The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
Riots show us the fragility of law and order
By Nicholas Wapshott
All opinions expressed are his own.
The pictures from London of scorched double-deckers, burnt out stores, and hooded thugs hauling home flat screen TVs are deeply unsettling. Among those who have appeared in court so far are a postman, a school worker, a new father out shopping for diapers, the undergraduate daughter of a multi-millionaire, and an 11-year-old boy who posted on Facebook: "Let's start a riot." Something has profoundly changed in William Blake’s green and pleasant land. The honest, upright descendants of Londoners who met the Blitz with a shrug are now cowering in their homes to escape the marauding mob.
What has rattled Britain? What prompted this thuggery and thievery? The spark, as is often the case with civil unrest, was a controversial action by police who shot dead a robbery suspect. Indignant friends of the victim marched on the local precinct and before long, with police distracted and their forces stretched, looters took advantage of the mayhem and began pillaging stores. What has taken Britain by surprise is that the lawbreaking did not end. Night after night since, and even in broad daylight, the destruction has continued.
When social order breaks down in one of the world’s most firmly founded and best behaved civic societies, something alarming is afoot. There are no excuses for “mindless,” “senseless” criminality, but there must, surely, be an explanation for such widespread contempt for law and order. If civilization is more fragile than we would care to imagine in well mannered England, could it break down in the United States? Are there special circumstances that explain the anarchy in London that do not apply elsewhere?
Friends and family in Britain report that the country has been unsettled ever since the financial collapse of 2008. The rescue of the banks and the calming of the economy was expensive and revealed a disparity between help provided for bankers and for the rest of the nation. While those running financial institutions soon resumed their old ways, awarding themselves high salaries and bonuses, those whose taxes paid to clean up the mess were put on short ration. Socialism, it seemed, was for the rich, not the poor.
from The Great Debate:
Rioters without a cause
By John Lloyd
All opinions expressed are his own.
On Sunday evening, a middle aged woman waded into a crowd of rioters in Hackney and shouted that she was ashamed to be black, ashamed to be a Hackney woman – because of the destruction and fear the rioters were spreading about them. But she went further. She said - Get real black people! I am ashamed to be a Hackney person! If you want a cause, get a cause! (See video below; contains graphic language.)
I had just spent a day, in Glasgow, with men who had had a cause. Forty years ago, workers at the Upper Clyde Shipyards in Scotland’s great old industrial city, where the workforce was being cut, voted to stage a work-in: a novel form of industrial action in which those laid off reported for work as normal, and continued to build ships. The action was led by two men, Jimmy Airlie and Jimmy Reid, both charismatic, both fighting for a cause – the right to work, the protection of the working class. They got huge support, in the city, in the country, even internationally. They won, for the shipyards on the Clyde, a temporary reprieve.
