Riots

[Frances_iom]

I just said I saw white kids in Enfield, but the majority seem to be black or asian but it's so difficult to tell with hoodies masking faces. ...

I can only comment on the front pages of the redtops - most (if not all?) of those photo'd looting were black and I suspect many would be easily recognisable from those photos. I wonder what the effect would be on next year's Olympics - would you care to come near a place that has demonstrated that the veneer of 'civilization' is wafer thin and that if you want a new pair of trainers then a brick + petrol bomb gets you a free supply + of course the intense news coverage - beats graffitti anytime in the not so mindless vandalism stakes.

[Donnie Essen]

I think earlier it was said Streatham would be targetted as well.

Was it today you read this? Those stores I mentioned have been done already, like late yesterday, but now things are happening in the daytime too. I'm wondering if more stuff will happen round this way.

Tabloids'll show blacks. BBC'll show white. Might've started as a black issue and if the particular photos are from Brixton or Tottenham, they'll likely be black, but now all kinds are involved. and doing it for kicks.

[StephenO]

The colour of the rioters isn't really the issue. The issue is why they're rioting and I think Anna's post (#4) explained the reasons pretty well. Of course there are serious social issues involved, some of which result from the present cuts but many of which have much longer term causes. A couple of interesting comparisons have been drawn with the poll tax riots and the miners' strike. This, though, is something altogether different. I doubt if many of the rioters are involved in any political causes or belong to any pressure groups or political parties. From the news footage, the majority just seem intent on looting and causing as much damage as possible.

I could be wrong, of course.

[hackneyvi]

One of the things I've found interesting about the reporting of this thuggery is that the colour of those involved has not been mentioned, despite the fact that it's as plain as the nose on my face that overwhelming majority are of a particular racial group.

But of course, one can't mention such facts these days.

Sincerely, I don't ask the question in any spirit of challenge, Mr Pee, but gently: If the rioters are predominantly of one race or another, what are we to learn from that?

If race and rioting are connected, what's the connection? What's learned? What does that tell us? What do we know? Is it something that you feel you can answer because the only answer I could come up with is that the race of the rioter tells us something about the race. But I don't believe it does tell us anything, or at least, I don't believe it tells us anything simple.

I have concluded that 'culture' is nothing more than 'an agreed way of doing things' and that culture is essentially geographical in origin. I firmly believe that where we think race is the important factor in 'racism', that in fact race is an obscure symbol of culture (of opinion, feeling, intention and behaviour) to those whom it riles; white for black, black for white. Race and culture are only loosely allied though because race and geography are only loosely allied. Culture is what matters and I don't see how we can have an entirely peaceful society if there is no common agreement, common culture.

We have a cultural trap, here, I think. I believe many white people in the UK - and I include myself - associate black people with trouble and guilt and, if they do, then can we not expect equivalent feelings towards ourselves from many black people?

We are all human and all different but we can share a culture, an agreement about how things are done, if we decide to do it. That decision remains to be made by the nation as a whole. It may be enshrined in law that we're equal but I don't believe that principle's alive in our hearts.

[hackneyvi]

I doubt if many of the rioters are involved in any political causes or belong to any pressure groups or political parties. From the news footage, the majority just seem intent on looting and causing as much damage as possible.

I could be wrong, of course.

Has anyone else read Barnaby Rudge? As it happens, I'm reading Dickens' descriptions of the Gordon Riots in London of 1780. His descriptions of the mob, how it's led and how it's essentially mindless and essentially destructive is thrilling and damning.

[Anna]

I take back my thoughts that this is just random. Half of Croydon is ablaze, not just shops but it seems residential as well. This is being orchestrated via Blackberry, not Twitter it seems (Blackberry has the capacity to send multiple messages at one time.) This is just not kids out for kicks, this now looks like an intent to destroy London, it's reputation and probably deaths will be inevitable.

[hackneyvi]

I take back my thoughts that this is just random. Half of Croydon is ablaze, not just shops but it seems residential as well. This is being orchestrated via Blackberry, not Twitter it seems (Blackberry has the capacity to send multiple messages at one time.) This is just not kids out for kicks, this now looks like an intent to destroy London, it's reputation and probably deaths will be inevitable.

It probably seems more fearful if you're away from it. I'm about 600 yards from Mare Street in Hackney. There's alot of noise of helicopters and car sirens * but the hundreds of thousands of people who are in their homes are at little or no risk. Life goes on.

I wouldn't fancy being a cop tonight, poor beggars.

It's nasty and worrying but people are nasty sometimes. When it's in their interest to, they get better.

* Oh!, and when I went out to look, an ambulance passed the end of the road.

Still, turn your tellies off and do something nice because the noise journalism will be making is just another fire.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it may be helpful to see this as a competive festival of street gang culture rather than mindless thuggery; this could be the most fun these kids can have ... they should and one hopes will face the consequences for what we regard as criminal, but for them i think it is fun ... it has happened in Birmingham and is a risk elsewhere

[Mr Pee]

Mass immigration will lead to violence on our streets

Enoch Powell (1912-1998)

What a shame that nobody listened.

[Bryn]

Enoch Powell (1912-1998)

What a shame that nobody listened.

They should never have let those Angles, Saxons, Normans, Jutes, Celts, Romans (with their rivers of blood), ... in.

Many listened to Powell, and rightly rejected his racism. Others listened and went on to build their neo-fascist organisations. Brilliant scholar, but nasty piece of work, was he.

[Mahlerei]

My ex is still in London and due to come home by cab at around midnight (via Lewisham). She may have to spend the night with friends in town as things are kicking off out here too. My son works nights at Waitrose in Bromley and management have just sent them all home. Bromley South station has now been closed as The Glades shopping centre in Bromely Hish Street is supposedly a target. Shocking stuff.

[Chris Newman]

Brilliant scholar, but nasty piece of work, was he.

He wasted his talents. If he had stuck to poetry he could have made Poet Laureate. Instead he had wild ideas about getting rid if people like me because my father's family have Dutch origins and my mother's ancestors came over with a Norman.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well we have had violence of the mob on our streets from long before Powell's infamous eschatology Mr Pee and will i suspect for long after he is forgotten .... ... and you are mistaken, an enormous number of people heard his remarks and the vast majority regarded it as a specious self aggrandising ploy from a busted flush of a politician ... the reputation he enjoyed a a shameless opportunist was further enhanced by his move to Ulster


i wonder quite why you wished to remind us of it .... i think you are a mischief around here and should depart before a move is made to remove you ... i find it hard to credit that you are in the least sincere, in either case i do not welcome your inflammatory contributions

[Lateralthinking1]

Earlier on, Mr Pee said that my comments sounded contradictory. I spoke of not condoning it and yet I also mentioned understanding their desire for redistribution. The part of me that hates it is the part that recalls people like my Nan in 1981 who had to live close to the riots then. We were very worried for her. She was 90, had worked for decades, was illiterate, and yet community minded and kind. Tough, for sure, but she and people like her were suffering the consequences of Government policy.

In fact, the public school and university people had torn down her home in the seventies and stuck her on the sixth floor of a tower block where the lifts didn't work. I hated them more than the rioters if the truth be told. That is why for all of my own hard work and genuinely establishment ways - free place at an independent school, university, civil service - I never took to my Government employers much or them to me. The adult kids of the uncaring elites never shifted their ground and in fact became more elitist. We generally got on but not whenever I spoke a few home truths.

So while we have always been a peaceful and sociable family, the other part of me is nothing less than delighted by what is taking place. When I was forced into a position of leaving in December with a vast reduction in compensation - symptomatic of the real theft and "couldn't give a toss" attitudes among the wealthy which has been brazen - I took it up with the highest levels, as I still do. I made it very clear indeed that while I am just one individual, with minimal influence, they could actually learn something from me. My very mixed background, with the widest range of class background connections, particularly in my youth, was not typical. The sheer anxiety they had created in me with their policies - a virtual collapse in which I almost didn't see the year out - had turned me almost aggressively against them in a matter of months.

The message was that if that could happen to me, with 25 years and more of essentially being an insider with many happy times, they were creating a climate in which millions could very easily become involved in social unrest. They had a chance to turn back but they didn't, they ignored it and dismissed it, predictably, and now we are seeing the outcome. They have done this. No one else. And our family always had something of a spiritual dimension about it. As Peckham burns tonight, I almost feel that my Nan and my uncle have looked down at how I and other people have been treated and sent a huge symbolic gesture of mighty displeasure on what was their home turf.

And, of course, it is Croydon too where I saw the current political attitudes brewing as early as the seventies. This country is run by the cold, the heartless, the brainless, the soulless, and the greedy. Most are cerebral thugs. They can now come back from their holidays and issue statements of condemnation. I won't be listening to them and nor will increasing numbers of others. Obviously given a choice of which homes would be on fire, I would prefer it to be theirs.

[Anna]

Lat, I know you're looking at this through your own experiences and that of your Nan but it still does seem as if you are approving of what is happening.

Well, it's all totally out of control, sheer anarchy and whilst I can understand some looting I'm afraid arson is a totally different matter. The situation will probably continue as long as they have the energy to continue and yes, this is now just criminals taking control of the streets. Just seen this update on the situation:-

00.09 Wimbledon Guardian reports looters in Colliers Wood had to be rescued by firecrews after becoming trapped under the grill of a sportswear shop. In Chalk Farm, North London, the Guardian's Paul Lewis reports motorists are being attacked with bricks, with shouts of "Who's next, man?" There are youths in balaclavas carrying scaffolding poles. One shouted: "Let's go rob Hampstead." Countless shops have been looted.

00.01 Police have called in air support from Sussex and Surrey. Shops are burning in Clapham and Notting Hill. Cars have been torched in Fulham Broadway. The Ledbury Michelin-star restaurant in Notting Hill was raided and the diners mugged. There are reports on Twitter of people carrying machetes in Notting Hill and Balham.