Aug-4-9-English-Summer-Simmer
Prelude – the Rioting-Looting events in a Wider-Angle
As Mohammed Bou'Azizi, a young man in his mid-20s, put fire of himself on Dec 17, 2010, in a derelict petty Tunisian town of Sidi Bazoud he surely couldn't even fancy the firestorm of near future he ignited or switched ON — but as the smell of burning-human-flesh descended in the thick December air and enveloped the little country, as the wail of his mother, wife and children echoed at each wall of all the barrios and factories, workers and unemployed folks started pouring on the streets with fists clenched ... and ... and so many things happened the world over in this very short one year. So many things, really, so many events did take place that just after first six months of 2011 and just after 6 to 7 weeks of #M15 in Puerto de Sol in Madrid, Plaza Catalonia in Barcelona and scores of other cities in Spain www.spanishrevolution.es could quote 'an acceleration of history'i; by the end of October 2011 'occupy' could become a part of most-used word-list and after #Jan25 of Tahrir Square quickly #spanishrevolution became the one of most popular twitter hash-tags, #realdemocracy-gr, #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, #N15, etc very quickly spread their messages of protest actions across the globe; from the heart of a multi-millennia-old civilisation appear messages like "We are everywhere. Whatever they do they cannot makes us leave. The streets and the squares, like jobs, productive structures, the wealth of this country and our rights belong to us. They are not for sale. We will continue to demand their return to the people."ii
England also had its share. From March militant student-youth demos announced the advent of spring, "F**K FeeS", "Free Education" like posters appeared in many places; March 26 "700,000 – biggest workers' demonstration in decades ... Guardian website shows film of young people - many singing the international revolutionary workers' song 'the Internationale' - being kettled and manhandled by the police"iii; then June 30 saw a massive workers' strike. Residents of Tottenham, from where the August-Riot spread, also took part. More than 250 workers marched in Tottenham on June 25 for the preparation of the June strike. They distributed thousands of leaflets and covered all industries and offices where workers suffered the austerity drive, where jobs were threatened, before assembling in the Tottenham Town Hall. And this riot-torn Tottenham, just a week after the riot-flames were doused, will see some 100 youngsters meeting there for organising youth movement that will eventually announce the 300-mile march for jobs. Manchester, Birmingham etc cities that experienced conflagration of worst kind of riot and looting will also see 30,000 to 40,000 workers marching in following October and November; in October the occupy movement will set its feet in the Isles; then, Guardian, 23 Nov 2011 – David Willetts abandons Cambridge University speech as protesters take over lecture hall to oppose £9000 tuition fees ... Willetts was forced to sit in a corner of the stage of Lady Mitchell Hall, as students read out a prepared statement .... If we are permitted to look back to 2010 or 2009 we can see more such instances — The Visteon-Ford workers factory occupy move in 2009, one of their factories is at Enfield, just north of Tottenham (or Haringey, as the borough is called); The Vistas Wind Turbine workers' actions in the same year (birth of the lyric - "We may not win but we sure can try / Learn from Visteon and occupy!"); the reawakening of grass-root-workers-activism to some extent; then say, a Guardian report headlined – "A few strikes don't make a spring of discontent" – admitted "Monday 29 March, 2010: "A strike by British Airways cabin crew| Threatened disruption on the railways| Picketing of parliament by civil servants on budget day| Quite clearly, Britain is once again gripped by the industrial militancy of the 1970s"; then 3 one-day-strikes by London Tube Rail workers in a single year, 2010; ...
Surely all these shows a thread, a certain thread of history passing through England, and also Tottenham, and it must be taken into cognizance while looking into the Riot-&-Loot littered England of August 4-5 to 9, 2011. Other threads are there too and some one or more of those may, under certain conditions, at some particular time, come into forefront, acquire importance or prevalence, as the rioting and looting episode showed; moreover none of those threads may claim to be totally independent of others, at times they get intertwined, at times they act on one another, one influences another – these can also be seen in those apparently bewildering days. Otherwise we shall not do justice to history and to the people of England too. And we shall not understand why even to close observers the riot came as a sudden rude shock, why the sudden eruption of the riot and accompanied looting puzzled almost everybody, even those who yelled, starting from Day 1 End, 'we knew it all'. We tell all these beforehand, that is before we delve into the particular subject, the August Riot in England.
Some Scenes of the Riot-n-Loot Episode
As the happenings are already known to the readers we shall present only some snippets – one, from a first-day coverage of the riot faring up in Tottenham, two, a news-story that focused on looting in Salford and three, an artistic sum-up.
<... a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?" The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you." Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere. The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool.">iv
<... There had been several rumours of riots when I drove home on Tuesday night, but I knew that many of them were false alarms. When I pulled up my car, I saw lots of riot police, lots of vans, thousands of spectators, and a handful of teenage hoodies with bricks and stones, more mouth than action. ...But then a couple of lads and one drunk elderly man began pulling at Bargain Booze's shutters, as another kicked cracks into the bank's door. ...Oddly, one man put down the golf club he was using to smash shop windows when he saw my collar. He went red and nodded at me. Others put down stolen goods, and still others walked up to proclaim their disgust at what was happening. But as the drinking ("free beer!") got underway, cars screeched into the area that clearly were the organised element of the criminal culture and I thought it wise to cover up.
As I watched through the thick, black smoke billowing from a burned-out car, talking to residents of the blocks of flats in direct line of the fire, I saw teenagers loot an electrical good sole trader's shop. Don't get me wrong when I say this, but if they'd nicked the TVs and laptops I could almost understand it, but they simply brought them outside and smashed them to bits in the street. ... Lads tried to break into Lidl and set fire to it, and mothers sent small children in to fill shopping bags with food and beer because they were too young to be arrested. ... How could anyone put their children in such a dangerous position, never mind ask them to commit crimes? Suddenly there was a mass exodus: the precinct had been compromised and there were shouts of "iPhones! Xboxes! Everything! You can get whatever you want!" Hoodies went up and scarfs went over faces, in they went and more "respectable" cars started arriving to collect the goods. Youths started arriving with hammers and the women and girls backed off. ...>v
<..."The Riots," which opened this week, vividly recreates the mayhem that raged for four nights in August through the testimony of real people — residents, police, politicians, community workers and the rioters themselves. The play conveys how different the experience of the riots felt, depending on vantage point. It captures the distress of victims, the fear of police officers holding the line against a mob, and the excitement of participants caught up in the mayhem. "It looked like Hollywood had come down, set up everything to look like a mad war zone," says one anonymous rioter .... Another boasts of his haul from looting: shoes, electronics and a Harry Potter DVD box set. "I don't even like Harry Potter." The emotional heart of the play is provided by Tottenham resident Mohamed Hammoudan, who fled his apartment with his two young sons after rioters set the store below it ablaze. ...
He also gets the last word, when he is asked for three words to sum up the rioters. After a long pause, he replies: "Just angry people.">vi
The Making of the Riot
An eerie or weird hint perhaps what activists with finger on the grass-root like Clare Doyle got; she was penning "30 years after the 1981 Brixton riots" in April for the Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales). She started the piece with the words – "April 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the riots in Brixton, south London, against police racism, unemployment and poverty. Today the conditions for new 'Brixtons' are being prepared." She explained, "The Con-Dem government, like that of Thatcher, has adopted a programme of vicious cuts in jobs and services. Last year saw the first actual fall in living standards in Britain since the recession of three decades ago. Unemployment is rising. There are almost one million young people without jobs in Britain.
Contrary to what some said on the BBC's anniversary programme, conditions in Brixton are not vastly better than 30 years ago. There are similar numbers on the dole - 11,464 registered last year. 50% of unemployed youth in Lambeth are black. Although, following the anti-racist movements of the intervening period, we now see less open racism among the police, it has by no means disappeared."vii Black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than their white counterparts – reports The Guardian.viii
Tottenham is indeed a queer place, enough queer to act as the flashing point of riot. It is highly multicultural and cosmopolitan, with South Tottenham is reported to be the most ethnically-diverse area in Europe, with up to 300 languages being spoken by its residents.ix But the condition of the average persons is miserable, to say the least. An average resident of Tottenham may expect to live 17 years less than an average English person!x Tottenham is located in the borough of Haringey, north London, where over 10,000 people claim jobseeker's allowance. One ward, Northumberland Park, is among the most deprived areas in Europe. The council has voted to add to this immiseration with £41 million in cuts to vital public services and jobs. Tottenham is also where the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots took place, sparked by the death of Cynthia Jarrett, linked to the police.xi Tottenham has the highest rate of unemployment in UK; the unemployed youth have no place to go for some sort of recreation as local govt sponsored Youth Club has shut its doors years back.xii Eight out of thirteen youth centres at the Borough of Haringey were closed. In Tottenham the youth service has been cut by 75%.
In Britain youth unemployment has risen from 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 to 20 percent.xiii Already, across London youth unemployment is 23%, in inner city areas it is far higher.
Hackney and Tower Hamlets have the highest youth unemployment in the country, with Tottenham not far behind. These young people live a very few miles from the millionaires and billionaires of the City of London, yet have little prospect of earning the minimum wage, never mind getting a decent job. All ethnic minorities in Britain still earn less, on average, than white people, with differences amongst men ranging from earning an average of 10% less for Chinese men, to 27% less for Bangladeshi men. Even those ethnic minority communities with very high levels of higher education qualifications still suffer worse pay. All ethnic minorities have higher than average rates of poverty. Rates of poverty are highest for Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and black Africans, reaching nearly two thirds for Bangladeshis. At the same time ethnic minorities are barely represented as the managers and employers of big companies. None of the 98 high court judges come from ethnic minorities, and only four of the 563 circuit judges. Less than 1% of the army come from ethnic minorities. There are pathetically few black and Asian MPs.xiv
One in seven childless working-age adults in the U.K. lives in poverty - the highest level of the modern era - and redistribution strategies intended to achieve more equity were systematically subverted and neutralized by tax breaks for the rich. Another domestic report says London has an "appalling" rate of child poverty - defined as a family subsisting on $16 a day or less - with 50 per cent of children in 16 boroughs living "in or on the brink of destitution." In Tottenham, 75 per cent of children were classified as "struggling." About 650,000 London children live like this.xv
And how do the children grow up? What they grow up to be? Maria Hampton answers it by her title: "Generation F*cked"; she already wrote about that in the ADBUSTER #71 (May/June 2007) — "British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. ... On the whole, British children were more disconnected from their families, with nearly half of 15-year-old boys spending most nights out with friends, compared to just 17 percent of their French counterparts. Forty percent of UK youth had sex before age 15, compared with 15 percent of Polish teens. They drank nearly four times as much as the Italians, and, perhaps most saliently, had the lowest sense of subjective well-being among all the youth surveyed."xvi An US study says, "With American children glued to the TV for an average of 27 hours each week (in the inner city it's often 11 hours per day), the American Psychological Association (APA) now estimates that a typical child will watch 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school."xvii Teenagers in UK are not better off either. An arch-conservative paper says <... our children now watch television for an average of 17 hours a week ... The report said: 'The age at which people have their first sexual experience has fallen dramatically. For women it dropped from 21 in 1953 to 16 in 1998. Teenage pregnancies are higher in the UK than anywhere in western Europe, at 27 in 1,000 compared with only five in the Netherlands. ...' ... The report concluded: 'The belief among adults that the prime duty of the individual is to make the most of their own life, rather than contribute to the good of others, is causing our young people a range of problems.'>xviii, A PhD Thesis presented at Glasgow University critically and scrupulously analysed the so-called kids' or teens' stuff in TV and confirms this.xix Another report informs "Researchers have identified three potential responses to media violence in children: ... Desensitization to real-life violence:Some of the most violent TV shows are children's cartoons, in which violence is portrayed as humorous — and realistic consequences of violence are seldom shown. Increased aggressive behaviour:This can be especially true of young children, who are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviour after viewing violent TV shows or movies."xx Or "Take– for instance– the popular, contemporary British teen drama series: MisFits (series about superpower social delinquents), Kidulthood (a film about inner city delinquents) and Attack the Block (a sci-fi film about inner city delinquents.)"xxi This author was horrified watching the kidulthood trailer at YouTube and readers may check themselves too.xxii
Capitalism as such dehumanisesxxiii and at its present decadent imperialist stage it does so more profusely and profoundly. So Hanley, as if with her voice trembling, writes, "I also feel a kind of empty, shocked sorrow that I heard young children being taught to hate the police as they arrived, that parents would send them into dark, dangerous buildings to loot to feed their own greed, happy to teach them that stealing and looting and robbing and mindless waste and destruction are "funny", because if I heard that once I heard it a thousand times tonight. "I just think it's funny!" "xxivFunny! Really – that is our perverted reality. But 'mindless waste and destruction' are more scrupulously practised by some other entities in much bigger and larger scale, isn't it Ms Matthews? And what about this – "The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production."?xxv
So Tottenham, London and rest of England were making the ground prepared for what was to come in August 4, 2011, the Flashpoint. Hugh Muir gives readers a taste of the first incidents: "Tottenham has rituals so long established that they are barely worth talking about. Everyone knows, or is supposed to know, what they are. When something bad occurs affecting the fragile relationship between the police and the black community in Tottenham – a controversial arrest, a death in custody – people march from the estates to the police station. "I have led 20 marches on Tottenham police station going back to the 80s," says Stafford Scott, a veteran community activist with an imposing frame and a raspy voice. "I know what is supposed to happen." What actually happened, recalls Scott, was very different. "We got there at 5pm and found that the highest ranking officer was an inspector. They just fobbed us off, saying that nothing could be said because this was a matter for the Independent Police Complaints Commission." ... He disappeared for about an hour, and everyone thought he was finding someone more senior. Then he came back and just said he was the man we have to talk to. People were saying 'no, that's not right. We want a superintendent or above to address the family.' He went in again and then came out again saying he had sent for a superintendent. I said: 'It is 7.45pm and we wanted to go home a long time ago. If you are going to make us wait past dark, on your head be it. He said, 'Give me an hour.' "The officer acted in good faith. By then, a more senior officer was indeed on his way. But the deadline expired and that was it. "The young women who were there with their children said they could not wait any more. Up until then, there had been no incident. One boy had thrown a stone through the police station window. He had then just run off. But when the young boys saw the girls going off, they started to get annoyed." [then, about Mark Duggan, the person in his late 20s who died when police fired on him, Scott says] "He was well loved," says Scott. "He wasn't an angel, but if you are brought up in a place like the Broadwater Farm estate, you better not be an angel because you won't survive." Duggan's wake, at the Broadwater Farm community centre10 days ago, was attended by up to 500 people. ... Was there such a spark? Witnesses speak of the treatment of one female protester heavily assailed by police, and there is footage on YouTube of others complaining about her treatment.xxvi Police have conceded that the protest was peaceful. However, they claim that, after several hours of protest, at approximately 8:30 p.m., a group of youth began attacking police cars parked in the street. ... Crowds gathered, many chanting at the police "we want answers" and "whose streets? Our streets."xxvii And this last chant brings in a whiff of Tahrir Square or Puerto de Sol or Syntagma Square in Tottenham.
The Telegraph scathingly reports: Tony claimed to have seen the whole thing coming. "This was always going to happen," he said. The police shot a black guy in suspicious circumstances. Feral kids with no jobs ran amok. To Tony's mind, this was a riot waiting for an excuse. In the hangover of the violence that spread through London, the uprisings seemed both inevitable and unthinkable. Over a few days in which attacks became a contagion the capital city of an advanced nation has reverted to a Hobbesian dystopia of chaos and brutality. ...This is the most arcane of uprisings and the most modern. Its participants, marshalled by Twitter, are protagonists in a sinister flipside to the Arab Spring. The Tottenham summer, featuring children as young as seven, is an assault not on a regime of tyranny but on the established order of a benign democracy. ...xxviii But the 'rioters' can retort too: Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. "The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters," one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: "We're showing the rich people we can do what we want."xxix
What the others say? "...Speak to Hesketh Benoit, another youth worker, equally passionate. "Youngsters are being stopped and searched; 75% cuts in youth provision; youth not listened to. EMA has been cut. Youths feel they get qualified and there are no jobs. This was the last straw. After the riots they feel they have been listened to. Even if they go to prison, they feel they have been listened to. It took the riots."..."xxx "It's very sad to see. But kids have got no work, no future and the cuts have made it worse," Hackney electrician Adrian Anthony Burns, 39, told Reuters. "These kids are from another generation to us and they just don't care. You watch, it's only just begun." xxxi Laurie Penny in her MRzine article on Aug 9 airs the reaction of Tottenhamites – "Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don't know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news."xxxii Surely Bax (E Belfort Bax writer of "Looting – Scientific & Unscientific") would have been delighted hearing echoes of some words of what he wrote after the February 8 London riot 125 years ago! xxxiii
On "Looting" that took place
A Daily Mail report published a 'sensational' heading — "The middle class 'rioters' revealed: The millionaire's daughter, the aspiring musician and the organic chef all in the dock" – and the big sized report had 'attractive' pictures too, the first one was captioned "Millionaire's daughter: Laura Johnson, 19, was charged with stealing £5,000-worth of electronic goods including TVs and mobile phones". This report proclaimed, "Poverty, social exclusion, poor education - these are just some of the theories put forward to explain the recent rioting. Yet shockingly, among those in the dock accused of looting are a millionaire's grammar school daughter, a ballet student and an organic chef. A law student, university graduate, a musician and an opera steward also said to have taken part. They are just some of the youngsters from comfortable middle-class backgrounds who have been charged with criminality."xxxiv And this report ruled the waves, i.e., waves of TV signals, waves of kilo-or-mega-byte-packets, waves of our information flow. Result? As Egyptian blogger, Alaa Abd El Fattah twitted – seems to happen periodically in Europe, police kills poor boy, riots erupt, hours later nobody talks about police killers just looters – and then after a short time he added – the point being, when the event is injustice committed by a state against an already marginalized community expect trouble.xxxv
Yes, looting, ugly and despicable looting did take place. But a Vancouver Sun columnist emphasised with a fact that Guardian noted – "those charged so far are predominantly adults (62 per cent), not slumming middle-class teenagers. The majority (69 per cent) are charged not with stealing plasma TVs but with violence, disorder and arson, an altogether more sinister overtone."xxxvi It is looting of 'facts' what the Daily Mail did by diverting public attention to Millionaire's daughter Laura Johnson. One 'Really Fit' writes an "Eyewitness account from Edmonton 'riot'" for indymedia "Those out on the streets of Edmonton will inevitably be slagged off for the looting and indiscriminate attacks on property. But while there are reports of local businesses having windows broken, the focus of their attack was overwhelmingly the corporate giants. The large Tescos had its massive windows reduced to dust, causing a fair bit of amusement among passers-by. Carphone warehouse, Corals and assorted banks were other casualties." So Laura and her likes are not the typical samples.
Slavoj ?i?ek gave out a venomous rant. In his 'sum up' of riots in UK which he titled "Shoplifters of the World Unite", he wrote – "it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the 'rabble', those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through 'irrational' outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called 'abstract negativity'. ... ...The protesters, though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren't living on the edge of starvation. People in much worse material straits, let alone conditions of physical and ideological oppression, have been able to organise themselves into political forces with clear agendas."xxxvii Well, no serious political person will claim 'the emergence of the revolutionary subject' seeing the 'rioters' or 'looters' of England, but the person named Hegel said so many other things too, like 'the truth is the whole'. Ms Matthews, who covered riot-n-loot scenes in Salford, who titled her piece is Guardian "The Salford riots and the greed of the disenfranchised", did not conceal rather wrote eloquently "Don't get me wrong when I say this, but if they'd nicked the TVs and laptops I could almost understand it, but they simply brought them outside and smashed them to bits in the street. ... Lads tried to break into Lidl and set fire to it, and mothers sent small children in to fill shopping bags with food and beer because they were too young to be arrested...."xxxviii May Mr ?i?ek please remember that mothers do not send their kids for food and beer (their equivalent to tea perhaps) if they live in middle class comfort. A 'greedy' kid does not smash a gadget rather pockets it. Yes, there are greedy looters but there are many others too.
In Lieu of Conclusion
...a 100-fold income gap now separates Britain's overclass from the 11 million with jobs who still live below the poverty line. One in seven childless working-age adults in the U.K. lives in poverty - the highest level of the modern era - and redistribution strategies intended to achieve more equity were systematically subverted and neutralized by tax breaks for the rich. Another domestic report says London has an "appalling" rate of child poverty - defined as a family subsisting on $16 a day or less - with 50 per cent of children in 16 boroughs living "in or on the brink of destitution." In Tottenham, 75 per cent of children were classified as "struggling." About 650,000 London children live like this. ... with youth unemployment for those aged 16 to 24 reaching 20.5 per cent, the highest since records began being kept in 1992 ....xxxix The wealth of the richest 10% has risen to 273 times that of the poorest.xl Where from the rioters came? The majority of areas where suspect live are deprived - and 66% of them got poorer between 2007 and 2010, when the last survey was published. 41% of suspects live in the 10% most deprived places in England.xli Moreover, there is the factor of race, colour, country-of-origin etc that we saw.
In absence of an organisation of the proletariat of UK (and the world over) that can imbue the people with Vision, a vision of future, a vision of humanity, people cannot sit idle for decades. And grass-root action of workers have started moving forward of their own (though some of them of course take some help from revolutionary activists); the advanced workers are summing up in their own way the defeat of the international movement of themselves, the working class and searching ways to move forward. They know they are surrounded by or immersed in other elements of society who will one day become their fellow travellers and in some of those future-fellow-travellers, future comrade-in-arms they have seen and will see some distorted rebellions, some primitive rebellions.xlii They do not malign their future comrades, rather feel the paining wounds in the hearts of the latter and try to show them the way. When they criticise rioters or looters they know whom they are talking to and why they are criticising. Those kids dehumanised by this racist unjust society, by TV channels, by so many things ... those are our kids and they should be real working class kids. We are going to see to that and see that through.
i http://www.spanishrevolution.es/ -- "Gracias a ellos [a los indignados del Estado espa?ol], despu?s del movimiento en T?nez y Egipto, gracias tambi?n al movimiento en Grecia actual, estamos asistiendo a una aceleraci?n de la historia". Quien pronuncia estas palabras es el polit?logo ?ric Toussaint, presidente de CADTM B?lgica, miembro del Consejo internacional del Foro social mundial y del Consejo Cient?fico de ATTAC Francia, entre otras cosas. Toussaint lanz? este mensaje al 15M en una entrevista realizada durante la 2? Universidad de Verano de CADTM que tuvo lugar a primeros de julio en B?lgica.
ii By al3xandros on Sun, 31/07/2011 at http://real-democracy.gr/en/announcement/they-came-thieves-night; readers may also see ??? t?? d???e?? ??? ????... at http://www.real-democracy.gr/en/announcement/ego-tin-doyleia-moy-kano for a statement of The People's Assembly of Syntagma Square, Athens, that declared "We will not go away before we take our lives back into our own hands."
iii Jun – Jul – Aug 2011 issue <for a proletarian party>, http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4968
iv By Martin Fletcher, NBC News correspondent
v http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/salford-riots-greed-disenfranchised
The Salford riots and the greed of the disenfranchised |By Hayley Matthews
vi http://online.wsj.com/article/APb107748dbada4213be45fc39ab715a8c.html
NOVEMBER 24, 2011, 12:31 P.M. ET| London theater turns England's riots into a drama
vii Britain|30 years after the 1981 Brixton riots| 13/04/2011| By Clare Doyle, http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4996. The same press also mentioned <...in February 2011 the Socialist carried an article by Peter Taaffe on the 1932 Birkenhead struggles, in which a comment was made about today: "The explosion of anger in the so-called 'Tesco riot' in Bristol indicates the gathering force of opposition from below... such inchoate revolts, only on a bigger scale, will take place elsewhere as the widespread uprisings of the 1980s under Thatcherism showed".> See www.socialistworld.net, 15/08/2011, Judy Beishon, "Mass, trade union-led response needed"
viii http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/riots-reflect-society-run-greed-looting By Seumas Milne
ix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham
x http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/03/02/we-should-focus-what-unites-us An interview with a social worker working in Tottenham – Haringey; Submitted on 2 March, 2010
xi Tottenham riots|08/08/2011|Fatal police shooting sparks eruption of protest and anger, By
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5219
xii Same as 8
xiii Age of Outrage, By ROGER COHEN, Published: August 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Cohen-age-of-outrage.html?_r=1&hp
xiv A mass workers' movement is needed to defeat the government, By Hannah Sell, Socialist Party deputy general secretary, 10/08/2011, www.socialistworld.net
xv Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun columnist August 17, 2011,
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Rioting+underclass+Brits+long+history/5268098/story.htm
xvi Generation F*cked| How Britain is Eating Its Young| By Maria Hampton, 11 Aug 2011 http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/71/generation-fcked.html
xvii Television Violence Children at http://www.ukessays.com/essays/childcare/television-violence-children.php
xviii Computers and TV blamed for teenage violence and casual sex, By Steve Doughty, Daily Mail, 3rd February 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1133707/Computers-TV-blamed-teenage-violence-casual-sex.html
xix A Research Scholar (Glasgow University) analysed some teenage TV serials and presented some facts. See Berridge, Susan (2010) Serialised sexual violence in teen television drama series; PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2326/ From his paper we cite the following:-
| Series name | Number of episodic sexual violence narratives | Number of over-arching sexual violence narratives |
| Beverly Hills 9021038 | 3 | 8 |
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer | 11 | 4 |
| Dawson's Creek | 0 | 2 |
| My So-Called Life | 2 | 0 |
| The O.C. | 1 | 3 |
| One Tree Hill | 1 | 2 |
| Skins | 1 | 2 |
| Smallville | 16 | 1 |
| Veronica Mars | 6 | 6 |
xx Television's Impact on Kids, http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/television/tv_impact_kids.cfm
xxi How Three UK Teen Dramas Foreshadowed the London Riots, originally posted at XHIBIT P (www.xhibitp.com) & written by Patrice Peck and Leticia St. Remy
http://giantmag.com/videos/ppeck/how-three-uk-teen-dramas-foreshadowed-the-london-riots/
xxii Find kidulthood trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mdoKD4gTQ2c#!
xxiii Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844| Karl Marx| Antithesis of Capital and Labour.|Landed Property and Capital
Production does not simply produce man as a commodity, the human commodity, man in the role of commodity; it produces him in keeping with this role as a mentally and physically dehumanised being. – Immorality, deformity, and dulling of the workers and the capitalists. – Its product is the self-conscious and self-acting commodity ... the human commodity....
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/second.htm
xxiv same as 5
xxv Karl Marx. Capital Volume One|Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
xxvi http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/05/tottenham-riots-police-community
Tottenham riots: missteps in the dance of police and a frustrated community, By Hugh Muir, Monday 5 September 2011 15.00 BST
xxvii http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/tott-a08.shtml
Fatal police shooting sparks riot in north London, By By Julie Hyland, 8 August 2011
xxviii London riots: the underclass lashes out, By Mary Riddell, 8:41PM BST 08 Aug 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html
xxix Same as 8
xxx Same as 22
xxxi http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/analysis-london-riots-point-to-much-wider-risks-of-youth-unrest/ ANALYSIS-London riots point to much wider risks of youth unrest, Source – Reuters
xxxii Panic on the Streets of London, By Laurie Penny http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/penny090811p.html
xxxiii "Of the immediate good done by the riots not the least is the exposure of the abject cowardice of the English middle-classes en bloc. Such panic stricken scare, such a reign of terror as London displayed on the Wednesday was truly at sight for the gods. The want of solidarity between the tradesman employer and his over worked shop assistant was also illustrated. The "hand" wisely abstained from risking his skin merely in defence of the wares by means of which he is exploited. Yet further, and looking only to the immediate gain of the unemployed, no honest man can deny that the events of February 8th have called attention to their condition in a manner no number of peaceful meetings could have done. ...
"... To those who have none but harsh words for the February rioters we commend the statement of the Times' leader writer, who declares that the absence of serious bloodshed and loss of life was solely due to the "forbearance, of the crowd," there being no police on the spot. But what avails that with the Bourgeois world against "destruction of property?"
"They are coming up," said the Regent street shopkeeper to the painter Vereschagen. The sooner the "respectable" middle class man recognises this inevitable truth in the full meaning which Vereschagen hinted at, say we, and prepares to make up his account with it, the better will it be for him and his." – Looting, Scientific and Unscientific, By E. Belfort Bax (March 1886); to be found at http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1886/03/looting.htm
xxxiv http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025068/UK-riots-Middle-class-rioters-revealed-including-Laura-Johnson-Natasha-Reid-Stefan-Hoyle.html#ixzz1Uol7Wgo7
xxxv http://twitter.com/#%21/alaa/status/100665241909723136
xxxvi See 15
xxxvii Shoplifters of the World Unite|Slavoj ?i?ek on the meaning of the riots http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite
xxxviii See 5
xxxix See 15
xl See 8
xli England riots: was poverty a factor?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/aug/16/riots-poverty-map-suspects
xlii The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased with the extension of manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore a constant relation to the number of bales of cotton annually consumed. ... ... Besides, theft was the most primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no other, it never became the universal expression of the public opinion of the working-men, however much they might approve of it in silence. F. Engels, The Condition of Working Class in England
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch10.htm
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