London's Burning
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Microcosmically speaking, the catalyst for the riots was the death of Mark Duggan, a twenty-nine-year-old Tottenham man who was shot by police during their attempt to arrest him on August 5th. But the historical backdrop is fraught: Brixton was the scene of two infamous nights of rioting in 1981. (The 1981 riots were also kicked off by a confrontation between police and a civilian.) The Metropolitan Police, in an official history, recall those riots this way:
299 police were injured, and at least 65 civilians. 61 private vehicles and 56 police vehicles were damaged or destroyed. 28 premises were burned and another 117 damaged and looted. 82 arrests were made. Molotov cocktails were thrown for the first time on mainland Britain. There had been no such event in England in living memory.
Like the 1981 riots, this weekend’s riots come early in the term of a Conservative Prime Minister at a time of deep cuts to public and social services. Tottenham, which has a large African-Caribbean population, has the highest unemployment rate in London, and the eighth highest unemployment rate in the U.K. Many of the jobs in the area are dependent on public funding. In the vacuum left by vacationing senior politicians, David Lammy, the Labour M.P. for the area (“from Tottenham, for Tottenham”) was left largely alone to deal with the media over the weekend. Standing near the hulls of burned-out buildings, Lammy told reporters, “The vast majority of people in Tottenham reject what’s happened. A community that’s was already hurting has had the heart ripped out of it.” Today, Clegg denounced the weekend’s events as “needless and opportunist theft and violence—nothing more, nothing less,” and, in a way, they were: it is unlikely that the people stealing sneakers from the Foot Locker on Brixton Road were planning to wear them to Mark Duggan’s funeral. But where have all the opportunists been between 1981 and now? In the agitated heart of an anxious nation, the riots seemed just the latest plague. Writing on his Web site in October, Lammy had warned of the potential effect of the coalition’s cuts on his constituency:
These unpalatable and unnecessary cuts will be disastrous for our community. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives risk throwing us back to the 1980s, when the frustration and anger that flowed from squandered talent and relentless poverty led to social unrest.
Everything everyone was saying about the riots seemed to involve the word “social”: social services, social unrest, social media. The rioters, it was widely reported, had kept a step ahead of police via BlackBerry Messenger. In the Telegraph Matthew Holehouse and David Millward wrote that some of the rioters had been taking cell-phone pictures of themselves, posing in front of gutted or blazing stores, as “trophy” snapshots. The story was illustrated with an unforgettable photograph of a woman in Capri pants and sandals, silhouetted against a pair of flaming garbage bins. One of her hands is on her hip, which juts out coquettishly; the other is open toward the photographer in a little wave. The night is black, the fire is orange. It’s not Tuscany.
Photograph by Christophe Maximin, Flickr C
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/london-burning.html#ixzz1UYZZdZua
Aug. 8, 2011