London, Birmingham, Salford, Manchester and a host other English cities burned. They have been burned.
Like many others, I have to say that "I've been both shocked and
saddened by the images and stories of youths, some apparently as young as 14,
looting, destroying and setting fire to shops at will, and battling with
police."
But that's just it. It seems I have to say it (hence the quote marks). What strikes me more strongly than anything else right now is precisely that such a reaction seems almost obligatory as the dust is settling on the last few days' events. It's the acceptable public discourse of a political present in an increasingly polarized country that situates me on the socially acceptable side of an emerging social chasm. It's the phrase I have to say such that I'm not mistaken for one of those "feral youths" perpetrating the violence. Our media coverage and our politicians (from right and left) have been quick to "unequivocally condemn" the riots, to label the events as "mindless thuggery", "senseless destruction", and as our Prime Minister told us just yesterday, the pathological behaviour of "pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly, sick." In doing so, it seems there is a concerted effort being made to abstract the events of the last few days, firstly, from what is a longer history of civil disobedience in the UK in times of economic and racial inequality, and secondly, from any of the current and horrific austerity measures wrought by our con-dem government; measures that Mrs. Thatcher could only dream about, and measures that are cutting sections of our society adrift and entrenching massive economic inequalities for years to come. Two days ago, Boris Johnson, our Mayor here in London, openly said that he does not want to hear social and economic justifications for the rioting.
OK, I am the first to admit that it might be difficult to read political intent from the opportunistic theft of sneakers, plasma screen TVs, and clothes from High Street stores that were systematically looted, destroyed and set alight. It is difficult to see the politics of a collective violence inflicted upon those who have little in the first place. But it also seems to me that to seek no explanation, to regard the violence as the pathological criminality of a "feral youth" (as our deputy Mayor, Kit Malthouse, put it), is a response that seems symptomatic of a social present in which large sections of society are today being actively forgotten about, and excluded, as a direct result of austerity measures that have disproportionately affected the poorest few in our already unequal society. Of course I cannot understand the violence, because as this excellent post by Penny Red puts it, I have no idea "what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school." My Education Maintenance Allowance has not been cut, my job prospects are not dismal, I don't rely on increasingly scarce income benefits, I do not depend on local council support structures that are being rolled back due to budget cuts, and I've already benefitted from a fully state-funded university education that from 2012 would cost me £27,000. So, if we can't understand the violence, perhaps we need to try. Which, I add, is an effort that requires neither condemnation nor support in itself. Just an ability to listen to what the poorest, and youngest, sections of English society are saying. On Sunday, when one ITV reporter asked a man in London whether rioting was the best way to express his discontent, the reply he received was, "Yes. You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
Riots rarely unfold in a political vacuum. They are not abstractions. And they rarely come from nowhere.
So right now, it seems to me utterly misleading to ask whether these were 'mindless riots', 'mob violence', or 'political protests'? The fact is we don't fully understand what has happened, but there is a more important question, which is: Why has what has happened, happened now? To begin to answer that question we need not to be coerced into a 'you're either with them or against them' mentality, to either condone or condemn. London, and countless cities up and down the country have spoken. Are we prepared to listen?
Image: Protestor on Tottenham High Road, Sat 6 Aug, 2011
Image by Beacon Radio on Flickr, reproduced with permission
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaconradio/6018588619/
Great points, Tariq. I agree that it's hard to know how to read the uprising/riots/etc, at least if one wishes to push beyond the pathologizing take of the media and political leaders.
It seems to me that one useful lens might be provided by the notion of structural violence. I've been reading Rob Nixon's recently published book "Slow Violence" this summer, which extends Johan Galtung's notion of structural violence in order to understand what happens to people in the global South when powerful transnational corporations dump toxic waste in their communities in one way or another. The poisoning of the residents of Bhopal by Union Carbide doesn't have the spectacular visual appeal of, say, the 9/11 attacks. But it's a form of violence nonetheless, and its effects are in many cases far more pervasive, even if they unfold over generations.
I think that one might say the same thing about some of the effects of neoliberalism. It's a kind of violence of attrition. Although there are plenty of direct police killings of people of color in the UK and elsewhere, in addition there's also a form of slow violence directed at such communities as essential resources of the state are withdrawn and the communities are left to gradually implode from within.
When some spark sets the long-festering flames of community anger ablaze, it is easy to demonize people as hooligans. However, there's a long history that, as you observe, needs to be taken into consideration in order to grasp why things explode so suddenly.
Of course it would be nice if community uprisings were organized and directed against those who victimize the vast majority of the people instead of being directed opportunistically at internal scapegoats and at the fleshpots of consumer society. But part of the point is that slow, attritional violence depletes a community's ability to organize itself carefully and coherently. Not always, and not everywhere, but it's still an insidious process of destruction despite and because of its relative invisibility.
I'm off to buy Rob Nixon's book! "Slow" or "structural" violence may indeed be a useful way to think through what's occurring here right now.
A couple of related points: I'm unsure about how the 'community' of 'rioters' - if indeed we can refer to it as a community - maps onto, or intersects with, those against whom the state's slow violence is being directed?
And also, more than this perhaps, I wonder whether we need a new kind of diction to be able to effectively articulate the complicated dimensions of these events? Perhaps the inevitable 'tipping point' moment that slow violence might lead to (though maybe that'll take us back through pathologizing explanations)? My broader point though is that I really worry that the debate around whether these were organized riots/protests or not is not only unhelpful but also dangerous in the sense that the subsequent question must inevitably becomes whether these were therefore legitimately political articulations.
Hello Tariq, and thanks so much for this illuminating post regarding the UK unrest.
I wonder if Hobsbawn's ideas of the social bandit and pre-political protest might not apply well here? The difference seems to be that in the case described here, working people are not describing the youth as heroic Robin Hood types, in part because the damage to property was not confined to luxury stores and multinational chains. But these activities do not have to be legitmate or organized protest in Hobsbawn's framework for them to be articulations of protest.
From a practical point of view, in the US it may well be that the spectre of this UK unrest tempers the cuts to social programs that has been slated as the work of the "super congressional committee." At least one can hope.
Be well and stay safe!
Micki
As we begin to reflect on the riots that took place in London and other large cities in England this week, it is instructive to look back on how we've reacted to riots in the past, and how we've gone about asking questions, and variously facing and avoiding the issues they raise.
The last major wave of riots that swept through England took place in 1981. At the time, as now, the media and politicians were quick to condemn and try to isolate the rioters. But it wasnt long before government ministers, institutions and community leaders began to ask questions about what was wrong with our society, and how to fix it.
In Liverpool '81: Remembering the Riots, a new book about the ways in which the 1981 riots in Liverpool and other cities have been represented and remembered, and how this memory has been used, Diane Frost and I show how those events -- for all the suffering they brought -- proved to be an opportunity for change. See: http://www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk/html/publication.asp?idProduct=4020
The Conservatives were in power in 1981, as they are now. Home Secretary William Whitelaw set up a commission (headed by Lord Scarman) to look into policing. An enquiry into the educational experience of ethnic minorities, led by Lord Swann, widened its remit to consider the experience of communities affected by the riots. Swann found that one of the groups who were involve in the riots -- the Liverpool-born black community -- were among the most poorly served by our education system. The Church of England launched its own investigation, which led to the Faith in the City agenda, identifying 'Urban Priority Areas'. At the local level, a further wave of enquiries and projects were launched. These began by listening to those affected by the riots. They moved on to propose and implement solutions, which have borne some fruit and addressed if not definitively solved some of the problems that led to those disturbances.
All this took time -- it was nearly a generation until the British establishment accepted what many of those who rioted (some of whom we interviewed, and others of whom spoke to Scarman, Swann and others) said was their primary grievance: institutional racism. The riots were an important step in the road to this.
In retrospect, the 1981 riots have come to seem rather noble. Those who rioted this week are unlikely ever to be elevated in this way. The media and politicians are probably right when they say that these rioters, unlike others before them, have no cause. And yet, their acts raise questions. They may not have a cause; but I think they *are* a cause.
Now is the time to ask questions about this, rather than to speculate too much on answers or solutions. If we ask the right questions, and explore them together, we have an opportunity to set a new political agenda.
TO hear Diane and me discuss some of the points above, see the following youtube posting, which comes from a radio programme we did and was posted by a listener.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJAI4pJIKME
Or
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fqt5