Written by Bryn Gough | 24 October 2011
Posted in Comment - Britain

Photography: Beacon Radio

Back in early August, several major English cities were split into two camps: those pillaging the streets and those who lay waiting for the human storm to blow over.

The unrest was sparked in North London by the fatal police shooting of local Tottenham man Mark Duggan, along with the perceived lack of a meaningful investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. The odorous scleroses of mistrust that defined the relations between the Metropolitan Police Service and the local community erupted into chaos, as youngsters engaged in the destructive rhapsody of a country turned upside down.

The UK has seen its share of bloody riots, from the poll-tax unrest under the Thatcher administration in 1990 to the ‘black bloc’ groups who caused extensive damage to central London during last year’s tuition fee protests. What typified August’s rioting, however, was the seeming absence of any overriding political goal on the part of those involved. Participants generally seemed far more interested in how much they could acquire than in raising the profile of any particular political injustice. Evocations of Stephane Hessel’s Indignez Vous! were nowhere to be found; the inspired sound bites of Malcolm X even more deeply hidden. This led to immediate speculation over the causes of such an apolitical disregard for the status quo.

During and after these nightly bouts of rioting, the British far-left sourced the outbreak to a collision between a consumption-obsessed culture and a wealth-bereft reality; a collision between the nagging of the celebrity dream and the reality of the proletarian humdrum. Those who have long eschewed the movement of the Labour Party towards the political centre-ground now felt vindicated as they witnessed the unfolding of a 21^st-century manifestation of the ‘contradictions within capital’.

 

Why is it so taboo to justify the misdemeanours of disenchanted youth when tacit acceptance of white-collar malevolence is almost universal?

Those of a more conservative temperament believe civil society rests on the upkeep of interrelated rights and duties, partly inherited from social history and partly mediated through changes in public desires. Such widespread rioting, it follows, must have its roots in a corruption of that system. So, the British right set about decrying the nation’s ‘moral decay’. Melanie Philips, #of the Daily Mail, lamented that:

 

“The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

She, and many others on the right of the political spectrum, deemed the recent lawlessness to be simply the ‘chickens coming home to roost”.

Observers of a centrist nature argued a number of intermediary positions. However, those in the middle agreed on one thing:  this behaviour was completely inexcusable. Whether centrist commentators were inclined towards Theresa May’s judgement – that these acts were nothing more than ‘pure mindless criminality’ – or whether they dared to delve into the sociological backdrop, all explanations were caveated with a clear moral demarcation regarding the unjustifiable nature of the rioting.

The fact that the vast majority of those in the media were so convinced that such rioting was unjustifiable illuminates the intractable position the blurred liberal distinction between legitimate protest and illegitimate political action serves up. Legitimate politics resembles an orderly checkout queue, with people lined up, waiting patiently, and served equally. This protest was more like an armed gang raiding the supermarket and making off with enough Vodka to kill a herd of elephants. However, we only need to cast a glance several miles over to London’s financial districts to see a whole cast of other, more smartly-dressed people whose skill at making off with other people’s money has given them no legal condemnation and yet bequeathed them innumerable riches.

Moreover, take a trip over to Parliament Square and you may catch sight of any number of the MPs and Peers caught defrauding the taxpayer in 2009, very few of whom have been given any formal punishment. It’s not hard to see the moral contradictions in such a system, or at least why people believe such contradictions to exist. Given this, why is it so taboo to justify the misdemeanours of disenchanted youth when tacit acceptance of white-collar malevolence is almost universal?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in the way the British have been taught to view politics. Once merely seen as a pragmatic representation of the political, the formal arena of party politics has reached such a plateau of importance that its self-legitimated channels are now the only way in which many Britons can conceive of political life. Faced with thousands of the nation’s youth vomiting a pool of contempt on society’s doorstep, perhaps we might all do well to remember the classic Hegelian refrain of “what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.” That is to say that our moralising after the events does nothing but ignore the reality of the event as it happened by only considering the perspective of those not involved.

Thus it has been laid out for public judgement. The narratives of political ideology have reproduced themselves, armed with evidence of the need for change, as stronger, fitter beings, capable of proving how society has been troubled all along by the ills they identified. Riots often service ideology. They are flashpoints in social history. They can confirm what we have always known or persuade us towards what we have often been told. David Cameron believes that sections of society are ‘sick’ and in need of tough treatment. So that is how future policy will be shaped – social discipline and treatment to cure the diseases and flush out the evil elements. It seems that there mustn’t be anything wrong with the broad structures of society, just individuals who have not learned how to behave within it.

As potential solutions unfurl, we must be careful to remember that when the chattering classes study the ills of the impoverished they do so from a distance, using the lens of ideology where their personal experience falters.

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