My Thoughts on the London Riots

This weekend a riot started in Tottenham, North London following a peaceful protest to demand justice for the murder of Mark Duggan - shot down by police last week. The video above is believed to be the incident that sparked the violence. You see a 16 year old girl being attacked by police after approach their line and on lookers screaming in horror. My post started off last night and it was purely Tottenham focused, but the rioting and looting spread to Brixton in the early hours of the morning and Hackney and Lewisham are also considered high risk for potential violence. Millions of pounds of damage has been done to Tottenham high street as shops have been looted, the police station burned down and personal property set alight. The same has also happened in Brixton. People of all colours have been looting. This is not a race issue, but a class issue.

The official stance of the government is that damage to property will not be tolerated and their PR strategy is to completely ignore the context of the riots and focus on criminalising the ‘thugs’ who rioted this weekend. I don’t condone the rioting or the looting. I feel it would be more constructive if people expressed their social grievances through community coordinated civil disobedience. Not paying council tax for example would have a greater impact than burning down buildings because it’s strategic and you’re negotiating in the language that the government understand - money. However, I’m not naive enough to think that disenfranchised communities have the leadership or the resources to galvanise in a way that the government consider to be acceptable. The fact is that the riots have happened against a backdrop of poverty, violence, disillusion and injustice. Ironically the public funded organisations that have been bridging the gap between the community and the police in Tottenham have lost support under the Conservative government and I assume the same is taking place all over London. Youth clubs have closed, initiatives run by the Job Centre to get idle young people into work have lost funding, libraries have shut down, tuition fees have gone up and to top it all off a man has been killed by the police and his family were given no answers. I see this as a context of legitimate social and economic concerns. And the government is not equipped to handle the problem. The fact the Prime Minister and Mayor refuse to come back to London and address us and the world shows this. The Deputy Mayor says that Boris Johnson feels that if he comes back to London he will be rewarding the criminals. How outrageous. Surely leadership in times like this and letting us know how the government will address the current air of resentment is a basic part of his job description.

I think those involved in criminal activity should be reprimanded, but if London does not develop a social conscious there will be nothing to stop these riots from happening in the future. Even if young people don’t riot we still potentially have a lost generation on our hands. Just because those who have rioted have not expressed themselves in a language that is socially acceptable does not mean that they are numb to their poverty and lack of opportunity.

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