The scale of destruction in London is more like the Los Angeles riots than anything previously seen in the UK. The pity is that the only areas that seemed to have ecaped destruction are the very rich ones but when people rise up the outcomes are never neatly packaged. People fight where they are and with whatever they can lay their hands on. The ferocity of a long repressed rage has shocked me who only a few days ago was writing ‘when will our class ever wake up and fight back’. Thankfully no one has been killed or seriously injured and despite the howls of hypocritical outrage from our political class tomorrow it is property that has ben hit – and as we all know property is theft.But it is only by luck that no one has been killed and tonight it’s clear that unlike the other nights there has been anti-scocial behaviour with random attacks on people in the streets and setting fire to houses and flats and small shops often in a reckless way and random cars attacked and many people frightened and scared.This is fucking shit and out of order and to be opposed wherever it occurs.This will not unite our class but divide it but it’s happened and we can not wish it away.
We live in an absurdly unjust society where we will see tomorow our privileged Oxbridge and privately educated leaders fly home from their Tuscan holiday villas to condemn those at the bottom of the shitpile of capitalism. This will be grotesque. The Bullingdon bullies and toffs of the Chipping Norton set – with the Milibands no different in the privilege stakes – have no idea that life is like for those who have been rioting. Social mobility in britain is non-existent – you can not rise up. The political class controls all aspects of our society and owns all of the land. The bankers get millions while someone who loots a mobile phone will get a long jail sentence.It is a grotesque absurd society – no wonder the explosion when it comes is viscerally ferocious. My own belief is that this day will mark the end of the rioting – all passion spent. We will then have to be strong because to speak positively of the rioting will be difficult in the face of the welter of reaction to come.While all the poitical class will outdo each other in condemnation it will not be the time for us to duck below the parapet. The rioters will revert back to silence.The daily mail will incite the ‘decent’ working class to ally with the frightended middle class and demand retribution. The witch hunts will begin. The voices of reaction will dominate again but in a way they never dared before. But everything has changed. The police can only operate by consent. Yesterday that consent was withdrawm and they and the government were powerless. they could no longr call the shots. The rioters were the ones with the power. They will now lie low but they will know they can exercise that power collectively again. Maybe during the Olympics. Maybe sooner. But they will rise again. The Tuscan villas will no longer be immune from the sound of class anger.Things are never going to be the same.WE ARE MANY AND THOSE CUNTS ARE FEW. That we now know.
Ian Bone 
I hope there is a 4th day. I hope this is just getting started!
Are these the kind of people you want to ‘have the power’:
I don’t suppose they went to Eton, but they are at least as despicable.
Don’t have nightmares.
the grandchildren/victims of thatchers dog eat dog individualism spoon-fed from birth on a diet of me me me at any cost conspicuous consumerism.
i think what’s happened here is that not only have a percentage of the ‘youth’ rejected the social contract with the govt they have rejected the social contract with anyone outside their immediate peer group.
hardly surprising really considering that consecutive govts since thatcher poisoned the well with her ‘no such thing as society’ beliefs have done nothing but maintain the credo that consumer capitalism and individualism are the only game in town.
( nasty little shitbags even so )
I agree. Where are the real anarchists? Not on this site, that is for sure.
I watched this (and apparently it is on the news too), I know I’ll get lambasted for this but here goes anyway … this clip looks a little bit suspicious to me. The ‘mugger’ takes what looks like a wrapped and boxed-up X-Box out of the boy’s rucksack then walks off tossing the packaging over the bridge. It is possible therefore that the boy’s X-Box (or whatever it is) had also been looted and the gang were angry with the boy for some reason, such as him having ‘nicked’ it off them earlier for instance. That theory could be total bollocks of course I admit (and doesn’t excuse anything), but I am always suspicious of quickly-disseminated propaganda. The media and MI5 have huge units filled with professionals who can edit footage to tell a hate-story for the masses in a flash (such as the reversal of the miners’ strike footage in 1984 to ‘show’ miners attacking the police which was then put on BBC as ‘evidence’).
As for the woman jumping from a burning building in Church Street, Croydon, the photographer Amy Weston of Wenn.com told Ozzie news she certainly took the pic last night, but I took a ‘virtual walk’ down Church Street on google-streetview and neither of the chemists on Church St had a sticky-out green pharmacy sign you can see on the chemist in her picture. Of course I know google-streetview goes out-of-date but it would be good to verify these now famous images are real or in proper context?
Dude, the army, remember the army. Power comes from the barrel of a gun, and I’m sorry, but you don’t have enough of those on your side.
Want to lay odds on tanks in the street by wednesday?
http://jodymcintyre.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/official-report-of-who-polices-the-police-at-lambeth-town-hall/
noticed this fellah has been sacked from The Independent and they no longer carry his blogs, tweets etc. Who He ?
Because of his current commentary upset Lora Norda lot.
Of course the media don’t understand spontaneity – there has to be a sinister presence. From my provincial hideaway it all seems a mix. Redistribution of wealth – good; redistribution to those most in need – a little more doubtful; keeping the police & state at bay – good; any redistribution of power to self-serving gangs – not good. Every ticking-over local business, jobs lost for those who need them, working class people burnt out or mugged can’t be good, even if over-egged by a biased media. I can only hope more positivity & direction returns to the insurrection
But riots are like lightning, you can’t judge it by its effects or who it hits. If you accept the logic of the riot, you should accept the inevitable chaos. People will get hurt. I don’t think it’s about condoning rioting, let’s look at causation instead and predict outcomes… and how any of this might relate to a revolutionary transformation.
Powerful writing.
Yes indeed. Don’t ever forget that the power of riot is always with us. Don’t despair like many commentators on this blog have been doing of late.
Keep pushing. Increase the pressure. Praise, support and applaud the rioting to family, work mates, the people at the bus stop. Speak up.
Our time is now.
Cheers, Ian. Happy days!
I’d agree with most of that Ian. And while I reckon London might have seen the worst, it wouldn’t suprise me if the rest of the country gets heavier tonight.
A thoughtful post and a good start to some kind of analysis of what’s going on. And we do need to that because clapping while London burns just will not do. Tottenham High Road was sealed off yesterday but at every intersection people were gathering and talking. It would not be an exaggeration to say that street meetings were starting to happen and the talk was not just about the inconvenience of it all but also about bankers and how they should be made to pay for all of this. Meanwhile the Asian stock market id taking a nose dive. Interesting times.
What a night!
Once all the smoke dies away we might see this as a time when we can “unthink” the 1917 template of what a revolution should be like.
Who would have thought that it took a group of students last November to start to wake people up? Who would have thought that in January 1,000’s of roiting looters in Morrocco would spark the Arab world in realising decades of repression. And over the past few days we have gangs of youths, no longer concerned with harming one another, acting out their anger. They too learned that protest had to evolve from allowing the police
to tamely kettle us in harmless chanting paddocks.
It calls for a revision of what we mean by mass class action. Things are changing by the hour. And it’s on the streets and not with abstract observors like myself.
I think we anarchists are being a bit to quick to see these incidents as being concerted popular uprisings. Taking a step or two backwards and trying to get an objective view I get the impression that any such conclusion is wishful thinking. As I put it in my own blog: “In a riot there is a complex range of psychologies and behaviours; a single person’s object may change, as may his or her emotions, as may his or her behaviour, in reaction to the various stimuli of the situation”. I do not believe the riots are in themselves evidence of a revolutionary situation. I do believe that the social situation of the hooded and masked guys has a lot to do with it. And I do believe that if street meetings such as were mentioned in the comment above (Ray) that in itself is a positive thing. However I am hearing a lot of comments elsewhere for greater police powers, calling in the army, etc etc. Just be a wee bit more cautious in your analysis.
Marie M
P S the blog I referred to was this one http://mairibheag.blogspot.com/ not my poetry blog.
Jody McIntyre, to the plum above asking “who he”, is fucking fearless. He nailed his colours firmly to the mast and was promptly dropped from writing his blog by The Independent. Ironic when you consider they only hired him in the first place because of his vocal support of the rioting student sons and daughters of the Inependent’s middle class staff and readers.
His tweets and facebook updates showing solidarity with those on the streets got him a shitload of abuse. Did he stop? Like fuck did he.
Who he? He’s one of the good guys, that’s fucking who.
Oh it wasn’t just social media support via tweets etc He was physically on the streets of both Tottenham and Brixton all night for the first two nights.
“The pity is that the only areas that seemed to have ecaped destruction are the very rich ones” – In a youtube video from 1985 you’re whinging about the millionaires in Islington. When it gets smashed up you presumeably want somewhere richer to get done in.
“Thankfully no one has been killed or seriously injured” – this to me is a sentance that just seems baseless and hollow. A get out.
“property is theft” – Family carpet/furniture stores in your beloved underclass Ian.
“have no idea that life is like for those who have been rioting” – you’re probably right.
“The rioters were the ones with the power.” – just child-thieves running amok. Nothing else.
You’re bitter old man with a chip on your shoulder.
I’m not so sure it’s over yet, London may hush a bit, but to be honest, if there’s a curfew, it will be defied- Troops on the street is a no-go, unless Cameron’s more of an idiot than we already know…Other cities will go up tonight I reckon.
The ‘anti-social behaviour’? Well, the youth are too ‘ignorant’ to be guilty, and the middle-classes are too educated to be innocent…
These kids are Thatchers children, the values they have recieved, the education they have been excluded from, the shit social conditions they endure, the total lack of a future offered to them and the knowledge that it is going to get worse, produce an utterly ammoral street nihilism. This may well change, if not, we will see draconian measures implemented by a weak government bowing to the calls from the skunks and bastards of the middle classes, for whom ‘chavs’ have long been the butt of their jokes- Well, these bourgeois hypocrites, these parasites, aren’t laughing anymore. Their utter lack of respect for working class youth means this and only this:- If you treat us like SHIT, we’ll behave like SHIT.
If the army is called out, we’ll see a ‘low intensity’ civil war in the inner cities- especially if they are deployed to predominantly muslim areas…It will inflame the situation, and the firearms will come out, and if we think this is ‘bad’, we ain’t seen nuthin yet-
It’ll be ‘bare swag for the feds’…
”Sheer criminality” ”Sheer criminality” Theresa May is like one of those squaking dolls that says the same thing over and over again when you pull the string out of its neck.
A few weeks the mealy mouthed, expense fiddling politicians, were calling the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East ”The democratic process at work” Was the level of hopelessness and despair in Egypt and Tunisia which forced ordinary people onto the streets and caused governments to fall so different from the hopelessness and powerlessness felt by the crowds in Tottenham or Brixton? Is the feeling of being oppressed in Syria any different from that felt by some in the UK?
She replied to every question with “Sheer criminality/there’s no excuse for violence.” A dim and contemptible women only full of empty soundbites and meaningless platitudes.
Probably not all over yet. Cameron is now going to have to placate all those Mail readers by being seen to “get tough”. What’s going to happen if they send in the cops to raid estates looking for rioters, loot etc? It will all kick off again.
I don’t think we have to either justify or condemn people’s behaviour. This is just the fucked-up capitalist system imploding. It was never going to be nice.
@DomesticExtremist – That video fucking shocked me. Still can’t believe it. Shows the true face of these rioters agendas. No politics behind it other than grab ‘n’ go.
Grab ‘n’ go eh? Who taught them that? Who put that idea in their heads from the day they were born? Who thrusts pretty shiny must have items at their malleable minds? I wonder.
You know nothing of the people in the video. Old scores being settled perhaps? Who knows.
I worry more about the bankers in suits that mug my class day in, day out, year in, year out, century in, century out. etc etc ad infinitum
The EDL blog is thataway falilv1971, see ya.
Scum are scum – they will always be amongst us.
The real problem is anarchy which IMO is fundamentally
incompatible with humanity.
Not that I don’t think the status quo should be maintained,
but anarchic uprising is not the way to achieve it.
“The bankers get millions while someone who loots a mobile phone will get a long jail sentence.”
QFT.
258,000 tweets were arrested this morning as police raided the internet. Further arrests of up to 149,000 Facebook status updates is likely later on today a spokesperson said. She also added “there is no hiding place in cyberspace, we are legion, we control all internets innit”.
Incubus you don’t half talk some bollocks
Well, it looks like the workers might have to take to their streets and police them themselves against these twats who want to burn down our homes, wreck our communities, terrorise our families and victimise the weak and vulnerable.
Workers in their workplaces may have to refuse to work until they can be given guarantees that attacks on them will stop.
And when the workers do organise to directly protect their lives, families, homes and communities ask yourselves one question. Whose side will you be on?
Do not intice civil war. This was never about turning people against each other. It was about some prick’s anti-governmental/establishment bull that this situation long morphed out of. Wait, wasn’t it about that kid that got shot? Oh yeah, the supposed “gangster”. Now, I wonder why he got shot? Was it maybe because he was a criminal? Right, so that’s how this started. Then, regardless of those twats saying this “revolution” has been coming since the 80’s, someone else made it about the current government, then you came along and decided to press the notion “whose side will you be on” irregardless of what’s going to happen, don’t say things like that.
Reggie. I was trying to make the point that those who seem to support every riot as somehow a means to social change and working class liberation would face a dilemma if the working class, who are actually the victims of this riot, should take to the streets to protect their families, homes and communities in the absence of police protection.
Whose side would thye be on? The rioters or the working class victims of the riots?
How that is enticing ‘civil war’ is anyone’s guess.
Well the rioters are working-class too you see jimn1……
I know they’re working class. What I’m saying is that the rest of the working class are the victims of their attacks. Would you support workers who organise to protect their lives, families, homes and communities from these attacks or do you think they should just barricade themselves in their homes and wait for it to be torched?
Cameron has bottled it- took no questions, cowardly fuck…Plan is to swamp the ghettos, no curfew, but an upsurge in harassment and Section 60 searches.
No rain is forecasted for tonight…
I’m wondering if that Police call to inform on @’s was just a coincidence…Keep your wits about you comrades.
Don’t know why people are amazed by the woman trying on the shoes outside JD Sports. She seems very sensible. She didn’t want to get home and find what she had was in the wrong size. She’d only have to make a trip back to return them for another pair.
Morning all….well we’ve had a bit of a night of it and a splintering up of the outrage is probable. I was just having a gander at Dave upping the number of coppers for tonight, he looks like he’s under a big cloud of pressure from within and I think heads are going to roll. What we do not want is for this mass action to become focussed on special targets that do not involve widespread pilfering e.g. recall of Parliament, Olympic sites, West Kensigton, Buckingham Palace. This is unthinkable and would be abominable and must be avoided at all costs.
I don’t whether the posters here live in the areas which were affected by the riots last night. I do. And I think Ian lives in Croydon. I am an anarchist and I do believe in revolutionary, direct action against the establishment and capitalism but last night ordinary, working class people had their homes torched, and broken into and burglarised and it could be mine next. This isn’t anarchy. cc
This is what you as an anarchist have called for for decades. This is what happens when people rise up. You know everyone who you told that you were an anarchist? what was their response? it was probably to ask you what would happen if there were no police, authority etc… well this is what they knew would happen, and what you had no answer for. Because anarchism to you was only theory. This is the practice of your lofty theory being put into action. The practice of achieving your anarchist idyll is mass uprisings. Without it things stay the same. This is what happens when human beings are left to it. The strong will prey on the weak… hman nature…..programmed into DNA…. selfish genes and all that. Ask Richard Dawkins et al.
Rethink your politics if you haven’t got the stomach for the reality of what your utopian theory will actually involve. This is concrete proof that anarchism is a pathetic little pipedream…..
You should have been careful of what you wished for.
Really mate? Have you ever read any anarchist theory. I doubt it given this response. The so called ‘lofty theory’ has also been and is practice all over the world. Read up on it. Read up on what actual anarchist have actually done in the real world and then come back and tell me it looks like this.
Darcus Howe – “Have some respect for an old West Indian Negro” Hahaha. It takes a minute for the sound to kick in. They wheeled him out of the nursing home a bit too early in the morning for this one I think. But the old guy has still got it in him.
YOU all started this “rioting” bullshit, now you refuse to take responsibility for the outcome of innocent people’s lives being destroyed. YOU (when I say “YOU” I am referring to the people that orchestrated this, and got the people’s back up to commit these crimes) are the reason this is out of hand. How stupid do you have to be to realize most of the rioting that’s happening now has nothing to do with government? I think it’s your duty now to help the police clear this mess up. Take responsibility. You’re a bunch of fucking losers, I hope the army blow ya’ll up!
No Reggie, anarchists didn’t cause this….the greed, oppression and tyranny of the capitalists, the governments and their police who rule us did. It was inevitable it would happen sooner or later, with or without the anarchists. The only failure of the anarchists is we were not able to reach people in time and help them to use their rage selectively and exercise a degree of control over it.
I agree with May.
These are anti-working class actions by anti-working class thugs.
If they continue they WILL kill someone, if they haven’t already, and it will be workers they kill.
I live in Croydon and I’m a train driver. The rioters I saw last night are same tossers who assault public transport workers on a daily basis for no reason other than they enjoy it. They’re the same tossers who I see bullying and intimidating workers in my local community on a daily basis because they get a kick out of it. The only difference is that they turned out in large numbers and the police had an undeclared stand-off policy.
Fireservice workers do a life-threatening job trying to save peoples lives, but they were attacked last night by these morons.
Then there are the organised professional criminal gangs who are taking the opportunity to systematically raid banks, bookies and retail outlets. A bit of ‘free shopping’ by the local community? I don’t think so. These organisations are run for the benefit of extremely wealthy bosses.
There is no protest here. No demonstration. No class, political or social agenda. Just the usual cunts doing the usual shit on a bigger scale. And we are the victims.
Tend to agree – leaving scum in your midst allows others to tar you all with the same brush. Not unlike the Met, now I think about it.
Cast them out, then you can move on with some more constructive usurping.
jimn1: I agree with everything you say about the rioters. I do not know if you call yourself an anarchist but what you write represents the views of working class anarchists who believe in building communities not destroying them.
Hilarity ensues. You’ve lost nearly all public opinion and the locals just used the opportunity to rob shops and you actually think any of them wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing, had the opportunity arisen when ‘times were’good’? You don’t know these people at all. The more i read these comments and blogs, the more i begin to realise, you havn’t grown up and lived in these areas. You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Has the uprising asked for NATO air cover like the Lybians?
Hasn’t bee a good week for Tories has it ..
Apart from Cameron having to cut short his hols in Tuscany becuse of the riots …the stock exchange has been in free fall and a polar bear ate a lad called Horatio from Eton school. Never new polar bears where so committed to class struggle? Will there be calls for an enquiry into the shooting of the bear like with Duggan and Smiley Culture?
Anyway between tories and the poor downtroden prols starting riots it just go to show what an uncivilised country England is .. we don’t do that sort of thing here in Wales you know.
I think a poster is called for:
SOLDIERS
DONT BETRAY YOUR CLASS
YOU MAY SOON BE ORDERED TO OPEN FIRE ON ANTI CUTS RIOTERS
REFUSE!
“OPEN LETTER TO BRITISH SOLDIERS
Men! Comrades! Brothers!
You are in the army.
So are we. You, in the army of Destruction. We, in the Industrial, or army of Construction.
We work at mine, mill, forge factory or dock etc., producing and transporting all the goods, clothing, stuffs etc., which makes it possible for people to live. You are Workingmen’s sons.
When We go on strike to better our lot, which is the lot also of Your Fathers, Mothers, Brothers and Sisters, You are called upon by your Officers to MURDER US.
Don’t do it.
You know how it happens. Always has happened.
We stand out as long as we can. Then one of our (and your) irresponsible Brothers, goaded by the sight and thought of his and his loved ones’ misery and hunger, commits a crime on property. Immediately you are ordered to murder Us, as You did at Mitchelstown, at Featherstone, at Belfast.
Don’t You Know, that when you are out of the colours, and become a `Civvy’ again, that You, like Us, may be on strike, and You, like Us, be liable to be murdered by other soldiers.
Boys, Don’t Do it.
’Thou shalt not kill’, says the Book. Don’t forget that!
It does not say ’unless you have a uniform on’.
No! MURDER IS MURDER, whether committed in the heat of anger on one who has wronged a loved one, or by clay-piped Tommies with a rifle.
Boys, Don’t do it.
Act the Man! Act the Brother! Act the Human being! Property can be replaced! Human Life, Never!
The Idle Rich Class, who own and order you about, own and order us about also. They and their friends own the land, and the means of life in Britain.
You Don’t! We Don’t!
When We kick they order You to murder Us.
When You kick, You get court-martialled and cells.
Your fight is Our fight. Instead of fighting Against each other We should be fighting with each other.
Out of Our loins, Our lives, Our homes, You come.
Don’t disgrace Your Parents, Your Class, by being the willing tools any longer of the Master Class.
You, like Us, are of the Slave Class. When We rise, You rise; When We fall, even by your bullets, Ye fall also. England with its fertile valleys and dells, its mineral resources, its sea harvests, is a heritage of ages to us.
You have no doubt joined the army out of poverty. We work long hours for small wages at hard work, because of our poverty. And both Your poverty and Ours arises from the fact that, Britain with its resources, belongs to only a few people. These few, owning Britain, own Our jobs. Owning Our jobs they own Our very lives. Comrades, have we called in vain? Think things out and refuse any longer to Murder your Kindred. Help US to win back Britain for the British, and the World for the Workers.
[This appeal gave rise to the Syndicalist prosecutions of 1912. It was printed in The Syndicalist of January 1912.]”
Damn, that’s great!
MM
http://mairibheag.blogspot.com
You’re sending that to soldiers? You’re fucking insane.
“Grim irony. The party shop in Clapham that was burnt down gave all it’s profits to a charity called Street Kids Rescue.”
Fight the powa!
You’re all missing something.
This is the beginning of a long slide of Western Civilisation.
Why?
Energy running out
Debt
Resources running out
Breakdown of nation state
Climate disruption
Can anyone put a ceiling on the price of energy, food, goods?
Any of you experts on alternative energy, agriculture?
Can anyone say with absolute confidence that there are even going to be goods to loot in the near future?
Who is better prepared for that, rioting chumps, or the gov.?
I’m fucking sick of all the carping horseshit here, with its racist subtext, the same kind of fucking drivel on twitter and inspector gadget (where at least they have the honesty to vomit up their bigotry).
The criticism here of ‘anarchists’ is a bloody joke- those who run and profit from this shitty class ridden society are the ones to pin the blame on-This is the return of the the repressed- What you sow, you reap- anarchists didn’t build prison-like estates, set the dole at a subsistance levels, cut EMA, or spoon feed youth with bullshit celebrity dreams and psychotic computer games and ‘torture porn’ movies, anarchists don’t humiliate kids on the streets and slap them about as if they were colonial subjects, like the old bill…
An entire generation, nationally, has been chucked on the shit-heap, dispossessed. The language used against then is redolent of the nazis-‘scum’, ‘feral rats’- people talk of calling out the army, why, so they can cut off black kids fingers as trophies? Light up entire families with SA80s? You want to have a ‘Syrian Solution’? Bollocks!
I don’t see how racism comes into this.
I would have thought that working class black families in these communities are just as likely to be victims of the rioters attacks as anyone else.
My wife is Jamaican and she was terrified last night in Croydon. She only just got out of Lewisham in time yetserday and Brixton the day before.
I don’t doubt what your saying about the causes of the riots are true. Of course we are all products of the social system we live in. And the rioters are no exception.
Capitalism produces all kinds of anti-social behaviour such as serial-killing, rape, dropping bombs on your fellow workers overseas, dumping food in the sea to boost profits, the list is endless. But we don’t cheer these actions on from the sidelines. No, we organise in order to establish a free and rational society of common ownership and stateless democratic control in order to solve these problems. And that’s what I think we should be arguing for here.
Of course I understand people’s anger at what is happening in the world, but that anger is misdirected when workers become the victims and the minority privileged elite are safely tucked up in their safe havens.
good afternoon….after words with Dave and May there will be a vicious clampdown, arrests will be made, and the old question of ‘where do you stand?’ will occur. these are not times for the lilly-livered, despite exhillatation and exhaustion. These are the moments when we all go to our real thohghts and feelings and reveal the bastard state for what it is, corrupt exploitative and vile. What else is there to do?
Audio clip on BBC News Channel from Radio 2-
Two 17yr old girls in Croyden drinking “free” Rose wine at 9.30 in the morning one tells the BBC hack-
“We’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want”
Hack then asks “Will there be more trouble tonight?”
“I hope so, I really do…”
OK well someone mentioned the army. As far as I can recall, they didn’t openly talk about COBRA meetings in the context of any of the 1980s riots. What the fuck? Obviously the ‘quality’ of the media is lower than it was 30 years ago, but STILL! Rioting has never ever been talked about as a national emergency in any of our memories. And now that’s exactly how they’re talking about it. Please let’s get this into our heads fast.
I am not sure that Ian is right that rioting will subside today – although it’s brave to make any predictions at all. Expect the unexpected. One thing is for sure – the way this is being talked about in the media (and by the government) is without any precedent. It seems to me that the enemy are picking for a fight. A fucking real big fight with lots of casualties on our side (whether killed rioters or working class people killed by the psycho element among the rioters – we’re all the same – chavs, pikeys, niggers, whatever – to the hereditary ruling scum of this country).
The question of the army is not simple. It’s interesting that no-one is saying as the economy collapses that maybe fighting unwinnable foreign wars isn’t a good idea.
A good place to keep up on what’s going down with the squaddies is http://www.arrse.co.uk – the name of which indicates the maturity of most of them. A lot of them think Britain is at war against the Pakis, and it’s the same enemy in Bradford and Southall as it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. Of course they don’t all think like that, but a lot bloody do. If I had the time I’d be paying careful attention to what they’re saying on arrse about the riots.
My own belief is that this day will mark the end of the rioting – all passion spent.
I dunno Ian, with predictions like that you might end up sounding like Britain’s most on the ball journalist Nick Cohen:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/nick-cohen-recession-misery
Epic riot fail, as the kids would say -or of Carlsberg did Riots….
Should have added to my last comment, you’ll enjoy this video if you’ve not seen it already:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424
I just heard news that the man shot in Croydon has died in hospital.
Andrew Gilligan mugged on way back from Tottenham ha ha
Who’s behind the grass site http://www.londonrioters.co.uk ? The registrant has opted not to have their name show up on whois. Is it worth putting out a call to overload their server and take it down?
There is some cunt “Stephen Mains” who has started an “e-petition” calling for: “Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed.” I wouldn’t put it passed being the same cunt.
At least they left Dub Vendor alone in Clapham though. Which was good. The only untouched shop on the block lol. Says it all. Classy move.
Real poverty is with the kids who make the sportswear. Consumer culture. One thing it ain’t is black and white. There’s some right fascist wannabe-gangsta tosspots out there. You don;t have to be BNP to be a cunt. It’s not skin colour exclusive. People are out for different reasons – not seen any riots in the square mile though. There can be a poverty of spirit and imagination in consumer culture that drives people mad ( can umpteen sets of JD trainers make you happy ). Some of the comments I’ve heard about Tottenham are complete tosh. Plenty of poverty pimps there ( Labour party paid em off ). Plenty of well off people there too believe it or not. It’s mixed as is the rest of Haringey. The council does not favour the west of the borough as somebody said. The racism comes through the system including the way it allocates grants and favours with division of community through racial and age identification and stereotyping. Suits the bastards running them and reduces the poor to meal tickets for the middle classes. Roll out David Lammy and don’t remind him he voted to bomb iraq ( wot a thug).Could go with examples but the social engineering in Tottenham and the corrupt Labour party etc etc. there could fill a book I reckon. . Roll out racist ( can I say that? ) lee Jasper and his poverty pimp thieving cronies.
A middle aged man was heckling Boris “feel the wrath of youth” – he wasn’t having a good time. Revolutionary potential can be derailed by opportunistic informal economy capitalist gangs. For years no go areas in Northern Ireland were the domain of paramilitaries meting out their very un-anarchist version of justice. The Russian & Spanish revolutions were derailed by Leninist thugs – it’s just the same. Hope! Hope! Hope! that these mafia gangs are destroyed along with the state & capitalism. They can join the dustbin of history along with IRA, loyalists, CP, trots, nazis & neo-liberals.
…and Ray Lewis, Boris’ special race adviser and sex-pest, who was spotted lurking about behind him in Clapham today…
Less than a minute to sum it all up. End of.
Toff Johnson heckled in Clapton. BBC continues to interview middle class captitalists.The ‘yoof’ arrested in Camberwell are aged between 18 and 47…Bourgeois pose with brooms – wonder how many of them have been employed in cleaning…Wonder how many of them will be sweeping the streets. West Brom – 200 in hoodies on the streets…Comments from the international midleclasses around the web hang em innit -as they loot the planet in an orderly fashion I take it. Not that long ago when kids were murdered by the state at Tyburn for a load of bread and up to the 1960s being deported to Oz for slave labour.The state told the kids their parents were dead…
“A Hackney local tells BBC 5 Live: “When you’ve got bankers taking their bonuses and MP’s taking money off people like me for their moats, and their chateaus and their castles, this is the result.””
Some Tory Toff MP urging parents to shop their kids…
I am suprised it took so long. The UK is a class ridden unequal society, always has been and always will be. The cost of living is astronomical, the people are not united in any form. I am “allright jack” society’ creates selfishness as group conciousness does not exist in the UK, due to the values of British capitalism. Of course the scenes are ugly and despicable but the underlying causes are immense.
Skirmishes in Salford (I didn’t realise it had a centre – thought it was a hundred villages fused together) & west Brom. The profile of the first few up at the beak seems to be more that of activists than gang members. Activists might not always realise what happens when shit hits the fans though.
Yes – it was squeamish with Boris being directed by the Clapham hairdresser, spieling nonsense & making a hasty get away.
I’m not too keen on passers by being mugged & Oxfam shops being trashed. But, mathematicians out there – Carol Vodermann (if you are a viewer of this blog) is there a critical mass necessary for trashing Downing Street for example, or Buck House?
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Eric Pickles on BBC blaming it on ‘greed’.Have you seen the size of the fucker! He’s had a good go at eating all the pies.
Evil Emily Matliss interviewing some corporate sponsored youth worker on the box.. PFI poverty pimp.
The rolling news has been inter-cut with stuff about the stockmarket ….
Blah blah protest blah blah facebook blackberry blah twittterblah blah CCTV blah blah anarchy CCTV more CCTV – cop brutality footage CUT
Comments above:
John Serpico: Praise, support and applaud the rioting to family, work mates, the people at the bus stop. Speak up. Our time is now.
Yes indeed. I couldn’t agree more with this. As well as praising all that’s positive, and building up the idea of ‘working class people against the government’ (sounds trite, but this is what we need to do, comrades), we should be writing up slogans on walls around the country. ANYWHERE. Leave leaflets around at work, in libraries, in the street – NOT lengthy tracts (!) but just saying any short pro-movement slogan you can think of. Spread the FEELING and energy OUTSIDE of the first riot areas. Sure, we want the riots to spread to more places, and to last longer (areas actually getting held, our power starting to get organised – which among other things will help deal with real anti-social crap). But it’s not only about that. We need to do other stuff other than rioting. Yes yes the bottom line is we are many, they are few…
I don’t know what things are going to be like in a few days time, but for fuck’s sake, can you imagine how things might move forward if people start going on strike too??
Anonymous: You’re bitter old man with a chip on your shoulder.
Well Ian can speak for himself, but I know that’s exactly what I am – and I’m fucking proud of it. What are you, Mr or Ms Anonymous? To turn your insult on its head…are you a contented young woman who knows you’re superior?
Well I always said it wasn’t a matter of when the Olympics come to London, but of IF they come. As the boot goes into the working class worldwide, the Olympics are a fucking obscenity. You know what? More and more people would agree with that.
Here’s Sky on the issue. Seem to be saying the same thing as the Chinese and Indian governments.
You don’t have to riot to support these riots and become part of a growing movement. There are many things to do. And if you happen to live near the Olympics site, every fucking little helps!! Also true wherever you live, of course 🙂
Of course that was echoed in the War Commentary appeal for conscripts returning from World war III to hold onto their arms. Resentments were somewhat diffused by hope given to the Attlee government, nationalisation, the NHS, Willie Gallacher &c.
1. Every society gets the kids it deserves.
2. Getting rid of the elites will not be pretty.
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I jotted down the names of news presenters and on the ground reporters from BBC evening news last night. From start to finish. Then I looked up each one on Wikipedia.Try it yourselves. Every single one comes from an upper middle class background. What I mean by that is there was´t a normal one among them. Above them are news editors .How the hell can they have any idear what they are reporting on when the nearest they have ever come to normal people is a chat now and then to their cleaner
I was watching some jolly social networking cleaners-up on the telly. Leaving aside that they might have a more privileged profile from the insurrectionists, they were very positive & insistent on autonomous self organisation & even elected a coordinator from their midst on an as needed basis. They might not know it (the talking heads on the BBC didn’t know it), but this is anarchy in action.
The spectacle of consumer society breeds consumerist riots. As simple as that.
Well I want a WAR
Between the Rich and the poor
I wanna fight
and know what I’m fighting for
in a
CLASSWARCLASSWARCLASSWARCLASSWAR
Having read and translated Ian Bone’s article ” Fucking Hell ” I continue to think this: If we can dispute the method: to burn and to destroy houses, businesses of peers will give arguments to the dominant political class to divide our class. The explosive anger of these last days is ‘legitimized’ by the violence with which the capitalist, oppressive system uses to subject the people to its destructive and wild will. We can oppose to an uncontrolled violence, to the expression which makes mistakes about targets…..
Nevertheless we have to show solidarity in front of the attempt of division which will come from the dominant class. For the greater part, the rioting demonstrators are young, very young.
Insteed bedside books they have television channels which praise them the virtues of the wild and rough capitalism and not Bakounine and other anarchists. As only future the unemployment, marginalism, the racism and…. .
And They should think about their method and targets !? …….
.As reflection before the action !
An anarchist warnes of the dangers( before or after the actions), shares its knowledge with others, informes, discusses and does not condemns. This is, in my mind solidarity. Hugs and Anarchy
Yes the young are fed a constant stream of consumerism to wash down the junk food. ipad 2s aren’t 10 a penny – yet they are told they are a necessity yet there are normally limits to that desire. In the past days those limits have in turn been limited. the young can learn however – learn that revolution & liberty are to be desired more. Anarchy now!!!