Thirty Years On: Rioting In London - Is Anyone Surprised?

I am sure most readers of this blog will have seen the news of the rioting and looting across London from Tottenham to Peckham from Ealing to Hackney and other places including Birmingham and Croydon.  It has now raged for three days and has involved attacks on the police and the looting and burning of shops.  I have written before how the government is ushering in an era which looks unpleasantly like the 1980s with high unemployment and in particular the reduction in opportunities for young people, who increasingly feel they have nothing to lose in rebelling against the government and capitalist society?

Something else which does not seem to have changed is the relationship between the police and ordinary people.  After the murder of  Ian Tomlinson by police in April 2009 and the continued tension with ethnic minorities because of the hyping up of the terrorist threat and the blame being put on to South Asians, activity among far-right political groups, it all seems horribly like 1981 once more.  If you were around in 1981 or have read about the period then you will know it had a summer which witnessed riots pretty much like what we were seeing now.  The Brixton Riot of 1981 occurred in April of that year and raged for three days.  Very much like the rioting we are seeing now, it stemmed from the handling of ethnic minority males by the Metropolitan Police and the bad relations being heightened by rumour around the arrest of Michael Bailey.  Whilst the initial riot was about protest regarding heavy handed tactics by the police, by the third day it was basically a looting spree.  Riots attract different people and get out of hand quickly.  Whilst starting as a political event, they soon bring in people just looking to steal what they can.  I think the looting of phone shops in Woolwich is symptomatic of that phase.

The spark for these riots was the shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham on Saturday.  Tensions around stops and searches have also contributed to the unrest.  In many ways both the context of Britain in fear of what is being inflicted on it by the government and what worse is to come, combined by heavy handed behaviour by the police have once again led to rioting.  All of this was covered in the Scarman Report of 1981.  I am sure somewhere in the government's or Metropolitan Police's strategy units there was a scenario playing out for summer 2011 just like this one.  Despite the various shootings by police over the past thirty years they seem to behave pretty much as they did in the 1980s.  No-one seems to learn from one year to the next: the police behaviour towards Duggan's family is as if none of these shootings had ever happened and certainly no lessons learnt from them. 

Whilst the hammering of the country by the government, the crass behaviour of the police and the willingness of people unconnected with the initial incident to take advantage of the rioting has not changed in 30 years, the techology has.  The ability to tweet messages and keep in contact via mobile phones and to relay images quickly to different groups explains why we are not simply talking about the Tottenham riot.  We know that there were various groups, following the student riots of last winter, ready for a new round of action.  Summer is always the best time for rioting, you just have to look back to 1911 as I have done.  Yet, all the ministers and the mayor of London, all set off on holiday with no expectation of rioting.  Clearly the police's intelligence is poor and they are not retrospectively hunting down people who use Twitter to organise violence.  If they had not spotted it coming, even in the immediate aftermath of Duggan's death, I think they will continue to be stumped.

The government is wrong to think that rioting will simply go away.  As in the early 1980s it is likely to continue appearing not just in London but in many cities.  The government cannot expect to keep on imposing cuts on services and cutting jobs and most of all opportunities in such a blatant, arrogant way, treating us like idiots when they do not blame their friends the bankers, and expect the British public (and the Northern Irish public either) to remain passive.  The continued police bungling keeps on providing the spark for the whole pile of tinder the government keeps on adding to.

Anyone who had stopped and thought would have been able to put a decent bet on there being rioting this summer.  I cannot believe that the government and the police had not worked through scenarios that showed this happening.  If I can do it, simply watching the television or writing my blog, then they, with all their advisors and their sophisticated computers should have had no difficulty.  I guess that they welcome as a distraction from the continued revelations about how guilty not only News International but also a growing number of its rivals were in hacking the phones of the bereaved as well as celebrities; the corruption connected with that and the government connections to people involved, plus straight forward corruption at the highest level in the Cleveland Constabulary.  I worry that knowing how much 2011 resembles 1981 and even 1911, they had foreseen all of this and yet took no steps to head it off.  It is clear that despite any efforts senior police officers may be making cannot stop their footsoldiers shooting people dead and that will constantly trigger local incidents.  However, I think the broader rioting was expected and has been allowed to run its course to allow the government to introduce the punitive and authoritarian legislation they are itching to impose.  Democracy and liberty are dying quickly in the UK.  I recognise the frustration the rioters are unleashing on this government which is pounding them and keeps telling them to forget have any opportunities in life, but inadvertently they are playing into the hands of a regime which is keen to impose an authoritarian regime and implement a social counter-revolution.

P.P. It is interesting to note that the rioting has spread to areas such as Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham and Bristol which experienced rioting in the 1980s.  It is unsurprising the areas affected are those where people still feel as let down by the government as they did 30 years ago.  There seems surprise in the media that so many young people have turned to rioting, without the recognition that if you cut off any hope for such people, they have nothing to turn to except violence.  The hypocrisy of the government as in 1989 over the Tianamen Square unrest, when they laud the overthrow through violent unrest of governments across the Middle East and yet somehow expect their own population to remain passive, I suppose is unsurprising.  I believe that David Cameron really does believe he is doing the best for the UK, even in his reassertion of social class divisions and denying access to higher education for all but the wealthy.  He is  so out of touch with the people that he simply sees all this as criminality.  Of course, every riot has elements of that in, but by focusing on this, he helps the media and the wider population ignore that a huge motive is despair created precisely by the conditions caused directly by government policies.

Cameron knows that the Poll Tax Riot of 1990 helped end Mrs. Thatcher's career and I guess he wants to marginalise this before people start questioning his position, especially as, in a coalition he is in a far weaker position than she was.  I think Cameron will use the riots to bind the Liberal Democrats closer to him, suggesting they sympathise with the rioters if they leave him now.  I also maintain that he will use this as the basis for more authoritarian policies and despite his sour attitude at present is actually enjoying these events.

Rioting And Reaction

David Cameron should be proud of himself, it took Margaret Thatcher two years before her government faced rioting and yet his policies to throw us back into some Edwardian-style society and shut off opportunity for all of those people who are not already in the elite he moves in, meant he had his first riot just six months after coming to power.  In addition, it was a political riot, one directed at the policies of the government, rather than, as with many riots in 1981, focused on local friction with police behaviour.  The riot was not extensive, only 56,000 people (150% more than had been expected), primarily students protesting about the raising of fees for the young people reaching university age in the next few years.  It was primarily focused on the Conservative Party headquarters in Millbank in central London.  There were acts of vandalism and rioters got on to the roof of the building.  However, overall 14 people a mix of rioters and police were hospitalised and 35 people arrested, which is very small scale compared to riots in London of the 1980s and 1990s.  However, this may be just the beginning.

Interestingly, in contrast to the G20 protest last year, at which the police went in very forcefully and murdered a passerby, and even when compared to the original round of protests against student loans, famously in 1989 with mounted police riding down student protestors, some of whom later showed the hoof marks on their shins when they had been trampled by the horses and images of students being clubbed by batons, the police response was very low key.  This has angered Conservative Party members as there was no police protection of their headquarters as the focus had been on the nearby headquarters of their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.  I imagine this was due to the earlier protests outside the house of the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg.  Police have been criticised for under-estimating the scale of the disorder and not bringing in a large enough force.  They had, however, protected Whitehall ministerial buildings, which in the past have been a target.

I think there are a number of reasons for the nature of the response.  First, the weather was terrible on the days either side of the riot, Wednesday 10th November.  If it had been as bad that day I doubt we would have seen even 20,000 protestors and it is unlikely rioting would have started.  However, it was sunny and dry.  There is a clear correlation in the UK between good weather and rioting.  The second thing is, after the criticisms the police received after the murder of Ian Tomlinson (a passerby not even a protestor) by a police officer during the G20 protests in April 2009, they are probably a little more careful and the aggressive policy of hunting out the protestors and breaking them up or even 'kettling' them was avoided.  Perhaps the police saw students as being 'different' to the G20 protestors, though the bulk of them were ordinary people, not revolutionaries.  On Wednesday the police reacted rather than being proactive.  However, I think, at the next large scale protest they will being encouraged by Home Secretary Theresa May, who in effect, unlike with other constabularies in the UK, heads the Metropolitan Police, to take a more aggressive line and certainly to put a ring of officers around the Conservative Party headquarters.

There is another more mischievous explanation for the Metropolitan Police's reaction, particularly in leaving Conservative Party headquarters unprotected.  On 20th October the government announced cuts of 20% in the police budget.  I have not seen the figures for the reduction this is likely to mean for the size of the Metropolitan Police, but we can make some estimate from looking at other constabularies.  The Greater Manchester Police employ just over 13,000 staff (this includes all uniformed and plain clothes police and all civilian workers in the constabulary), the West Midlands Police, almost the same.  These two constabularies reckon they will have to shed 3,100 and 2,100 employees respectively, i.e. between 16%-24% of their workforce.  Not all the losses will be uniformed officers, but some will have to be.  If the same ratio of job losses is applied to the Metropolitan Police with a little over 52,000 employees then it means laying off something between 8,300 - 12,500 employees.  Given that it is argued that Britain continues to face potential terrorist attacks which most likely would target London and with the crime rate always rising as unemployment climbs as it is at present, you can see why the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, might feel that it is the worst time to be cutting the police service so severely.

Thus, perhaps next time there is the risk of a riot, the Metropolitan Police will say, 'well we would love to be able to protect Conservative Party headquarters' but unfortunately the cut-backs mean we cannot spare the officers to do so'.  This shows how the government's widespread cuts hitting at all parts of public service, are to a degree politicising sections of that service which normally would never come close to protesting.  The last time the UK had a police strike was in 1918, but it seems we may be on the path to another one.  Firefighters have struck more often, but usually on a localised basis, but already, only six months into Cameron regime we are seeing strikes of the nature that the Labour government of 1974-9 only experienced in its closing months.

Now, looking beyond the immediate issues of the likelihood of more rioting and the challenges for the police in dealing with it, are there bigger political moves behind all this?  Of course, we know from the early 1980s, groups such as the Socialist Workers' Party (and back then Militant Tendency) believe that a revolution will only come about when the bulk of the population, even those who typically cannot tear themselves away from watching 'The X Factor' to even answer the door, are so angry with the government that they strike and riot.  I have always felt this was a delusional policy, the British are far too passive a bunch ever to even protest on the scale we have seen in France over the past two months, let alone something more active.  British society is incredibly divided and people tend to blame others on their level or specific groups like students, the unemployed, single mothers, immigrants, asylum seekers, ethnic minorities, gay people, people from the North/the South/Scotland/Ireland rather than the government.  We have already seen the rumblings of race rioting which was another aspect of the 1970s and 1980s (and the 1950s and the 1910s...). 

What I think is more likely is that there will be a counter-reaction by the state.  A riot on the scale of the Poll Tax Riot of 1990 would play right into David Cameron's hands; it would be what the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks were for George W. Bush, they gave him carte blanche to strip citizens of so many civil liberties.  Cameron in many ways takes the policies of Margaret Thatcher and drives them in harder and faster.  So, as Thatcher used the rhetoric of 'the enemy within' applied by dictators commonly to Jews, Socialists, Communists, also Catholics and Freemasons, and during the Miners' Strike of 1984-5 allowed police to pick up people driving around London simply on the suspicion that they were going to attend a coal mine rally, I can see this coming with Cameron, but even more harshly.  I have often commented how Tony Blair's govenment steadily eroded civil liberties in the UK.  Blair is the link in the chain between Thatcher and Cameron, advancing their agenda rather than reversing it; Major and Brown were barely hiccoughs in that process.  If Cameron cannot fund a larger police force, then he will use legislation, he will encourage the public to inform on their neighbours (something we have been encouraged to do for a number of years now) and given the restriction on prison spaces, other limits to personal freedom will be introduced.

A sub-headline on 'The Guardian' frontpage of Thursday said 'Both sides warn of 'more to come''.  Already 'sides' are being outlined.  Winter is not the time for rioting, but come April and beyond, especially if there is a hot summer, then I think we will see disturbances that will make 1981 look tranquil in comparison, partly because this government has unsettled not only those usually at odds with the state, but also very quickly, those like the police and firefighters, who generally we loyal to the state but now feel they are being stabbed in the back.  The government reaction, with the ground so well prepared by Blair, will be harsh, and with the cutbacks, will probably have to involve the military.  I do not think Cameron is an idiot, he may be evil, but no fool.  He must know that you cannot destroy the hopes of so many people and expect them to accept it passively.  Thus, I believe, as Thatcher prepared well in advance for the Miners' Strike, he is readying to oppose civil unrest and use the opportunity to suppress civil liberties that little bit further.  He believes he is right, because, as I increasingly believe with every passing day, he is bent on reshaping British society to something resembling the fixed hierarchical model of a hundred years or more in the past.

Return of the Sus Laws

I was not really surprised to hear this week that the UK Government has decided to re-introduce police powers to stop and search people at random. In my recent post 'Combating Terrorism - Responding to whose Agenda?' I wrote that I anticipated an erosion of civil liberties in the UK (and the USA) in the name of combating terrorism and it seems to be quickly coming true.

The UK has had bitter experience of so-called 'sus' laws before. In the 1824 the UK police just being created at the time were able to stop and search anyone on 'suspicion' (hence the moniker 'sus') of about to be doing something illegal. These laws do not seem to have been overly abused until the late 1970s when they were increasingly used against Afro-Caribbean people (usually young men) especially living in London. Blacks made up a tiny proportion of the police and the predominantly white police force, some of whom were being influenced by the attitudes of the NF (National Front - a UK Fascist Party) which was prominent at the time simply used the laws to harrass Blacks. Sometimes they did catch people with concealed weapons or drugs but most of the people stopped were just going about their business. In other areas young, male Whites suffered too, I knew someone who was stopped on his way to work and the police claimed the tools he used for his job as a printer (this was in the age before everything was electronic in printing) were weapons. The sus laws and their abuse was one of the major causes (though not sole reason) of the Brixton Riot of 1980. Brixton is an area of South London which has long had a large Black population, there was also rioting in the St. Paul's area of Bristol. This was followed in 1981 by the Toxteth Riot in Liverpool. Surprisingly, the Thatcher Government, despite being hardline Conservative, scrapped the laws in 1981.

Now (still) Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has announced the re-introduction of these laws in an attempt to combat terrorism. Now the police will be able to stop and search anyone even if they are just behaving normally. Up until now they had to be doing something illegal such as being clearly drunk or urinating in public or commiting a crime. Clearly this policy adds to the feeling that Blair wants an authoritarian regime as the people who have had these powers in the past have been forces such as the Gestapo (Nazi secret police), the Stasi (East German secret police), the KGB (Soviet secret police) and so on; not democratic police forces. In addition, the fear is now among Middle Eastern and South Asian people who made up 4% of the UK population in 2001. (If anyone says the UK is becoming 'overcrowded' with people of non-White races tell them Whites make up 92% of the population, so non-Whites are less than 1 in 10 of the population). Even Hispanic people are at risk from laws which open up opportunities for bigoted policing and the general difficulty the UK police have in identifying suspects. Jean Charles de Menezes, an unarmed, pale-skinned, Brazilian was shot 7 times in the head and once in the shoulder on 22nd July 2005 because he was thought to be a Middle Eastern terrorist. It is anticipated that young Asians and Hispanics going to work or going out for an evening will now be stopped and searched as 'terrorist suspects' in fact just simply to fulfill police officers' racist attitudes. It should be noted that despite having identified the men who would engineer the 7th July bombing in London in 2005, MI5 (the UK's secret police force) did not follow them or seek their arrest. They had the power to do that and yet they did not, so why do they think additional powers will help cover their inabilities?

Of course, it really has little to do with sufficient powers to stop terrorism. The UK has long had sufficient powers to do that, as was shown throughout the past 35 years in combating the threat from IRA terrorists. In the 1980s the UK Government even began assassinating Irish terrorists. No, this policy is about Blair (and his supporters) who feel Britain should move away from democracy to a 'moral' dictatorship, a kind of clerico-authoritarian regime as I have outline before. Blair has said that those who have raised questions about the re-introduction of the sus laws have made a 'misjudgement' about how important civil liberties are. Given that people have fought for centuries to try to secure these, surely he is misjudging what he is in such a hurry to scrap. The assumption is that these laws are to defend our democracy and we have to lose some freedom to protect it. However, I believe Blair has gone beyond that and is in fact seeking to curtail may freedoms, not because he wants to defend democracy, but because he would prefer an authoritarian state which he genuinely believes is what the UK needs.

It seems that the only hope is that Blair will leave before he can force through these new rules. People who love freedom and democracy and especially those drawn from the Asian population of the UK and putting their hopes in Blair successor, Gordon Brown and possible deputy prime ministers like Peter Hain (famous for campaigning against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s). Once the Blair Party has yielded power, hopefully something more like the Labour Party will come to the fore and stand up for decency over dictatorship. We are holding our breaths and praying it will be so.