Enfield riots?

[Empusa]

Just seen on Twitter and in a few articles like this, that there are meant to be plans for a riot in Enfield tonight and riot police are in the town centre?

Used to live there, and got family there (luckily a fair distance from the centre), but fucking hell! What the hell is going on?

I'm waiting for sakura to explain what important political point is being made by a masked figure looting a flat screen TV from Debenhams in Birmingham.

Agree with you 9while5. Its more comfortable for people to distance themselves from what is happening and talk about it solely in terms of criminality and thuggery. Yes it is that but its also in the political landscape where the divide between those who are rich and those who are poor is wider than its ever been.

There are people in this 'big society' who feel completed dispossessed, disillusioned and without any prospects of improving their lot in life. Why else would people take such little responsibility or pride in their communities-or for that matter treat fellow human beings with such indifference and contempt. Dismissing it all as criminality won't make a jot of difference unless we try and understand the resaons behind it and address those reasons.

working9 sorry I disagree - this is what happens when our police and judicial system aren't able to tackle the gangs that are endemic in our inner cities.
this is what happens when thugs tell people in their estates not to speak to the police, not to help the police and so the violent in our midst cannot be brought to justice - and police then have to resort to divisive stop and search policies in order to try and gets drugs and guns and knives off our streets
but most of all this is about little shits who have no intention to graft to get themselves through life.

that is sounding slightly like hippy twaddle to me, when I was being terrorised by (white, before I get accused of racism) thuggish teens it just pissed me off, I didn't want to feel sorry for them and think about the wider picture and how the poor things were disillusioned with society.

"we have a lot of greedy, mindless people who don't care who they hurt in their pursuit of material goods" - exactly. Many of them are members of the Tory party but greed at the top of society is now acceptable. We've had a breakdown in morality in society and the poor are copying the example of the rich. The full weight of the law will come down on these people but not on the rich.

indefensible inexcusable

birdland they treat others with contempt because they see/suffer no consequences for their actions.
i can tell you the children i saw skipping to the action in my neighbourhood did not look in any way deprived or ill-fed!!!!

I don't think it's racist to say that it is predominantly black youths who are involved. Yes, there are other races committing the offences but not as many as there are young black males.

Exactly right ellisbell

Hippy twaddle? Not me fanjo.Its bullshit and lazy thinking to say this is just a law and order issue. No ones asking you to 'feel sorry' for them-just to say that there are wider issues that might lead to these 'thugs' not giving a shit about either themselves or others.

Birdland..have you been personally affected by these thugs?

ellisbell why not include labour etc politicians in that greed?? you would sound more credible by not making it party political.

i am NOT a fan of the tories nor a tory voter but to make this about the tories is a crock

i posted elsewhere everyone should take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable, whether it is MPs expenses, corporate tax avoidance - or the selfish looters who have wrecked our city.

It's not a "race card", it's about the fact that the riots have started in and spread from areas associated with race riots and where many of the population are from ethnic minorities. It was triggered by the shooting of a black man in police custody. I very much doubt that all of the rioters are black or from ethnic minorities but colour is not a non-issue in these communities. As someone said on another thread, there has been a lot of talk of the language of the ghetto by people in this, the man who was shot sent "The Feds are after me" as his last text, as though he were living in the Wire. These are people living on the borderlands of a society that is crumbling at all levels apart from the top... when riots start at the bottom it's a pretty good indicator that the whole society is in disarray. Who can dispute that things are pretty grim at the moment, for the vast majority of us? By the end of next year, hundreds of us will be unemployed and work is going to become harder and harder to find and to keep. Those of us who have always played by the rules and been educated etc will have to downgrade and get jobs that we didn't qualify for.. what do you think happens to the people at the bottom of the ladder when this happens? Do you think it improves their job prospects any if I and my two degrees and good grasp of written and spoken communication shore up at the interview for the entry level secretarial position?

The important political point made by a masked figure looting a flat screen TV from Debenhams in Birmingham is "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me": I will take what I want and operate outside the law because I can and because there are enough of us to blockade these roads and create destruction and I can make this society break. I can burn up the world. That's a pretty powerful statement to make. I don't condone it, I condemn it, I don't want to see this spread.. but this is not happening in a political vacuum just for the hell of it. It is crazily naive to assume that this is just "one of those things".

and of course there are wider issues. But it is bullshit and lazy thinking to blame it on the Tories, the incidents I am talking about happened 5 years ago.

And incidentally I voted Labour.

my last comment was to Birdland, I x-posted.

working9while5 - if it's not a "race card" how do you explain the WHITE thugs who used to trash our estate just for the hell of it every weekend, and terrorise us. That is what I was talking about. but you jumped in and said "why not nail your colours to the mast and say "its the black kids innit".....that hadn't even occurred to me...so i found your comment rather offensive.

Is it, therefore, merely coincidental that the biggest riots England has ever seen have all happened under Tory rule?

its got fuck all to do with race

teejwood - firstly because they are the ones in power, secondly because they have massively hiked tuition fees and are limiting the exit route from poverty, thirdly because they want to increase the difference in the range of incomes while the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties in theory wish to reduce it.

Whoever you vote for if you have any sense at all you can see that wide disparities in income lead, as in Brazil, to gated communities and armed guards. The conservative party used to know that too - it's why Britain hasn't had much in the way of revolution.

Depends what thugs you are referring to fanjo?-have I been the victim of crime? Yes I live in inner city London and I have been the victim of crime. I also worked with very unpleasant offenders in the probation service so I've met a fair few 'thugs'.

I'm not talking about individuals like perhaps you are. I'm commenting on what I think may be underlying issues relating to what is clearly a national problem. I also (hippy that I am) think some criminality is related to problems within our society-be it poverty, racism,addiction. You can dismiss whats happening as a problem of individual pathology if you want-I just don't find that explanation makes much sense in this situation.

Fanjo-btw I didn't mention Tories in my post. I think theres precious little difference between labour and the tories these days.

matana purleese - is it merely coincidence that the biggest riots has ever seen have all happened during recessions?

but again, the people I saw yesterday were not improverished. and looters were giving themselves away as people who actually did have job e.g. "I'm getting my taxes back" while walking away with armfuls of stuff

It's not as simple as being related to poverty. I was brought up by a single parent on benefits in pretty great poverty. And have never committed a crime in my life.

I think its more likely to be related to being given too much and not respecting anything. Don't mean to sound like a Daily Mail reader though.

ellis you REALLY think many of the people looting yesterday are aware of tory taxation policy, or that many have any intention of going to university? when they use "feds" instead of "police" they aren't exactly positioning themselves as intellectual giants.

Fanjo, now you are making it about race in a really silly way.

The underclass in the areas of South London and most of the other urban areas of the UK currently rioting are predominantly black. The underclass in Scotland and in many other areas of the UK are predominantly white.

This is an issue of the underclass and not race, but I detect racism in some of the "thick lazy thieving pricks" commentary and I find that offensive. There is a comment on another thread about how "these people" think they are living in a ghetto etc etc and it reflects "their ignorance". There is a racial undertone to some of what is being said, particularly when it comes to the "ghetto element". Black urban hip hop and rap speaks to people who feel disenfranchised and some of those people are currently rioting. It is not because they are thick!

To see this site, which is predominantly middle-class have as a discussion of the day the fact that the use of the term "the Feds" makes someone's teeth itch just makes me cringe. At least there is honest condemnation on this thread and people putting forward their opinions, differing as those may be, but to laugh at the fact that there are a group of people so distant from mainstream culture and politics that they only identify with American ghetto culture in the current context is no laughing matter IMO.

I think that what happens in any one part of society reflects pretty much all of society. We are all suffering this economic meltdown and the extreme reactions and violence in these riots is symptomatic of much broader societal trouble, from which the vast majority of us are NOT immune just because we "take responsibility for our actions". I have always taken responsibility for my actions but when my job goes at the end of the year, if I can't find another one, I will lose my home. I'm not going to riot about it, but I am protected by other factors and my education and class etc.. things must seem bleaker in Tottenham. It is the same problem there only they are demonstrating their anger in a different way.

People say "these people" don't want to graft, but let's face it, nobody will be thrilled about grafting when their enjoyable and fulfilling jobs are replaced by menial work for less money and lots of struggle. This is just a symptom of much broader stuff in the pipeline.