Stay Home Tonight

One motive for the riots is 'See what you get when you take away a kids future'. Indeed cuts have ensured that opportunities for access to higher education are nil, job opportunities, possibility of affording a decent place to live, negligible. Even after a patch up job, where community figure heads might try to take some of the blame here and ensure the provision of more youth services, improve police dialogue etc UK society will never provide financial equality for all if neoliberalism remains central. I think an important question we actually need to ask 'what kind of future?' ... a great future as a wage-slave, working all the hours in the week to pay the mortgage and buy 'stuff', or work in goal/corporate orientated academia, or a social sector driven by key performance indicators etc? - in the neoliberal emerald city, the streets aren't paved with gold for most. I think the kids have seen through this and nihilism has set in.

What these looting kids are doing in a 419 culture, cut out the middleman, style is cutting to the chase. They got the trainers, the gold, the track suit, and did they have to work for months or nurture soul scalding credit? ... they did not. The way these objects of desire are produced and distributed is the problem, not the objects themselves or the desire. Look to Adam Curtis' All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace for a history on the oil crisis in Nigeria for insight into the actual costs of primary source theft, i.e. oil to make our Play Stations etc. Surely this is the individualistic entrepreneurship neoliberalism advocates, talk about instant profit. Fast wealth looks bad and unfair, but at least these kids have the guts to do it out in the open, not behind false shrouds of dignity like the political elite and the mega-rich.

The gangs already have their organised unions, I think it shines a light on the lack of other Londoners to come together and take to the streets to protest. I resent Teresa May et als exclusion of these kids as 'thugs' that 'Londoners' should unite against. These kids are Londoners. At this time any demonisation should be abhorred. Denying responsibility for social malaise is a tabloid tactic. However, I think the governmental stance will play on the idea that at this time of great austerity, everyone should be making do and mend, altruism is key. These kids are not playing fair, not showing allegiance to the Big Society and not showing the negative solidarity that is needed. Their criminality will be seen as a great burden, they will be outlawed. I think everyone is looking for significance here, political intent, or a logical motive. Of course the rioters' motives will be mixed. But on the whole I think the motive is angry revenge, revenge for taking out one of their own (Mark Duggan) revenge for being poor and for being bored.

As I write short term solutions are being proposed - further denial of civil liberties, legal police brutality in the form of surveillance of phone calls, use of water canons and plastic bullets.

Homes To Go To

Regarding 26th March protest: I've just watched video footage from the Guardian taken in and outside Fortnum and Mason's on March 26th after the short occupation of the building. Here protesters are given false information from the police about what would happen to them as they were 'allowed' to leave the building. I think it's extremely telling when the police officer says 'People have got homes to go to!', in a sort of quirky, light way. She seems to be empathetic with the people she's addressing at the same time as being complicit in their restraint. The mumsy comment sums up for me the whole way the police have operated over the business of kettling: the police officer entirely normalises the process. Just because a short sighted judge decides to look kindly upon kettling as a tactic means that now anyone's civil liberties can now be disregarded. Freedom Press give a brief history to kettling here:

'Although not defined in law (it still is simply a police tactic) it was given the green light by the High Court after some protestors questioned the legality of their seven hour kettling in Oxford Circus on Mayday 2001. The courts ruled that the police could under certain circumstances detain people against their will for long periods of time to prevent outbreaks of violence and criminal acts – and typically a breach of the peace. The example they gave was the detaining of football supporters in the ground while opposing fans left the area. The question of the fact most of the 2,000 people detained in Oxford Circus were in fact law abiding was described by the judge as “unfortunate”.'

She also reveals her own lack of authority and a ballsing up of communication, I could point out to be very kind, as a result of cuts and KPI based mismanagement that we're seeing all through the public services. I'm not feeling so kind though, after witnessing a mass compliance on the part of the police to entirely deny people their rights.

'Homes to go to' It's what you might say as a bar woman at the end of the night - haven't you lot got homes to go to, also perhaps a glib comment to a bunch of kids causing a little bit of disturbance in the street. But people were held against their will in a shop, and then kettled on their way out and arrests made.

The fact that I wasn't allowed to go home the other night, while being held in Trafalgar Square was distressing to say the least. Here the protesters ask what they've done wrong and aren't given a straight answer. The 'disorder' that the police say they have protected them from has subsided.

The question for me was, next time, when I have the chance to go out to protest and risk being kettled, will I go? Leave the safe zone of home. I put the kettle on, have a think, there's no question is there.