Quote:
Originally Posted by Amy
Plenty communities are armed to the teeth and fighting when necessary to defend themselves (Often ironically, the much maligned immigrant communities. Certainly I've seen lines of sword-bearing Sikhs positioning themselves to defend the usually quite mixed-race poor neighbourhoods that some of this violence is damaging).
This rioting is rooted in deeper social and economic problems affecting the country. A large proportion of the country's youth feel (Correctly) that they have no real future prospects, after this current government (As with the previous conservative government in the 1980s) has stripped social programmes of funding, slowed economic growth to almost nothing with massive sweeping budget cuts, and has cut off higher education to all but the richest of the population.
When you have one of the highest economic disparities between rich and poor in most of europe (though still NOWHERE near as bad as the US) and then compound the situation of an entire generation who feel (And often quite rightly so) that they have nothing at all to lose, with increasingly aggressive behaviour of police, themselves stressed to breaking point by massive budget cuts, and layoffs, all wondering if their jobs will be the next ones to arbitrarily be dropped, you have a powderkeg, and a lit fuse.
Interestingly, the more northern areas (We consider regions like Manchester to be "the south" even if they think of themselves as "north") have not seen rioting this time around. This seems largely due to our part of the country already having an "us vs them" mentality of hatred towards London, which we see as more of an invading foreign power, and having an almost nationalistic pride in our shared identity and in our cities, rather than nihilistically seeing no value at all in anything.
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Thank you, Amy, for saying what no one else did: that despite the despicable behavior of the rioters, and the fact that such action does nothing to advance the "cause" of those who riot (to the degree that they have a "cause"), the riots are definitely rooted in a socio-economic situation of deep alienation from society. Here in the United States, it has become the norm that ascending generations are worse off than their parents. The economic disparities in this country grow and grow. Young people face a future of temporary labor (what the French rightly call "precarious work") and increasing alienation and atomization. It's no wonder that any spark can lead to conflagration.
This is not to excuse rioters. Individual or group violence is a bankrupt approach to changing the world. The youth of England, just like the youth of the United States, could learn a thing or two from the serious side (i.e., not the Yippies) of the anti-Vietnam War movement and how it was organized, or how the students in France in 1968 united with trade unions and nearly brought down the DeGaulle government.