While looting and burning of glitzy shops was the common motif running through the ‘insurrection’, some other features stood out. There was no controlling organisation; only a shared history of miscreants’ poor relations with the police. Social stratification was a determining factor even amongst the immigrant communities. Indians, Pakistanis and Turks were victims rather than the perpetrators of anarchy probably because they have been more successful economically and have assets to defend and also because their family and clan structures have seen less wear and tear in Great Britain’s transition to neo-liberal economics. Again, communities that seek education proactively as a means of social mobility within state-sponsored facilities or by their own private investment stood apart from the utterly neglected social groups the hooligans came from.
In the post-war rehabilitation of a devastated Europe, Great Britain was emblematic of social care. The great moralists of the 19th century with roots in Christianity, Fabian socialists and diehard Marxists had all contributed to a culture of responsibility for the underprivileged, a culture of reciprocal obligations where altruism also protected upper class interests. It started disintegrating during the Margret Thatcher era. Continental Europe, unlike England, had seen huge convulsions of the French revolution and the revolutions of 1848-49. The latter failed but not without creating a strong foundation for social democratic movements agitating for welfare systems particularly after the fascist interlude.
If Thatcher undermined the bargaining power of the working class by weakening trade unions, Tony Blair stitched Britain to the political and economic system decreed globally by the United States by blunting the dialectical edges of the Labour Party. The result is that in the present upheaval, the demand from liberal and leftist circles for soul-searching finds little resonance in the government. We saw something similar in Sarkozy’s France after 2005; he actually intensified his quest for locating France at the heart of the capitalist West by fostering the prosperity of some while further marginalising others. Both Britain and France gave higher priority to US-led wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa than to domestic renewal. In Britain today, a mighty propaganda machine is trying to prove that the recent riots had nothing to do with the severe austerity cuts imposed by Cameron’s government that took away residual hope for salvaging rioting groups and gangs. Even with their criminality, they made a political statement that the government does not wish to recognise. In refusing to diagnose the deeper malaise, the government runs the risk of greater crises in the years ahead.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 15th, 2011.
COMMENTS (24)
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@hassan feroze: Actually you demonstrate perverse logic. You wish to defend analysis of UK riots by a person who was somebody at some point in time and served in UK possibly some thirty years ago. Pakistan may not have changed in thirty years but UK certainly has. He states he has been a UK visitor on numerous occasions. OK I am happy to accept him as a 48 hour expert on England! His analysis is such that it does not even make any reference to the role played in the riots by Afro-Caribbean communities, and the disenchantment felt by the native white community against immigrants. It is generally accepted that further away something happens, the more people's understanding of it is ignorant. So much for the expertise of the author!
By the way I do accept your assertion that you have some very fine brains. I am sure you are referring to people like Zaid Hamid, Aamir Liaquat Hussain and Hafiz Saeed. Keep them at home, no one in the outside world wants them.
@Johnny - it's a political statement in that it is a message from the forgotten stata of society. Nobody in their right mind can deny that these people are trying to rebel against the status quo - they are disenchanted and disillusioned - and millions of miles apart from the ruling elites, both corporate and political. It is a political statement without doubt, a violent and unruly one, and a criminal one, but a statement nevertheless. Author is absolutely right.
Sarah Watkins
@Ehtesham: Thank you for your explanation. My original comments were to say to people like Tanvir Ahmad Khan that superficial statements by people like him are wide of the mark in spite of the fact that he was educated at Oxford and has visited UK on numerous occasions. Short term visitors can pretend to know what is going on in a society. I have spent more than the equivalent of twelve months, during last ten years, in United States, yet I do not pretend to be an expert on its internal situation. Believe me I do read very widely and that is how I came across the Express Tribune. The situation in UK is far more complex than Mr Tanvir Ahmad Khan outlines, in the same way as the situation in Pakistan is very complex. Peace!
I think you guys are mixing internal events within UK as some strategic gameplan. I understand everyone is welcome to have their opnions but I am just trying to answer the question the author has put forward, and my answer is NO. There is no political statement here. What political statement do you expect from chavs who cannot even spell a simple english word and looted shops with adidas trainers and N07 perfume. The root cause however has been the mass immigration from South Asia, Carribean and Africa which has caused undue strain on social benefits system that Labour has so passionately espoused. Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" prophecy is coming true and I hope it opens the eyes of the Whitehall mandarins that immigration has to stop.
@Ehtesham: Well actually you demonstrate your own inferiority by pretending to know what ails the west, when you and your ilk cannot sort out the ills and malaise that has been affecting Pakistan resulting in the murders of 40000 people over last ten years. More people die in the violence in Karachi on weekly basis than are murdered in UK in a year. But of course that does not worry you because you think you belong to the land of the PURE.
@Amjad: So you think UK is suffering from unemployment; alienation, ghettos, kids with social problems, racial problems etc. Obviously they appear to be very attractive to millions in Pakistan wanted to emigrate to UK legally or illegally.
I am grateful to Anne Wilcox,Ehtesham, Christian Robertson and Nabi Noor for kindly focusing on the contents of the article. I was educated at Oxford, worked in our embassy for four years and have visited UK on countless occasions for short and not-so-short periods of time. So I have a certain awareness of its problems and the empathy of an Anglophile. The argument that we in this part of the world have no business to comment on a major event in the West is absurd. Scores of Western commentators from both sides of the Atlantic and analysts from India, China, Japan, the Arab world and other comment on the situation in Pakistan. Why should we not analyse developments in the rest of the world? Mr Jameel thinks the UK is a far off land. No; the Nato/US forces are right on our door steps and occasionally intrude into our country. Iraq and Afghanistan have seen utter devastation at the hands of politicians who are also responsible for marginalizing large segments of western populations. My point was the sad moral and material decline of the caring state in Europe.
To all Pakistanis you don't need to take this crap from these British zealots - trust me in the UK these guys would get shot down so they come here to talk their rubbish. If you have something clever to say like the author then say it and if you have something stupid to say then don't make it worse by being patronizing.
@Jonny English
You're almost as dopey as the film hero....
Loose that pride - no one gives a damn about Empire any more so stop wasting billions in Libya and sort out your own mess (instead of using the writer's nationality as a scape goat) - a decade down the line i don't think we'll even recognize Britain if the ''Jonny Englishes'' of the UK don't wake up and smell the coffee.
To all you Anglophiles stop using Pakistan as a way of ignoring your own problems - if a Pakistani makes some valid points listen to them - patronizing duffers....
Things are not so bad in England that we have to take advise from Pakistan! Also there is no political statement in these riots...it was just a bunch of kids from working class raiding shops for trainers and ipods. how can this be a polical statement? This was just common thuggery perputated on a mass scale
The author shows an extremely well developed sense of paranoia towards west. he see's political statement against pakistanis / muslims even when there is none. I supect he also see's some sort of political signature of hitler on the burnt tandoori rotis.
You Sir, have no cure. I would like to see you walking on road with talking to self against the west, with saliva dribbling from the corner of your mouth. the political conspiracy of uk/us/sun/moon against muslim ummah/pakistan will then be complete.
@Amjad
Well said! I am so tired of inferiority stricken people like Mr. Shock Horror asking all Pakistan commentators to gag themselves as the Western world supremely knows how to tackle everything on this planet if not in this cosmos! If they (the ruling British elite) 'know something about it' then perhaps it is even more worrisome that they allowed it to happen. If the almighty Westerners knew that they their entire banking system would come undone due to their amoral approach to lending (re - the subprime crisis) and off balance sheet shenanigans (re-Enron) then why didn't they do anything about it? Because they were part of it? or just didn't gave a darn about the average man - their own bonuses coming first. Ultimately the tax payer bailed out the white collar crooks. Similalry I suppose Westerners knew the mess they would create in Iraq etc etc...Please educate yourself Mr. Shock Horror. You and your kind really need to get over your deep seated inferiority complexes.
Ehtesham Tirmizi
yeah people living outside west hardly understand the issue but very much eager to comment. I saw a pic where a man protesting against FOXNEWS in the streets of Pakistan. I am sure that man hardly understand english forget bout watchin FOXNEWS ever and understanding US culture/society. Same goes most of the ASIAN commentators. They read one two news papers from west similar to their ideological view and just conclude their understanding based on those couple of papers. And then people from these countries read those articles and again they conclude their version out of those article.
I was one of those people a decade ago.
@Amjad:
Do you live in UK? I do. I don’t see it that way. I am more worried of what is going on in Pakistan comparatively due to the severity of it. When religious killers are celebrated at large by the society then we know that society has had it. Tanvir’s own home is on fire yet he gives advise to distant lands; he obviously has given up on his own society completely.
Interesting article - Ilivea few roads away from the incident in Birmingham and knew two out of the three who were martyred on dudley rd - i can tell you in was not a political statement
Sort your country out, it is a failed state.
England can be fixed - don't need advice from people who cannot fix their own country.
@Shock Horror: So if you are sick you can't treat others? Funny logic. The UK has been a hotbed of social unrest for the last 3 to 4 decades. We all know why: unemployment; alienation, ghettos, kids with social problems, racial problems etc; It's bound to happen again.
Excellent, thoughtful, sensible article. Sadly, crass capitalism and the accompanying moral breakdown in the UK have led to the recent violent eruption of emotions and horrific riots. Recent events such as the Murdoch saga have shown how shallow our society has become; our much trumpeted value system is broken and our youth are miguided and frustrated with life. The wealthy are in another world altogether. It is an unsustainable and highly combustible mix. Thanks for an excellent article.
Christian
@Tanvir Ahmad Khan
I suggest that the commentators who, over many years, have failed to correctly analyse and sort out the malaise affecting Pakistan, should leave the English problems to people who live in England and know something about it.
The masses have protested against the continuous perpetration of social injustice. This will, as it should, spread to all societies where such injustice is embedded. The US, Europe, China as well as the autocratic monarchies in the Middle East will be reshaped by this movement. Countries like India and Pakistan, where there is shameful disparity in income distribution, will also be affected. Cameron’s dismissal of the recent events in the UK as “pure criminality” is as naïve as it is misleading.