FLIP LIFE TV: UK RIOTS DEBATE IN CLAPHAM

Following up on my thoughts on the London riots that expanded across the UK this week I wanted to share a must see debate on the streets of Clapham South London about the riots. The biggest misunderstanding between us in the UK is that those on the right assume that those of us who are trying to understand the reasons behind the rioting are justifying the violence. I am not a rioter. I do not justify the looting. But I understand my community and I understand that if children are not invested in and have no infrastructure they will grow up feral and misguided. Children with little or no education will express themselves in a language that is not socially acceptable. As a country we either criminalise, ghettoise or ignore the underclass. In the mean time we celebrate tokenism as part of a pseudo-liberal agenda. This is the status quo and we usually get along fine in this matrix.

The undercurrent of the UK riots is the recession, a context in which young people experience the brunt of unemployment, the government abandons pre school programmes like Sure Start, cuts youth services like connections, youth clubs and initiatives to get unemployed youth into work and triples the cost of university education. This is a context that promotes individualism above everything, but expects the poor to be passionate about their communities. Personally I see no difference between the opportunist banking strategy of the sub prime mortgage crisis that leaves people homeless and an opportunist young person burning down someone’s property. I see no difference between MP’s looting the public by filing illegitimate expenses paid for by the public and a teenager stealing a plasma TV. The leaders of the UK speak in terms of the acquisition of things, money and power and the looting youth maybe maleducated but they have been socialised into the same language and have shown us this violently. The reason why the riots in the 80’s had a clear ideological agenda is because the 80’s were political. You had the Conservative Tories on one side and the Liberal Labour party on the other side of the swinging political pendulum (the Lib Dems were still irrelevant). You now have less clear ideological differences between Tory and Labour and a society and youth governed by consumerism. This is why we have the looting of TV’s and jeans instead of the burning of books.

So how do we move forward? Not by employing a strategy of blame towards the poor and dusting white collar crime under the carpet. We need to invest in young people across class by prioritising education, sport and extra curricular activities for a start. When I say invest I mean both the government and individuals like me and you mentoring where we can and setting up initiatives for young people because it’s all about using individual responsibility for the collective good. Most of all we need communion across the different social and economic spheres. The way the police and government talk at eachother and the conservatives and liberals talk at eachother and the adults and the youth talk at eachother - but not WITH eachother is bound to continue the cycle of conflict.

blog comments powered by Disqus