From Subhash Chopra, London
Dear England has witnessed its first multicultural riots this August, exploding the earlier myths since the 1980s turmoils of London's Brixton and Tottenham areas that rioting was mainly confined to pockets with concentrations of black communities of West Indian origin unable to cope with the rigours of English discipline and policing. The ugly scenes this time have put an end to the populist politics of making immigrants as scapegoats. This time whites, blacks and Asians have all come out in the free for all looting spree, sometimes in organised gangs and sometimes on the spur of the moment.
Some of the gangs were remarkably savvy in using Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry messaging and nimble enough to play hide seek with police. The constabulary, which was thinly spread during the first three nights, was clearly taken by surprise to see the trouble flare up at several places simultaneously. Hence its inability to control the situation early enough. By the time the Metropolitan Police, or Met as London police is known, called in additional forces from other parts of the country, lot of damage had been done.
Prime Minister David Cameron and other leaders cut short their holidays and returned to London ( to stop increasing comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burns). Greater numbers of police on the streets did the trick to control the rioters, off another controversy over police or politicians claiming the credit for the strategy to finally control riots. The Prime Minister belatedly papered over the cracks by praising the police with full backing of his cabinet colleagues. Nevertheless the row between the Prime Minister and the police continues unabated, especially with Cameron's decision to call in an American police expert on gangs, which has angered British police officers who see it as an insult and reflection on their own competence to deal with crime.
To rub salt on the English wounds, not just the Iranian and Syrian leaders jumped on to mock the London government to keep its own house in order before reading out democracy lessons to others, the nearest rub came from Scotland. The Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, chastised the BBC for calling the unrest as U.K. riots. It's a purely England phenomenon, nothing to do with Scotland., Salmond said. The BBC and some of the newspapers like the Guardian took the hint and promptly re-branded the unrest as English riots!
Be that as it may, there is no unity on what lies at the heart of this explosion whose television images have lowered the image of Britain, sorry England, across the globe, especially when London is to host Olympics next year. The picture of an England athlete billed as Olympics ambassador allegedly "hurling bricks at police" is a blow to the country's Games image. Her mother felt so shocked and shamed that she herself informed the police and aik her daughter, saying: "I had to do what was right." An eleven-year-old white rioter was also shopped by his mother. Even a young soldier back from Afghanistan has been charge sheeted on the looters list, with some more names likely to be added. The number of offenders, already charged or likely to be charged is set to go beyond three thousand with magistrates holding 24-hour courts to hand out quick punishment. The cost of the riots will inevitably run into millions of pounds, besides claiming five lives including three brothers in Birmingham from the
Pakistani diaspora in a hit-and-run car drive by hooligans.
Political leaders and analysts are hard put to come to a consensus on the cause and remedy of these riots. Prime Minister Cameron and most of his Tory party supporters have called it " criminality, pure and simple" which must be dealt with firmly. A parliamentary committee of inquiry has been ordered. Others are not so sure. Opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for a wider Commission of Inquiry into the riots.
Still others view the riots as an uprising of the dispossessed, of losers in education, jobs and hope. Not all are jobless or futureless. A primary school teaching assistant has been caught as has been a millionaire's daughter. Obviously some were there for the heck of it. For the thrill. But it would be churlish to deny that most come from poorer backgrounds with poor education unfit for a job. Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 , one Labour MP stressed the need for finding work for the young and hopeless, while his Tory counterpart emphasised the need for discipline at home and school, though agreeingon the need for jobs. The Tory establishment seems to be united on what Cameron and his cabinet colleagues call "zero tolerance" towards crime, rendering the life of ring leaders of crime gangs difficult day in day out. Daily police knocks on the gangsters' doors seems to be the new tough line.
Highly acclaimed novelist Hari Kunzru, partly of Indian lineage, takes a harsh look at the scene when he says in a newspaper article that faced with end of good times in the current economic downturn, people are tempted to help themselves. " Fear and greed are our ruling passions. That's true of the kids smashing shop windows to steal trainers. It's also true of MPs fiddling their expenses, the police officers taking backhanders, the journalists (hacking) into phones….. The example has been set by our new masters, the one percent for whom and by whom we are governed….
"The poor hate the rich and the 'feds' who enforce their laws. The rich hate the poor, who frighten them,"
In short the riots show of the gulf between the haves and have-nots.
Not too dissimilar from the uprisings of India's poor tribals branded as "Maoists" in Orissa, Chchattisgarh and elsewhere.
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