August is muggy. The balmy evenings of crimson glow across the
horizon turns the ordinary man litigious and the not-old-enough-man into
a tactile reactionary frenzy. Riots broke out this August in London,
Birmingham and Manchester. 'Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, Asleep in granite Aberdeen, They continue their dreams..'. Yet the youth of London, Brum, Madchester
and the smaller cities where rampaging youths steamed along the streets
like W. H. Auden's Night Train were dreaming of something else. What
were they dreaming of? Politicians, litigators and intelligentsia
debated as dawn broke out over the charred horizon now not so crimson,
but ashen grey.
As planes landed one by one on ashpalt
not too dissimilar in colour to the morning after the riots, Boris,
Dave and others returned to the capital having cut short their summer
holidays. Before the events in Tottenham
I read in The Independent that the Prime Minister had gone back to the
same busy cafe somewhere in Tuscany to tip the waitress who had not been
tipped the morning before, apparently, for poor service. He returned
to London on the first available flight after the riots had been
raging for three consecutive nights to chair a meeting of COBRA. Cobra
is the extraordinarily dramatic name for the civil contingencies
committee which leads responses to a national crisis. On that very same
night, heavy police presence ensured that very little happened.
The Coalition government had averted the crisis from
turning into something far worse. Law and order was the order of the
night again. After three nights of staying in largely due to a cold, my
friend Charlotte decided to go to the pub again. As the police raided
properties in search of rioters in the usual locations, they slept in
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and in my very own Cardiff dreaming of
something no doubt very different from the near two and half thousand arrested elsewhere. What do teenagers dream of?
Much has been attributed to teenage gangs operating in deprived neighbourhoods. The youth vilified
all over England. Yet so many of the rioters were not teenagers. CCTV
pictures which in itself seems to have been accepted as a necessary evil
have revealed faces of men and women, largely black and white, but a
few belonging other ethnicities
too were within an age range of 12 to 35. What is it that they all have
in common? The obvious answer seems to be criminal intent. Proving
intent to commit a crime isn't difficult after poking one's right hand
through the broken glass of a convenience store to steal a packet of £1 Haribo
sweets. They are all criminals. Lump them into the same jail cell and
throw away are key. A 'broken society' has descended upon us as David
Cameron had declared. To mend this broken society new laws on rioting
are required in addition to those allowing councils the power to evict
rioting families. The parents of the children rioting are brandished
with the same brush. Theresa May, the Home Secretary alluded to possible
new curfew powers for the police. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
had defended orange jumpsuits, Guantanamo style that could be worn by
prosecuted rioters and made to clean up the streets themselves, and mend
broken windows.
Broken glass can only be replaced not mended. The
shards laying on the pavement and inside of shops get brushed up into
dustpans by the broom-army and put away. The rioters are like the very
same shards of broken glass. They have been broken. Perhaps they broke
themselves. What started out as an 'old-skool' protest by the gangsta-designer label wearing black men in Tottenham soon became diluted into a general protest mele
with the word protest losing any significance soon after dusk. New
anti-terror laws and stop, and search powers brought in by the previous
New Labour administration of Tony Blair, and never really repealed by
Gordon Brown thereafter had often been misused by the authorities. The
ethnic minorities have faced the brunt of it alongside the odd Holocaust
surviving pensioner and Labour Party activist within conference
settings. A young black man is more likely to be stopped and searched.
The criminal intent of the rioters in whatever capacity is unjustifiable in a civilised society. Clapham
Junction is indefensible. Yet, by labelling each and every one of the
rioters a criminal, and ushering in illiberal anti-riot laws ignores the
social conditions that led to the first night of rioting in Tottenham.
Glasgow, Edinburgh and granite Aberdeen slumbers. Long
ago the Night Mail Train stopped crossing the border whistling all the
way, shaking gently but a jug in the bedroom. No jugs of water in Clapham bedrooms, only vials of Tamazepam and white-brown-black powder stains on the bedroom floor. This is England.
Acknowledgement: © TTR