Riots and why

In the summer of 1980, I was working as a photographer’s assistant. It was my job to pass her the various lenses as we traipsed around the Midlands taking photos of brides and grooms of all shape and size.

One Saturday morning, I remember a particular wedding so vividly. It was taking place near my school at a small church that I did not even know existed. It resembled a shed; quite a peculiar little place. It was 11am and the bride arrived, as wide as she was tall – a complete ball of a person. Lovely, she was and so excited about her special day but one could hardly call her attractive. I can remember Eileen turning round to me as she passed by, whispering subtly in my ear, “What the bloody hell am I going to do with this one?”
She wasn’t the nicest person I have ever met in my life. I passed her the soft focus lens as she gazed at me in horror.
And then we saw the bridesmaid. She was stunning, all wrapped up in a Laura Ashley dress that was the fashion mode of the moment. It was navy blue with a full bodice front that exaggerated her already slim-line and yet curvaceous figure; such a contrast from the ball-like bride.

Eileen was delighted that she had something or someone to photograph and I swear she took more photos of the brunette bridesmaid than the bride, who had exaggerated her own size by choosing a dress full of horizontal frills of white and apple green!

But of course, the main thing I remember about that morning was that it was the day after the night before. Handsworth had exploded into flames not more than four miles away from us. Toxteth was burning and Brixton was full of flame too. The heat of the summer after a year of a new government had erupted into all sorts of disturbances and looting.

In Birmingham there was the most horrendous attacks on the Bengali community from the Black Caribbean youths who had arrived at this part of the city a decade or so before them. Huge resentment between these two groups emerged and to some extent still remains today, but this warring veiled another truth – that people were terrified about what was happening to the country. Thatcher was here and she was destroying society, only we didn’t even know the half of it one year into her term of office. I suspect that had we been able to look into the future, there would have been far more rioting than the outbreaks in what many deemed to be mere ghettos and annexes of our big cities.

If only we could have stopped her by joint and peaceful rebellion against her reactionary politics at the beginning of her Prime ministry.

Some of us tried, even though we were too young to actually begin to comprehend the damage that she was doing.

And so her predecessor is here now, probably about to start blabbering on about his Big Society and how we should all rough-ride over these trouble makers and develop some community spirit and Blitz stoicism to show what a truly great nation of collective consciousness we are. Not that Cameron could possibly have a clue what collective consciousness is.

I blame Thatcher. I usually do. All this disparate irresponsibility and lack of community collectiveness is a direct outcome of her will to rid people of society and togetherness. Bitch! And I never use that word lightly.

But then I think we are perfectly adept in blaming another ruthless bastard too. I am surprised that nobody has mentioned this but Mr. Murdoch can stand up and take some blame. The Metropolitan police are in turmoil at the moment. There is no clear leadership, and I am not suggesting for one moment that the riots and looting that took place in London over the last few nights would not have happened if there was a definitive Commissioner in charge, but it doesn’t fill you with hope and confidence when you know that there is not really anyone in charge that has the full authority of a substantive post and the experience that goes with such an appointment.

And then there is Murdoch and his papers too. I am sure we can find a way of blaming them too.

What happened in Tottenham on Saturday night was appalling. It was frightening and horrific. In this piece, there is no way that I am going to condone the actions of the mindless but it is also impossible to disregard the cause of such problems, and they are plenty and diverse in their provocation.

99% of times that I drive passed a copper who has pulled a fellow driver off to the side of the road, the man (yes, never a woman) is black. 99% of times I walk along the streets and a policeman or two are talking animatedly at a person they have stopped and searched, the man (yes, infrequently a woman) is black.
Maybe I just happen to be spending my time in areas where this happens but the institutional racism that was so specifically highlighted by the Macpherson Report in 1999, six years after the death of Stephen Lawrence – of which there has still not been a conviction for his murder, is still very present not only in the police but in other institutions in our society.

Add to this the utter despondency of our young people in their inability to get a job or have a purpose in life, you can understand their rage and frustration.

Add to that also the fact that many of these youths have been watching the Arab Spring occurring in places where one could never have imagined the possibility of mass gatherings making change and bringing down dictators and autocrats, then it is hardly a surprise that this has happened.

These people, our youth, our future, are angry and they feel that they have no future. The services where they may have got jobs in the past have been obliterated. Those same services are not even providing them with the welfare to live a life that everybody deserves. There is much frustration and fear, and we all know what happens when fear overtakes one person let alone the same fear being encapsulated by a group who all feel the same way.

Yesterday, it all kicked off in Hackney. Again, I am not condoning this action but it was triggered by yet another Stop and Search where the people felt that the only reason this invasion of privacy had taken place was because the person involved was a little darker than some would like to see on our streets. The violence then erupted because people were angry, and at times such as these, people sadly do take to violence because sometimes reason gets you absolutely nowhere.

I watched as I saw a street that I know relatively well going up in flames. I was suddenly terribly concerned for the owner of the second hand bookshop that hides comfortably in this quiet yet productive road off the main High Street of Hackney. Places need individuality and I am a strong advocate of real shops, independent shops that make a living offering something unique, something different from the big conglomerates who probably have (w)bankers as their best buddies.

Then the rest of London seemed to erupt too. Again, places that I know and that are all too near; Lewisham, Lee, Woolwich – even little suburbia towns like Bromley.
People are angry.

But back to Hackney, there was apparently just cause for this escalation in violence, and it struck me how, once more, our media are prejudice and cower to stereotype when they cover such incidents. Hackney has a bad name. It is a bad borough where bad people live and bad things happen. Ironically, I feel perfectly safe there and there are plenty of reasons for feeling that way.

It is NOT a BAD place, and what Hackney has that possibly other areas do not have, is a sense of community, lots of communities within its borough boundaries. The ironic thing is that people who live in Hackney are somewhat protective of it purely because it has this name of violence and lack of hope. They get riled by being grouped together as this mass of delusion and despondency when really the place is vibrant and wonderful, if you only have the eyes to see.

So the media, go on and on and on about who terrible this place is, how of course violence erupted here but what they do not mention is that there was less looting in this place than other boroughs in the city. Admittedly, there might have been more police present but I like to think that there was some community spirit happening that prevented them from bombarding their own, knowing that there are businesses in Hackney that are not linked or the causal factor of their poverty and inequality. That is what I like to think but the media would never see it as such.

And as I said, there appears to be a cause for the violence in Hackney whereas other outbreaks of violence across the city merely appear to be copycat and mindless. Nobody seems to have pointed this out in the news. The violence in Croydon and Ealing is put as the same violence and the same cause as what happened in Tottenham and Hackney. It is not. There is a subtle difference.

So what next? Where next even?

I am not into violence and I cannot sit here and readily agree with everything that I have seen but Cameron should not sit smug and complacent here. He got away with the student riots in the Spring, sending ludicrous amounts of police officers in to control the situation. The same happened with the riots that took place after the jobs march in London. He got away with that, not just because of the overspend on police hours but because the will of the people to be violent was not there at that point.
But people are restless and with every right to be so. We did not all join in when Thatcher was about to wreak havoc on our society and look what happened. She got away with murder.

We should not let Cameron do the same.

This is not inciting violence, this is merely calling people to consider what should happen next and to also look at places like Egypt where peaceful demonstrations, despite such provocation from the army, took place and made change happen.

Our world is sick and dying at present, and there is part of me that is grateful for that, however bizarre that might seem. The controlling purses of the world bankers need to be exposed, and still they get their bonuses. Our glorious government have reacted to this by chopping the very services that people need, not wish for, NEED, in order to live. And still the bankers earn their squillions.

This is connected. Of course people are fed up. Injustice does this to people and everyone has a breaking point. When the individual’s breaking point combines with others, then this sort of thing happens.

Any government that underestimates the will of the people is a foolish one, especially when they are tentatively part of a coalition that could collapse if the balls of the enlightened few within the Liberal party finally flash in front of the consciousness of their leaders.

Of course I don’t want violence but I do want people to see there is some justification in peoples’ fear. Of course some of what we saw on the television last night was mindless, but if you do nothing to support a rounded education for these people, what the hell do you expect? Constant boredom in the classroom is a direct source for this frustration as is the poverty that people pretend is not happening.

We have so bloody far to go in this country and in others. The dickheads who were looting yesterday are stupid but they are also bored, they are also uneducated in intelligent ways of being, they have knowledge and what knowledge that they have has no relevance to their lives at present. They need channelling, they need excitement, they need some purpose and I fear that I cannot see it coming their way, not even for the next generation either.

There is another way of course, and I just wonder whether anyone in power will ever see what could be.