the reckoning

london burning

So it has begun. The actions of the few just described by Teresa May as “ Sheer criminality”. These are the kids who don’t count. These are often the children of parents who don’t count, who never did and have no expectation that there needs will ever be addressed. Years ago I spoke about an underclass that would one day bite back. The song Night Hogs, on the EBB album Super Chip, refers to an underclass outside the norms of a civil society and from a future that has arrived. Where do they come from?
They come from deprivation and they are disenfranchised and disenchanted. They are the kids who cannot read or write well nor negotiate in their own language. They failed at school because the system failed them although they were required to attend by law. They live in the streets and they are regularly abused by clumsy application of the Police stop and search process that demeans and alienates young people, especially if they are black. This summer the effect of government cuts on the provision of services for young people has had a disastrous effect.

These are kids who live in a society that is often deeply divided with regard to its opinion of the legitimacy of government policy. If they look to those who lead what do they find? They find hypocrisy at the highest level and corruption in abundance.
NATO trashes a village in the desert, by accident but they argue that collateral damage and friendly fire will always be an inevitable product of war. Government licences dodgy arms deals to dodgy regimes and are party to the torture of innocent people, detained as suspected terrorists. Government closes youth services and services to the poorest and most vulnerable of us all and those responsible are not accountable to any one yet, but they will be. While most people will condemn the actions of the few in London and else where we will look back at these events as the beginning of the back lash that will defeat this government and it's devisive aims. The term " not fit for purpose " was never more applicable than it is to the ConDem coven.

Don’t misunderstand me I cannot justify or approve of this destruction nor the violence but I understand it and the well spring from where it flows. I have worked with some of these young people and I know that their actions today are the inevitable response to years of feeling unequal and hopeless. It is not enough for politicians and others to simply condemn the rioters. It is essential that we all recognise that the government dismantling of the structures that cement a society together and policies that alienate a generation must be reversed.
While playing at a FDPFAFDW on Saturday evening I sang Red Star which is a song about the Brixton Riots. I said, as I have done recently when announcing the song, that I thought we might be close to a similar outpouring of frustration and resentment that lead to the riots in Brixton. By the time I got back to London later that evening, parts of Tottenham were burning.

It is frightening to see how inept the Metropolitan Police are and in the final analysis they must be reformed still further and better trained. Government plans to get rid of more than 1,900 police in London alone. Saving money? I doubt it and I will be amazed if this and other government cuts don’t lead to huge enforced expenditure to address the issues caused by the current cuts. This government is making the poorest pay the most. How can this be fair or strategically viable?

We will hear the condemnation of the rioters every where in the media and every other sound bite will tell us that the there is nothing wrong with peaceful protest and that this is the democratic way. Where did this ever get any one in recent times? Only recently the ConDems were working on a law change to further limit the power of democratic Trade Union action. I was at the Student Fees protest demo in Westminster. Nothing changed. A million people marched against the worst excesses of the cuts. Nothing has changed but Teresa May is on the telly again. She is telling us that every thing will be done to bring the rioters to justice. I don’t think the rioters care any more. That is why they are here right now. A quarter of a mile from here at Clapham Junction the rioting has just begun.
It is so sad to see my adopted city in flames. It signals that the time to identify and address the real underlying causes is now.



peace