UK Riots

[Griffin NoName]

Shocked by thugs and hooligans and the violence and the looting. It's widespread across London (and now north/midlands too). I live in a "nice" neighbourhood, but a shop on our highstreet was looted today. It seems to be all men, aged 10/11 to twenties. I can't help thinking it's to do with bad parenting and we have a real problem with youth culture. Shocking. How to reclaim a whole generation and turn them into decent people?

[Bluenose]

The vision that I have seen on TV over here remonded me of film from the Blitz.  Shocking.  I heard an interview by an Australian reporter who was speaking to two girls aged about 17 who were quite sanguine about it all.  They had been up all night drinkling and looting abd in their words "having fun".  The seemed to think that the justification for it was that so they could "show the rich people we can do what we like".  Rich people, yeah right, like some poor sod who works 80 hours a week in a corner shop to make a modest living.  Yeah, he's a rich S.O.B., sure.  Made me sick.  I don't have any clever words or smart solutions for the problem, I don't even know what the problem really is.  It just makes me realise that the vaneer of civilisation can be very thin at times.  Are we perhaps really witnessing the barbarians at the gate?  Is this the begining of the fall of western civilisation?  I wonder...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is evidently something structural at work here, too many people doing it to be just bands of "thugs". Higher levels of unemployment among the youth and lots of people living in invisible parts of town seem to be at play. While it looks like "homegrown" population, I would think it's very similar to the riots in the banlieu in Paris not too long ago, start ignoring a portion of your population and you are bound to be reminded of their existence sooner or later.

Mind you, I don't condone the looting and burning, nor do I think that straight welfare* will solve these problems, but I am convinced that these things don't happen by accident.

*handing out money outright doesn't work, the recipient should have something to give and something to lose even if it is more symbolic than anything else. Besides, it can't be that the only work option for the youth is to go get killed in some foreign place to guard the oil wells/refineries/pipelines/interests of the corporations**..

**I'll get down of my soapbox now.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I tend to think this sort of thing is symptomatic of disease in a society (please see riots in US history). I agree with what Zono said. As I understand it, this isn't just a bunch of barbaric youngsters running around and wreaking havoc for the sake of it, though goodness knows I'm sure there are those who are taking advantage of the situation, possibly especially the younger end of the spectrum; this is the result of police shootings (from what I heard, 333 deaths since 1998 and not a single conviction of the cops involved) and chronic unemployment and casual disregard for the poor.

I'm not condemning the UK per se. It's the same thing in the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually happens here, too. Hell, our local cops are notorious for this sort of thing. They're deliberately told to unload the gun into the suspect so they can say they feared for their life so as to get off, and I've had more than a few friends loose somebody to the cops. I think it's a product of the society we have allowed ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, to become.

[Griffin NoName]

I was wrong, it's not men alone, plenty of women joining in. It's hard to understand what has really sparked it but disaffected youth seems to be the closest one can come. It's spread too far to be just the shooting. They talk of arrests and so on, but what punishment will reform them? Seems to me the damage to a generation is irredeemable and it will pass on to their offspring if society does not change. Seeing the disintegration of society is sobering. I don't think our government is up to dealing with it.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I was listening to a report on the radio and two things popped into my mind regarding the younger portion: this happens over the summer when many of these kids don't have school, and, where are their parents? If I know that there are riots about I would never-absolutely-ever let my son out, how then is that some of these kids are out? Is it that parents have no control over their own children, or, that they're absent because they're working overtime/nightshift/etc? I'm sure every case is different, there is definitively an open rebellion against the perceived authority, personified by the police, but it is too large and too generalized.

I wonder if a portion of the population is taking a cue from the Arab upraising in their own misguided way. There has to be a perceived injustice generalized enough to allow the rioters a self-justification for their behavior.

[Aggie]

I was listening to a report on the radio and two things popped into my mind regarding the younger portion: this happens over the summer when many of these kids don't have school, and, where are their parents?

Working.  It's absolutely vital to have all persons of adult age working as much as possible to maximize GDP, don't you know? Daycare is a fine substitute for in-home parenting, there's no need to waste time interacting with your children.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Daycare is a fine substitute...

Fine and expensive so that enough people can't afford it. I suspect these kids are out in the street without many real and/or constructive alternatives.

Edit:
I found this article on the subject quite interesting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conclusions-we-cant-draw-about-londons-riots/2011/08/10/gIQA3H4k6I_story.html

[Griffin NoName]

I went out today and there are police vehicles everywhere. They have certainly upped their presence, and visibility. At the retail park (in a posh area) there was even a police land rover patrolling the car park. Feels like living in a police state. All very odd.

Most of these kids parents aren't working. They are unemployed. But that doesn't mean they spend time with their kids, at leasst not the sort of quality time that would make any difference. They have no control over the kids, and the kids are mostly in gangs. The press note that the gangs, for the first time ever are joining together to loot etc rather than fighting each other. Gangs are a huge problem in our cities. The violence has been growing for years. These kids have no future. It's very sad and also awful. I can't see things changing, only getting worse.

[Aggie]

Good article, Zono.

If the Egyptians in Tahrir Square wanted democracy, and the anarchists in Athens wanted more government spending, the hooded men in British streets want 46-inch flat-screen HD televisions. They aren't smashing the headquarters of the Tory Party; they are smashing clothing shops.

I'm stepping way out on my middle-class-intellectual-ly biased limb here, but it looks like there's a demographic that, with little prospect of attaining material success through a career (and likely bugger all for credit), is focused on material goods as status/success markers but rarely able to meet their desires. With an opportunity to grab what they want, and to a large degree get away with it, why not?  In some groups (gangs and the like) I'm sure committing acts of savagery is a status-booster in itself. Young, bored and pissed off with the fact that they're at the bottom of the ladder with little prospect of moving up is enough of a motivation for a riot in itself (the small "riot" in Vancouver following the loss in the Stanley Cup finals suggest young and bored is enough, although there's a lot of latent anger in BC that rarely comes out in to the open).   The chance to grab power and defy authority is a heady thing for those who've been under the boot of authority all their lives.

Here's some topical song lyrics for you all, to sing along:

White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own
White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own

Black people gotta lot a problems
But they don't mind throwing a brick
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick

An' everybody's doing
Just what they're told to
An' nobody wants
To go to jail!

Chorus

All the power's in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it

Everybody's doing
Just what they're told to
Nobody wants
To go to jail!

Chorus

Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?

I raise my hand, I've got another question:
"If I start a riot, will I get protection?
'Cause I'm the kid whose got a lot of problems
and if I throw a brick maybe the brick will go and solve them."

Oh.... yeah.... I wanna riot
Oh.... yeah.... I wanna riot

April 26th, 1992,
there was a riot on the streets,
tell me where were you?
You were sittin' home watchin' your TV,
while I was paticipatin' in some anarchy.

First spot we hit it was my liqour store.
I finally got all that alcohol I can't afford.
With red lights flashin' time to retire,
And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire.

Next stop we hit it was the music shop,
It only took one brick to make that window drop.
Finally we got our own p.a.
Where do you think I got this guitar that you're hearing today?
Hey!

When we returned to the pad to unload everything,
It dawned on me that I need new home furnishings.
So once again we filled the van until it was full,
since that day my livin' room's been more comfortable.

Cause everybody in the hood has had it up to here,
It's getting harder and harder and harder each and every year.

Some kids went in a store with their mother,
I saw her when she came out she was gettin some pampers.

They said it was for the black man,
they said it was for the Mexican,
and not for the white man.

But if you look at the streets it wasn't about Rodney King,
It's bout this fucked up situation and these fucked up police.
It's about coming up and staying on top
and screamin' 187 on a mother fuckin' cop.
It's not written on the paper it's on the wall.
National guard??!
Smoke from all around,

Let it burn, wanna let it burn,
wanna let it burn, wanna wanna let it burn.....

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I'm generally suspicious of the media and authorities when they throw the word "gang" around in conjunction with riots and such, particularly when the demographics involved are minority groups, because it's a convenient way of delegitimizing their complaints and turning otherwise sympathetic members of the dominant group against them (for example, in the aftermath of Katrina, whites were "looking for food" while minority groups were "rioting"*). This is a riot, I'm sure gangs are a legitimate problem and I'm sure they're taking advantage of this situation, but I don't think they're the catalyst/fount of it. Riots are a symptom of disease - cure the disease (easier said than done) and the symptoms go away. I think this is pretty universal, regardless of all other factors.

[Foreigner watching from an ocean and a continent away]

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neN5FiTOIJY

Britain's rioters: young, poor and disillusioned

Young rioters clogged Britain's courthouses Wednesday, each one painting a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old gangster arrested for stealing a garbage can.

Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots _ some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.

Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any one plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.

"Nobody is doing nothing for us _ not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who lives near Tottenham, the blighted London neighborhood where the riots started. He only gave his nickname "Freddy," because he took part in the looting and was scared of facing prosecution; he was not among the youths in court.

Britain also has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU and alarmingly high youth unemployment _ roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all young black youths are out of work.

As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's blinkered to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.

"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham.

"The argument that this doesn't have anything to do with expenditure cuts or economics doesn't stand up to the evidence. If that's true, then what we have here are hundreds of young, crazed kids simply acting irrationally. I don't think that's the case."

Nearly 1,200 people have been arrested since the riots erupted Saturday, mostly poor youths from a broad section of Britain's many races and ethnicities.

It's unclear what role racial tensions have played in the riots, if any.

In Tottenham, most residents are white but blacks from Africa or the Caribbean account for around a quarter of the ethnic mix. It's also home to Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Asian immigrants. The rage has appeared to cut across ethnic lines, with poverty as the main common denominator.

But there's a history of racial tension in many of these neighborhoods, and the riots themselves were triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham.

In 1985, the neighborhood was home to the Broadwater Farm riot, an event seared in the memories of many of the rioters' parents. Back then, violence exploded area when a black woman died from a stroke during a police search. The area remains a hotbed of ethnic tension: In the past year, police have logged some 100 racist or religion based hate crimes.

Other social problems afflict the places where rioting erupted: high teen pregnancy rates, gun crime and drug trafficking.

Daniel Cavaglieri, one of the lawyers for a 17-year-old black teenager who appeared with dozens of others at Highbury Magistrates Court on Wednesday, said the youth was studying mechanics and trying to finish school. He was accused of following his older cousin into looting a clothing shop, and charged with intent to steal.

"His mother is furious he was out and about at that time. She genuinely thought he was at a friend's house," Cavaglieri told the court. "He's going to be grounded."

Britain's Conservative-led government is implementing painful austerity measures in an attempt to get the country's finances in order. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged 80 billion pounds ($129 billion) of spending cuts and 30 billion pounds in extra taxes to trim Britain's huge deficit, swollen after the government spent billions bailing out foundering banks.

The plans to cut services from welfare to education sparked violent protests last year, as students took to the streets to demonstrate against the tripling of university fees. The government is also cutting civil service jobs and benefits, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66, hiking the amount public sector employees contribute to pensions and reducing their retirement payouts.

The austerity measures will also slash housing benefit payments used to subsidize rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families out of their homes and force them toward the fringes of the country's capital.

Economists at the Centre for Economic Policy Research say such cuts promise more unrest. Most of Britain's deepest cuts haven't even come yet.

"There's usually something that sparks these things off," said Hans-Joachim Voth, a research fellow at the center. "The question is why is it that in 90 percent of these cases that nothing happens? Why is it that some places just end up like a tinder box?"

An 11-year-old boy was among one of the youngest to appear in court on Wednesday.

The boy, from Romford, Essex, told the court he had joined in a gang of youths who looted a department store. Wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, the youngster spoke only to confirm his name, age and date of birth. He pleaded guilty to burglary, after stealing a waste bin worth 50 pounds. A charge of violent disorder was dropped.

Courts have been running nearly 24 hours a day to hear all the cases since the rioting began. Most cases are heard in a blink of an eye and only give a snapshot of some of the youngsters' lives. Most of the youths also can't be named because they are minors.

The courts have been chaotic with a near-constant stream of defendants _ many of whom haven't had a chance to talk at length with their attorneys or some whose records have been sent to the wrong courts or wrong attorneys.

Another of the boys who appeared Wednesday was a 15-year-old charged with using or threatening unlawful violence, a charge to which he pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors said the boy, who already has a criminal record of theft, is an only child who lives with his widowed father. He came to Britain from Germany three years ago after leaving Ukraine when his mother died.

Police say he was in the thick of Tuesday's rioting in London's Hackney area, throwing stones and missiles.

Under the Labour-led government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, authorities tried to penalize badly behaved youth with Anti-Social Behavior Orders, or ASBOs. The orders have since become badges of honor for many of Britain's youth.

In 2008, there were more than 1 million reported cases of violent crimes in England and Wales alone. By comparison, there were 331,778 reported incidents in France and some 210,885 incidents in Germany. Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers is also among the highest in Europe.

"There's income inequality, extremely high levels of unemployment between 16 and 24-year-olds and huge parts of this population not in education or training," Goodwin said. "There's a general malaise amongst a particular generation."

As someone of that age or recently so, I sure as hell didn't/don't want or need my parents supervising me all the time. In fact, it would piss me off.

They talk of arrests and so on, but what punishment will reform them? Seems to me the damage to a generation is irredeemable and it will pass on to their offspring if society does not change. Seeing the disintegration of society is sobering. I don't think our government is up to dealing with it.

I don't think punishments are going to really help. In fact, I think the bit with the cops is only going to aggravate the problem. I agree that the looters, arsonists, etc. need to face consequences for their actions, but for those actions alone rather than venting their frustrations. I don't think this generation is irredeemable. I think it's frustrated and poor and feeling helpless - people lash out in response to that. When/if the economy picks up again and they can get jobs, I imagine a lot of this will dry and blow away.

*sorry for the perpetually American examples. They're the ones I know the best.
[/foreigner watching from very far away]

[Griffin NoName]

Stuff I've said, I'm parroting bits from the BBC.

Today, people in court were for example, a graphic designer, a schoolroom assistant and an eleven year old boy - so no not gang material.

I'm generally suspicious of the media and authorities when they throw the word "gang" around in conjunction with riots and such, particularly when the demographics involved are minority groups, because it's a convenient way of delegitimizing their complaints

The term rioting maybe slightly misleading ? What is happening is quite specific in that it is shops being looted and buildings (and cars) set on fire. There defintely are gangs involved, though clearly others as well, and the age range quite wide. The gangs referred to are local to each area, are teenage boys and girls, and in the really rough areas they rule the streets at the best of times, never mind the worst. It's quite hard for a teenager in one of those areas to not belong to a gang. The UK version may be different to what you understand as gangs? At present no one really understands what the catalyst is. Ostensibly it was a black man being shot by the police, but clearly this goes much further than that. The response was looting not specifically fighting the police.

[/foreigner watching from very far away]

I'm quite shocked by my own reactions. It's made me realise how detatched I am when watching news items showing rioters in other countries (eg. Greece). This is making me feel shame and horror. I'm not at all detatched watching it. I feel angry too. Angry at the wanton destruction, violence and especially the looting, as well as anger at the deprevation. It has also touched me directly in deciding to stay clear of the high street where there are lots of high end goods shops. (And I got a home delivery take out for £3 cheaper than the usual minimum price tonight as the restaurants have no business).

Cameron makes me cross. He describes the rioters as "sick" without saying anything about how they became sick. ie. no responsibility taken.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The botched interview was quite enlightening, if youngsters are systematically harassed by the police, it won't take much to set them off, it reminds me the LA riots after Rodney King way back.
---
It's a real pity that politics are what they are now, either you're with us or against us, etc, is it really so bloody difficult to see reason in any argument and try to balance? I do see a problem with the way welfare is setup but by no means should it be dismantled. On the same token there is a problem with the authoritarian behavior of the police but that doesn't mean that the laws shouldn't be followed and guarded. Those in gangs can't be let do whatever they please but the root causes of those gangs need to be addressed, those who are unemployed and disenfranchised with the system have legitimate concerns but those don't justify looting, and so on.

But it's either or, the ideology must be pure or you are a traitor, etc, it bothers me to no end.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Ditto. Well said, Zono.

Stuff I've said, I'm parroting bits from the BBC.

Today, people in court were for example, a graphic designer, a schoolroom assistant and an eleven year old boy - so no not gang material.

I'm generally suspicious of the media and authorities when they throw the word "gang" around in conjunction with riots and such, particularly when the demographics involved are minority groups, because it's a convenient way of delegitimizing their complaints

The term rioting maybe slightly misleading ? What is happening is quite specific in that it is shops being looted and buildings (and cars) set on fire. There defintely are gangs involved, though clearly others as well, and the age range quite wide. The gangs referred to are local to each area, are teenage boys and girls, and in the really rough areas they rule the streets at the best of times, never mind the worst. It's quite hard for a teenager in one of those areas to not belong to a gang. The UK version may be different to what you understand as gangs? At present no one really understands what the catalyst is. Ostensibly it was a black man being shot by the police, but clearly this goes much further than that. The response was looting not specifically fighting the police.

I think that's the general definition of rioting. It's still, imo, a sign of disease in a society for the same reasons I said before - stuff like this doesn't happen without the right kind of context: powerlessness, poverty, desperation, frustration, and anger at people who have the power to change things for the better but choose to help themselves instead. Any time there's a riot - food riots, race riots, etc. - there's always this at the base, at least from my observations.
Gangs here are also mostly young folk like that (with a distinctly criminal bent), but I've also known middle aged gangsters.
I'm not a Brit. I haven't paid serious attention to British politics but the signs of malaise are pretty obvious, and when it's this big with these demographics, it's not just a bunch of kids. It's something deeper and more fundamental than that. It's really easy to see it as solely bunch of delinquents run wild (and, like I said, there are elements of that there), but I'm pretty damn sure it's not the whole truth.
And that bit of my post was a general comment, applicable to this situation and to any similar one, anywhere in the world.

[/foreigner watching from very far away]

I'm quite shocked by my own reactions. It's made me realise how detatched I am when watching news items showing rioters in other countries (eg. Greece). This is making me feel shame and horror. I'm not at all detatched watching it. I feel angry too. Angry at the wanton destruction, violence and especially the looting, as well as anger at the deprevation. It has also touched me directly in deciding to stay clear of the high street where there are lots of high end goods shops. (And I got a home delivery take out for £3 cheaper than the usual minimum price tonight as the restaurants have no business).

Cameron makes me cross. He describes the rioters as "sick" without saying anything about how they became sick. ie. no responsibility taken.

I would argue that that's about a third of the problem.

[Griffin NoName]

[/foreigner watching from very far away]

I'm quite shocked by my own reactions. It's made me realise how detatched I am when watching news items showing rioters in other countries (eg. Greece). This is making me feel shame and horror. I'm not at all detatched watching it. I feel angry too. Angry at the wanton destruction, violence and especially the looting, as well as anger at the deprevation. It has also touched me directly in deciding to stay clear of the high street where there are lots of high end goods shops. (And I got a home delivery take out for £3 cheaper than the usual minimum price tonight as the restaurants have no business).

Cameron makes me cross. He describes the rioters as "sick" without saying anything about how they became sick. ie. no responsibility taken.

I would argue that that's about a third of the problem.

I agree. If not half. Of course, it's not just Cameron. The politcal class fails to get a grip, whoever they are.

What's particularly distressing is at present they are busy reassessing (all) the ill and disabled with such stringent parameters that they are all being chucked on the employment market (without a hope in hell of actually getting any jobs) and being left destitute, so as well as the unemployed youth who make up the majority of the figures, there will be massive further deprivation. This is happening with relatively little protest or even public knowledge as it never makes front page news given what else is going on. As for the elderly, they are just getting more and more impoversihed and no one cares a damn. Makes me despair, hitting the most vulnerable. <soapbox>.