Are the UK riots a political statement?

Even with their criminality, the rioters made a political statement that the government does not wish to recognise.


Tanvir Ahmad Khan August 14, 2011
Are the UK riots a political statement?

In the torrent of opinion pieces interpreting rioting in several cities of the United Kingdom, there was an interesting article devoted to a comparative study of this orgy of arson and looting with the turmoil in the outlying suburbs of Paris in 2005-06. Ironically, the French critics of their own model of integration and assimilation of immigrant communities looked at the British paradigm of multiculturalism with some envy and chose Tottenham in North London as an example of British success; the district had several common features like high rate of unemployment and poor access to education amongst the Blacks and yet it enjoyed peaceful neighbourhoods. Six years later, Tottenham ignited the fire that spread overnight to many other boroughs of London and then on to other cities. Tottenham also defined the fearful method in this madness by putting a heavy accent on plundering and destroying shops and department stores. UK Prime Minister David Cameron described the events as pure and simple criminality. The London police came closer to the heart of the matter by characterising them as “violent consumerism”. A marketing and consumer expert at Nottingham Business School tacitly endorsed the ramifications of the phrase used by the police by stating that the rioters were perhaps “rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can’t afford it.” A brilliant article in The Independent observed that that this is a natural human response to the brutality of poverty. Characteristically, many British commentators looked beyond Cameron and saw in the frenetic looting and burning of properties an underclass that is totally disconnected from society.

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)

Shock Horror | 13 years ago | Reply

@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.

hassan feroze | 13 years ago | Reply @shock horror your logic is twisted. If Ambassador Khan - a distinguished diplomat and former foreign secretary - who understands global affairs a lot better than you do, should not comment on anything at all outside the borders of pakistan, then pray tell us, why should Britishers and others opine about Pakistani affairs? your logic reveals, as ehtesham points out, a deep rooted inferiority complex. Also why are you reading this article? if the Britishers know best then read their assessments. While you do so ask yourself why things came to such a dismal state in the form of the riots -- if so many intelligent people in england with their almighty knowledge knew all of the reasons that presaged the riots! people like you kowtow and to all things western so much. We have some very fine brains in this country; if people don't wish to listen to them, that's another matter.I think this piece makes wonderful sense. Hassan
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