So, for the last few days London has been rioting…and while London itself has quietened down, the riots have spread to Manchester, Salford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and other places.
The riots here have, in a personal sense, been quite weird. Coming from India, I am no stranger to riots. I have lived through the ‘84 riots while in delhi (of course, I was a child then), I was in TN when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. And have seen different types of unrest over the years in Bombay, Pune and so on.
To that extent, in human life terms, this was not that serious a riot. Three days of looting and pillaging across London, and I believe one person in London has died. It was almost very “civilized” rioting. Some of the footage was surreal- a tv reporter was actually walking around the rioters at Clapham and having general conversation with them – watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqj1N9qeWXI and then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXcI-NL3Tro . “Getting our taxes back” has to be one of the most memorable lines from this entire episode.
However, what was even more weird for me was that in spite of all these incidences in India, I don’t think I have ever been more close to riots in my life. In India, luckily, I have never got caught in a situation in the middle of riots…somehow one always got home in time. And perhaps, the places I stayed in were safe enough. In Delhi, which have to be the worst riots I have lived through, we were in the air force station- so once the bus ride from school to home happened (which was after the assassination but before the worst of the riots)- we were in one of the safest places in town.
But here, it was happening next to us. If you consider our block of flats to be a parallelogram, then on 2 sides of it there are main roads (which intersect at right angles in a traffic signal) and on the other 2 sides there are other houses with smaller, side roads. On the other side of both the main roads are shopping centres - the priory retail park on one side and the tandem retail centre on the other. Both these were vandalized and looted.
http://www.demotix.com/news/782970/aftermath-looting-colliers-wood-retail-park
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/pictures/picturegalleries/collierswoodriots/
But again, it was completely civilized, nothing happened outside these two retail parks and nothing could be seen on the roads. Riots are not the nicest thing in the world…but if you have to have them, this is perhaps a better model!!!!!
That doesn’t change the fact that this was an absolutely absurd event, as are all riots. There have been a number of commentators giving their views on why this happened and what the lessons are, etc etc. Not surprisingly, there has been some party politics on this with Ken Livingstone especially going for the jugular of the government
"I am concerned that there is growing social dislocation in London and a threat that the police will be forced into escalating conflict with some London communities. We do not want to go back to the 1980s.
The economic stagnation and cuts being imposed by the Tory government inevitably create social division. As when Margaret Thatcher imposed such policies during her recessions this creates the threat of people losing control, acting in completely unacceptable ways that threaten everyone, and culminating in events of the type we saw in Tottenham.”
There have been other commentators who have spoken about how we need to look deeper and understand what is causing these problems, how social disaffection is causing this alienation of the youngsters, etc etc. Harriet Harman went on about the cutting of the EMA was causing youngsters to leave school. And Lee Jasper seemed to suggest (albeit obliquely) that Curry’s not spending CSR money on local projects was the reason they were attacked by “disaffected youth”
Balderdash!!
There is no greater reason behind all this than plain, simple thuggery and the urge to make a quick buck in the spur of the moment. There was simply no other reason. Most of the cuts that are being planned have not even come into force.
There are 2 serious cuts which have come into force - the cut in the educational maintenance allowance and the increase in tuition fees- both of which impact students (albeit, in my view, marginally). It would have had some logical sense if these riots had happened in college campuses and schools – one could have understood it.
However, these riots happened in city centres and the people involved were not just college students. There’s been an 11 year old arrested – he should have been in school – which is free in this country. There’s a 31 year old primary school worker who was arrested – who was no doubt putting in a blow on behalf of his wards for the future. Yet another is a convicted drug dealer who was out on probation. Clearly a cut in public services might mean that some of his unemployed customers might not get benefits anymore to spend with him – so the cut in public spending will directly impact him, won’t it?
And, just listen to some of the statements which some of the looters have been making
From Croydon
“It was good fun, free alcohol, lovely.”
“It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know – Conservatives or whoever it is. We have shown the police we can do what we want. That’s what it’s about – showing the police we can do what we want. And now we have. Hopefully it will go on.”
“We are targeting the rich people, people who have got businesses and that’s why all of this has happened. We are just showing the rich people we can do what we want”
From Clapham Junction
“hey, let’s go in and get some watches”
From Manchester
On being asked couldn’t he afford to buy some of the stuff he looted, one guy said – “Why am I going to miss the opportunity to get free stuff, stuff that’s worth loads of money.” He went on to say “I'll keep doing this every day until I get caught. When I get home nothing is going to happen to me."
On being asked what if he got caught the response was classic
“This will be my first offence, I will take a caution. The Prisons are overcrowded, what are they going to do to me, give me an ASBO”
Clearly from the responses, there is no great disaffection; instead the rioters are enjoying themselves. And the last response shows that the riots grew because there was no fear of reprisal. And that’s the key point, isn’t it?
The events in Tottenham were sad and one could understand some form of spontaneous violence happening there. Not justified but understandable. But unfortunately, when the police were not able to handle that well, there were enough gangs who thought through it. If the police found it difficult to handle rioting at one location how would they manage 5 or 6? And once the gangs were out, I guess everyone had a go. And the blackberry meesenger made it very simple to mobilize people.
(As an aside, maybe it’s because I am from a third world country- but if you have a blackberry messenger, you are not that deprived, are you?)
And as the police got its act together in London and got in forces from other cities, the violence in London died down and the violence in other cities picked up. I am sure there is no Moriarty like creature in the background…but it does give one something to think about.
That’s the reason for these events – plain simple thuggery and greed. People got a chance to get free stuff with what they thought was almost no chance of getting caught and they took it. There was no other agenda, there was no deep rooted, long planned social upheaval, there was no back to the wall. This was wanton violence - not mindless – in fact, it was calculated…that in the midst of all this, they won’t get caught - but nonetheless, gratuitous violence.
While it does not justify any such act, this is not to deny that large parts of the population are stuck in a deadend welfare situation. And they have, as Cameron put it, a sense of entitlement – a legacy of government policy where you threw money at a problem, hoping it would go away. And that’s going to take ages to get rid of. Because, today it has seeped into British public life- all discussions centre around how much money the government is spending (or not spending)- and nothing else.
My knowledge of UK politics over the last decade or so is based on what I have seen and read after coming to London in 2007. There has been ongoing and continual debate about Tony Blair’s legacy – Iraq and Rwanda, etc. I am not sure of how things were before Tony Blair but, looking at public spending figures, I think the biggest legacy Tony Blair has left this country is that he has changed all public debate on the role of the government to inputs rather than outputs.
Today, any debate on public services is only about how much money is being spent – never about what happens to that money. “We will spend 5 bn more on the NHS” – never “Can we get the same type of care for the patient but spend a little less?” It is “Oh, my god, there will be 1000 officers less” – never “so, can we manage the same level of security by changing the way we deploy the forces.” Even on the rare occasions when outputs are discussed, the solutions always focus on inputs and almost never on the process which converts inputs to outputs. So, if doctors are spending only 50% of their time seeing patients and thereby only seeing 70% of patients on time, the solution is not to see how one can free up 75% of a doctor’s time to see patients. It is to get 50% more doctors.
Nobody in any debate is concerned with anything but how much the government is spending. All governments are profligate…that is not new. But a complete disregard for output and a belief that the panacea to all evils is “Go forth and spend”, means that no effort has been made to do things differently and that any reduction in spending is automatically seen as a disaster. I have not seen any department, other than perhaps the defence, which has said –yes, there is less money but we will do things differently and ensure that services are as good.
Perhaps I expect too much from government but when the public sector gets paid better than the private sector, surely the civil servants can deliver some better solutions than saying “there is less money, so things will suffer”
But this is a diversion from the last few days – the riots. There is, however, a linkage – the mentality of throwing money at problems has meant that there is a large section of population which has had money thrown at them. Actually, everyone had some money thrown at them, in the Labour days. But some sections got so much thrown at them, that they did not have to bother getting any of their own. And that has created a sense of entitlement among many people. The feeling that the world anyway owed them something coupled with a feeling, post Tottenham, that no one (read the police) could catch them gave rise to greed and these riots.
That’s all these riots are about - greed – not social dislocation, not unemployment, not a class war…but greed - generated perhaps by a sense of entitlement, but nonetheless, greed. And that’s all there is to it.
