“Burning an illusion tonight, burnin’ and lootin’ tonight.” – Bob Marley
It’s time we saw the rioting, looting and destruction for what it really was – a desperate cry for help. Thatcher’s policies (a pinch of social welfare cuts and a dab of increased tax burden on the poor) and the failure of successive governments to fix the problem, to be blunt, fucked the poor, and yet some of us then seemed surprised that it has bred generations of angry, desperate youths.
It all began in Tottenham, an area with a longstanding, shady history of police shootings of black men. Racial tensions between police and the Tottenham community were heightened when the police ‘accidentally’ shot Mark Duggan, a 29 year old unarmed black man, while attempting to arrest him on 4th August 2011. A peaceful protest over Duggan’s killing turned violent following police provocation, fuelling the fire and triggering the London riots, which took place from the 6-10 August 2011. Many of those involved were youths from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the by-products of the insatiable greed inherent within capitalist society.
It’s was never just a race issue, but it was also a class issue, an issue of intergenerational theft.
The mainstream media and hot-shot politicians did their usual thing; propagandising, demonising, and calling for harsh repercussions. But their rhetoric of ‘criminality’ was not innocent of self-interested prejudice. Naturally they placed more emphasis on the destruction of private property, channelling public anger towards the much loved Tory pastime of beneficiary bashing. They would have us call these youths ‘mindless idiots’ – further alienating and silencing an already powerless and socioeconomically deprived faction of society – in order to disqualify any sociopolitical commentary or analyses of their actions. All the while, successfully distracting the public from the government’s failings to attend to rising socioeconomic and racial inequality in the UK. That’s right. We, as a society, have failed these youths.
And it is more than a little cryptic, nay, disgusting that damage to private property can anger a nation more so than the ongoing suffering of a decent fraction of its population. Coming from poverty-stricken backgrounds, these youths are not only deprived of nutritional food, healthy homes and good educations – but of a voice. These youths are hungry for the chance to be heard, hungry for the respect they deserve and for their needs need to be met. And however unknowingly, these youths aren’t as useless as the Tories would have us believe. They managed to burn the illusion of social justice in the UK and start a much needed conversation. Good work y’all.