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Enfield riots?

916 replies

Empusa · 07/08/2011 18:21

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?

OP posts:
CheerfulYank · 10/08/2011 04:20

A good downpour of rain brought on by a water cannon, maybe.

IvyAndGold · 10/08/2011 07:19

Just woke up to horrible news, three men defending their communities in Winson Green were run down, and have died, as well as protesters shooting at police :(

Not seen much reporting about it on the news, but friends in the area say there was trouble over there in the hours after midnights, a car on fire and at least two explosions.

What the fuck is wrong with people?! I've heard a few of saying it's about respect, but how is this going to gain you anything but hatred?

Also getting concerned about the use of the word 'youth' and it being associated with idiot vandals and criminals. I'm 23, I'm a youth, but I don't want to be thought of in the same way as the rioters :(

CheerfulYank · 10/08/2011 07:39

I don't understand it at all.

A friend of mine was talking about it today and going on about it being all about "opression and the London class system" , like he'd know, he's as American as I am. Hmm

They have to be stopped, first and foremost, and then it can be looked at as to why this happened and how to prevent it again.

OhYouBadBadKitten · 10/08/2011 08:03

Some fairly heavy rain tonight over the midlands. Hopefully part of the country will calm down.

ChaosTrulyReigns · 10/08/2011 09:05

That's what's needed Kitten, isn't it? hopefully a night with rain will work to stop the impetus.

Sad
Davida · 10/08/2011 09:28

'What the fuck is wrong with people?! I've heard a few of saying it's about respect, but how is this going to gain you anything but hatred? '

Well to my mind, that's just how these kids have been raised. 'Oi, get here and have some respect'

they grow up thinking you get respect by hitting and throwing your weight around
just like their parents told them

ajandjjmum · 10/08/2011 09:45

I suspect no-one ever told many of these kids to have respect. Infact no-one parented them properly at all.

fargate · 10/08/2011 09:57

''I suspect no-one ever told many of these kids to have respect. Infact no-one parented them properly''

That's precisely why kids join gangs.

And the fact it's safer to be in a gang than trying to survive on your own.

fargate · 10/08/2011 10:01

Sorry a bit dropped off my first sentence.

Thats precisely why kids join gangs it provides a family of sorts and legitimises their independence from their parents and all 'good authority'.

CheerfulYank · 10/08/2011 10:02

So how do we stop it?

How do we make people be better parents?

working9while5 · 10/08/2011 10:31

I don't know if you really can, CheerfulYank. I don't know the answer. There are generations of poorly parented individuals with no prospects and a burning sense of injustice and entitlement and rage.

Surestart tried. It did naff all.

ElenorRigby · 10/08/2011 10:40

At last someone from liberal, pc, hand wringing media gets it!

warped logic of no-hopers good for nothing - and afraid of nothing

"YOU do not make your ­neighbourhood a better place by burning down your ­neighbour?s home.

You can?t scream about social justice when what you would really like is a free high definition TV.

You do not make this country a better place by terrorising ordinary men, women and children, or by setting fire to their streets, or by destroying businesses that have served communities and provided jobs for over a hundred years. The riots have no moral authority.

Those involved ? or their ­apologists ? can bleat that it is about unemployment, or police violence, or the cuts in public services.

But that is all rubbish.

The people who are out on our streets robbing, burning, looting, throwing bottles and putting people of the minimum wage out of a job are self-pitying scumbags.

There is no justification for what they do. This is beyond all politics ? and beyond all special pleading.

The people who are the very backbone of this country ? the folk who work hard, who always do their best for their families ? are the ones who suffer.

They run for their lives. They see what they have worked for burned down by jeering mobs. They lose their businesses, their homes. It might not look like much to the outside world, but it is everything they have worked for ? gone in a night of stomach-churning, mindless violence.

It is so hard to build something.

It is so easy to smash something up.

But even as the rioters post their triumphant pictures of booty and mayhem on the social networking sites, they are building the next generation of ghettos.

Do they imagine that the shops and stores which they pillage and smash will be coming back soon?

And I feel desperately sorry for all the hardworking black people in this country.

Those images of black youths looting and pillaging will not soon fade from the national consciousness. They have set race relations back in this country by 30 years.

It is sad beyond belief ? nothing less than a national tragedy.

Not merely because firemen and policemen have had to stand back and let the rioters have their way.

Not because so many innocent families have watched all they love get smashed to pieces.

But because of what these riots say about the rioters themselves.

I know they whine about ­unemployment and a lack of ­opportunity ? but why would anyone want to employ these witless morons? Who would want to give them a job? And what job could they possibly do?

They are lost forever. The 14-year-old in his pair of looted trainers should make the most of them ? he will be wearing them when he is 40.

In these riots everything that ails us comes together in a perfect storm. Schools where education is despised. Illiterate, swaggering thugs who have sucked up benefits like their mother?s milk.

And a gang culture that is a ­corrosive substitute for families that were broken before they were ever really made.

One government tip ? as Cameron put down his semi-skimmed latte in Tuscany and hurried home ? was that parents should know where their children are.

What a bitter irony ? because of course, many of those masked thugs would have had absolutely no idea where their fathers were.

And in their pathetic swaggering, we see the very limits of society?s attempts to be understanding, to be soft, to be compassionate.

In the end ? softened up with their human rights, pampered with a benefits system that was meant to protect the vulnerable ? we get this shabby shower.

We have produced a generation that is good for nothing but, paradoxically, is afraid of nothing.

How shameful to watch images of policemen who appear afraid to strike out in case they get dragged before some human rights tribunal.

How hard to watch firemen who can?t put out a blazing business, or home, because goons are pelting them with bottles.

How it breaks the heart to see the very best of us ? the quiet families who go to work, the small shopkeeper who serves some poor working class community, the family with the business that was started generations ago ? tormented and tortured by the mob.

And for all their looted booty, for all the HD TVs and trainers, the mob have nothing. No family beyond the gang. No home that they have built with their hands. No job that gives them pride and a sense of worth and a few quid to save up for the things they want.

The rioters are not made of the same stuff as the quiet, decent families they have terrorised and robbed and burned from their homes. They are not made of the same stuff ? and they know it.

Yet inside the heart of every single one of those rioters, there beats a certain warped pride.

Perhaps for the very first time in their lives, they can forget that they are worthless.

These riots are a crime against all the people who live their lives with quiet decency.

They are a crime against the working class of this country.

Because whatever those rioters truly are, they have done nothing to deserve being called the ?working class?."

Well said!!!!!!!!!

New Liebours children have come home to roost. Angry

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 10/08/2011 10:50

isn't that from the Mirror? Hardly liberal

Blueberties · 10/08/2011 10:51

Eleanor, a passionate essay but good for you.

busybee1983 · 10/08/2011 10:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

working9while5 · 10/08/2011 10:54

I just don't know where it's going. Is there any historical precedent for this particular kind of looting, anyone know?

Pan · 10/08/2011 10:56

I was wondering if any other European country has experienced days of looting in their major cities at all.

Blueberties · 10/08/2011 11:04

How do we stop people becoming bad parents?

At the moment we seem to pay people to be bad parents.

There will always be people who don't care, but there is something in the idea that you would think twice about having children if you have to pay for them yourself; if having children will, in effect, make you poorer, financially.

When you are older, settled and prepared for a future, that's a sacrifice you will undertake. It comes with maturity, a sense of planning and preparation, budgeting and sacrifice and effort.

Young, free and single and you want to have fun, you don't want to make sacrifices, of course - you aren't ready for that, there's a time when young people can be irresponsible, spend their money on fancy stuff, drinking too much, holidays and so on. You don't want to give up what income you have and spend it on dull things like nappies and baby milk and not go out with your friends.

But when at that stage there are funds on offer for children, when it means more than you have at the moment, the thinking and planning can stop. When you're young often you think babies are darlings, you have immature fantasies about boyfriends of two months staying with you forever, see the money, can't imagine how hard it can be with children because you think you are immortal, you're young, you can do anything better than anyone, then there is no need for planning, or caution, or sacrifice.

Good parenting comes from thinking ahead, and being ready for the awful things that might come and being ready to plough through them and understand that patience and working hard and sacrifice will reap results.

We have a welfare condition which does not take account of these things.

I've read stories on here which are marvellous, especially of teenage mothers who have been inspired by unexpected pregnancies to go back to college and work very hard for the future of their children.

But most young people are not like that - it's almost a definition of being young. There's no reason why they should be. Consequences and sacrifice take moral character and that's something that often develops with maturity. I don't know what the answer is - I suppose I know I wouldn't start from here.

fargate · 10/08/2011 11:04

Pan France 2005 - 3 months of riots in 240 cities and towns. According to the French press 'the underclass phenomenon' is an Anglo-saxon problem and doesn't exists in France, Italy, etc. because of strong family ties.

I don't know if thats true or not.

Pan · 10/08/2011 11:14

fargate - thanks and I was wondeering about that. I did seethe fabulous film "La Haine" but wasn't really sure if the trigger for that was pure looting, or if there was a strong 'race' angle - teh film implied there was re treatment of African immigrants.

I think I did ask the question as I was fearing the continental analysis was true tbh.

fargate · 10/08/2011 11:17

Surestart tried. It did naff all.

Thats not true.

Re-examination of the original US research in the 1970s showed that there was a powerful 'sleeper effect' 20 years later. Children who had been part of the original Homestart/Surestart project were more likely than their peers to be in stable relationships, employed, not in prison, enjoy better health as young adults/parents.

Results aren't always immediate. And sometimes an intervention can prevent matters getting worse rather than actually improving them.

Like all helpful parenting you got to stick with it and not keep changing your strategies.

The ''I've given up. I've tried everything. Nothing works'' School of Parenting is spectacularly ineffectual and usually involves blaming the child for there own behaviour.

Blueberties · 10/08/2011 11:18

Fargate: yes - it's like deep muscle work.

But Surestart is fire-fighting a bigger problem than it should have to.

Kladdkaka · 10/08/2011 11:23

Yesterday the BBC reported that some of the first to be arrested had appeared in the magistrates court. The reporter was surprised by the fact that non of them came from anywhere near the communities they were destroying nor were they 'disenfranchised youth'. Hmm

working9while5 · 10/08/2011 11:25

That was Headstart though. Very different culture, very different welfare system.

I worked on and off in Surestart over the last few years, and I think it really helps families who are willing and able to attend and participate, but they are typically not the types of families who create kids like those ringleading these riots. It really doesn't reach the families that are in most dire need of help, or if it does, I have never seen evidence of this.

fargate · 10/08/2011 11:28

Very strange isn't it, klad? Maybe, just an unrepresentative sample because 14 - 20 year old males were the demographic on the ground? Usual suspects for violent crime and crimes against property.