Riots - London Burning

Thirty years ago the Brixton riots started because of police harassment of black young men by the ‘sus’ laws. Thirty years later new riots are triggered because the police shot a black man dead on the streets of Tottenham. Mark Duggan is not the first casualty of police brutality towards young black men. We have also seen the killing of Smiley Culture during a police raid, Ricky Bishop was killed by police during the Operation Clean Sweep, Demetre Fraser from Peckham died in Police custody in Birmingham and so did Kingsley Burrell. The list can go on forever. No person has been charged for these young men’s deaths!
The shooting of Mark Duggan was not an isolated event.
Black men are still stopped and searched by police and killed in cold blood on our streets. This has to stop!

Over the last few days we have seen the riots spread across England and young men take to the streets to show their anger and frustration. The last time we saw London Burning like this was during Thatcher’s Tory Government. It’s not a coincident that it’s happening again under a Tory Government.
Since Cameron came to power he has put into place a politics of austerity and a moral war against the poor. The unemployment among young people is proportionally higher than in the rest of society, education costs are increased and affordable housing is impossible to find. So yes, young people are angry, particularly the young and poor that are completely excluded from society. (The white middle class youngsters are probably away on nice holidays at the moment.)

I said it before and I say it again; if you don’t share your stability and wealth with the poor then the poor will share their poverty and instability with you. The riots are a spill-over effect of poverty.

The reactions to the riots has been scary, people talk about bringing in the army and mow down the ‘thugs and scum’. Vigilantes have been taking to the streets to ‘defend’ themselves. Some vigilantes were even armed with cricket bats! What were they going to do to a ten year old rioter? Kill him? It’s getting harder to see who is the good guy and who is the baddie in the battle of the streets.

Cameron then break his nice holiday and uses the riots for his own purpose by dehumanizes the angry rioters and talk about bringing in more police armed with baton rounds and water cannons. He also suggested that the Human Right Act will not be seen as a hinder for publishing pictures of suspects! This could seriously harm innocent people and put suspects in danger of vigilante attacks. Cameron needs to stand up and take his responsibility for the crisis his politics of austerity has created.

The middle classes need to wake up to Cameron’s agenda, to bring the poor people down by making people see them as moral deviants and monsters.

The violence is scary and some individual victims have suffered severely but it’s not completely irrational, it does not happen in a vacuum. There is anger in the poor areas and this anger might spread to other parts of society as Cameron’s cut backs are started to affect more people.

Cameron need to sit up and see that we are in this together and that he has the main responsibility for  looking after all people of the country not only his millionaire friends!