist class' and secondly, by fighting to protect one class over another, you act to preserve the idea of class itself.
The only way to understand the situation as it now stands, is to understand that the entire narrative is one of long-term post-war collapse...and that in time of collapse, just as in time of war, the truth is rarely present. We must not allow ourselves to become subject to the political classes who's only 'reality' is to offer bouts of horse-trading once every five years just so they and their friends can live champagne swilling lifestyles at the public expense.
That is not an answer to this problem.
Knot-Eyed Jaguar