The Meaning of the Riots by Roshan Kissoon

Democracy and Class Struggle is pleased to publish the thoughts of Comrade Kissoon on the Uprising in Britain.

The riots in England recently have shocked the country; and quite rightly; for they are a warning of what will come. All the drivel about one happy country united in celebration over the royal wedding has been blasted away.

The slaying of Mark Duggan by the shot of a policeman in Tottenham was the spark, the riots were the fire. The light from the fire revealed the society in a somewhat unusual light; a snapshot of Britain from a strange angle sent around the world. Let me explain:

1) Riots and looting are not supposed to happen in first world countries. Riots are only supposed to take place in third world countries. Riots in the UK and France signal that first world societies are changing toward something more traditional, more akin to the 19th century ‘Victorian’ social model, more akin to societies in the third world. That is: an openly class divided society, with educated wealthy elite, and an uneducated poor majority.

2) For instance, in most third world countries, as in pre-WW2 Britain, higher education is only for the wealthy and the elite; it is not for all. In the New Britain, it seems higher education will again be just for the wealthy and the elite. The post-war European ‘social democratic model’ is collapsing and, it seems, we are reverting to an earlier social model; this is the meaning of ‘the cuts’; viewed from another angle, it is the loss of certain ‘first world privileges’.

3) It is getting somewhat unbelievable that we really live in a democracy and that voting for one party or another will make much difference. I will not seek to prove this, but only say that is what people feel. No silly gimmicks such as online voting will make any difference, when all the parties are, at bottom, the same. There is no popular confidence in the ‘democracy’ the UK is exporting around the world at gunpoint.

4) A creeping authoritarianism has overtaken the country; we seem to be subconsciously sliding into a particularly British and peculiarly technological kind of police state (Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’ comic book captures this perfectly). I do not say we are there yet, but to get to a police state from a ‘normal’ liberal democratic state is not a quick affair. It takes a number of steps -let us say seven steps-and we are perhaps on the third step.

5) Consider: In Cardiff, the Anarchist group was infiltrated by an undercover policeman; a sinister government agency called ‘Prevent’ spies on refugee and Muslim communities; every mile of London is under 24/7 CCTV surveillance; armed police wander around London with dogs ready to ‘stop and search’ anyone who may look suspicious, a disproportionate number of whom are young black men. In the university, lecturers and academic staff are supposed to be on the lookout for ‘extremists’; the Metropolitan police is asking people to report Anarchists to the police. There are even plans for the police to use unmanned ‘drone’ spy planes, as used in Afghanistan, over mainland Britain. And who knows what kinds of cyber spying takes place? Everything is already set up for a police state; just a few more steps...

6) These steps have been justified by the threat of terrorism. The reverse side of unpopular foreign wars is the popular loss of civil liberties. A wise man said: “A nation that oppresses another is itself not free.”

7) The society preaches consumerism and the acquisition of material goods as the highest good, and is shocked when some people try to acquire those goods without paying for them. The people are drenched in consumerist propaganda from an extremely early age, young children know advertising jingles before they even know the alphabet or the times table.

8) It is not just poverty and lack of opportunity that cause riots, but there is something about life in advanced capitalist countries that makes people angry and aggressive even if they have money and opportunity. It is not just poverty but poverty in the midst of so much wealth and so nearby.

9) Since Thatcher, the society has been depoliticised and atomised to an alarming degree. People are not taught to think politically; there is no sense of community. This is the difference between the UK and other European societies such as Greece, where everyone seems intensely political. So we should not be surprised that a revolt of the young will have no political ideology. However, without a coherent political ideology, without any clear demands, the rioters are not able to state why they rioted and what they want; politicians can interpret the riots in ways that suit their interests. The interpretation of the riots, what they mean for the country, is therefore also a struggle of conflicting interpretations made by left and right wing commentators and pundits, because the rioters themselves have not been able to articulate coherent demands.

10) The now open class divisions in society should allow the radical left to widen its sphere of influence and become a real force in British politics. But only if it can get its act together.

August 21st 1971 - The 40th Anniversary of the execution of George Jackson

George Jackson - 40 year commemoration from Freedom Archives on Vimeo.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the execution of Black Panther leader George Jackson on August 21, 1971, this video produced from the Freedom Archives of San Francisco provides valuable memories of that historic time, which continue to resonate in the struggles today.


We dedicate this video to the comrades of The Pan-Afrikan Voice and the George Jackson Socialist League in Britain

Thaks to Revolutionary Frontlines for this video

London Afire by Mumia Abu -Jamal

After decades of political betrayal by the Labour Party, and the blatant attacks on the working class by the Tories (the British Conservative Party), there has emerged an angry and bitter class that has rocked what was once the center of a global empire: London.

Fires have erupted In Birmingham, Croydon, Bristol, Liverpool and Tottenham at last count, sparked by thevery same fuse that lit the explosions of the 1960s, and 1990s: police violence-this time against a 29-year old father of four, Mark Duggan.

But while this cop violence may prove a spark, that doesn't mean It was the reason. Years of cutbacks, joblessness, slashed educational opportunities and plain old political mean-splritedness
aimed at the poor and the dispossessed, immigrants and the like, left sour tastes In the minds of many. Especially In the midst of a city that became the financial center of Europe, who were living a life of excess and plenty.

Predictably, pols bum-rushed the mike and spat out words that could've echoed their American cousins in power in the '60s, or after the Rodney King police-beating acquittal, which burned Southern California in 1992.

"They're just criminals--this isn't about social conditions!
"
"These people are just thugs--they're thieves--that's all!" (Last time I checked, thieves don't usually light fires where they steal.)

Fires are attempts to destroy: period.

The late Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. said, during the tumult of the '60s: "A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard."

For those In power in Britain, they've still heard--nothing.

Urban Lawyer speaks on London Riots

Why Youth Hate Police

August 2011 Uprising in England - Politicians want peace without justice

Democracy and Class Struggle is pleased to publish this contribution from Comrade Emma Lewis from Brixton.The Black List refused to publish this article because of it's criticism of Black MP's.


The uprising which began on the 6th August represents the rage of the poor against decades of police violence/racism, unemployment, and poverty.

Tottenham has a long history of police killings (Mrs. Aseta Simms, Colin Roach, Mrs. Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardener) and struggle against police violence.

On Thursday August 4th, Mark Duggan, a 29 year old father of three was shot by the police. Normally when someone has been killed, the police inform the family first, before the name is made public. This did not happen in this case. On Saturday 6th August the family of Mark Duggan and 300 community members organized a one hour vigil outside the Police station asking for answers to their questions re his death. The vigil started at 5pm. At 9pm the people decided to end the vigil as no police officer was willing to speak to the family. While the crowd dispersed, the police attacked a 16 year old girl, smashed her with riot shields and batons. It was in response to this brutal and savage attack on this young girl, that the young men started to stone police cars and then to torch them.

We now know that Mark’s killing was part of a planned operation “Operation Trident” which is directed at “gun crime” in the Black community, and was carried out by CO19, a specialist firearms unit.
So far we have had different stories from the police about the shooting. The IPCC, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, ( known in the Black community as the ‘Independent Police Cover up Commission’) which is NOT Independent, now claims that “we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists” One story they gave was that there was an “exchange of fire” They have now admitted that this was not true. The police have no historical record of providing reliable information.

Lies change but the truth remains consistent.

For well over forty years now, the number of deaths in police custody has averaged one a week. Yet no police officer has been found guilty of murder or has even been charged.

Although the spark for the uprising on the 6th was the murder of Mark Duggan, and the police assault on the 16 year old girl, it is the government’s social and economic policies that led to this explosion of violence. It has been brewing for some time. The regime now seeks to shift the blame elsewhere.

Totttenham has the highest level of unemployment in London. Half the borough's children live in poverty. Youth project funding has been slashed by 75% this year, eight of the borough's 13 youth clubs have shut.

There were uprisings here, (as well as in other communities) in 1981 and in 1985. Many people who work, receive such miserly wages that they still have to claim benefits from the State in order to pay their rents. So we as taxpayers are actually subsidizing these criminal employers.

The young people who took to the streets, have grown up in a society where corruption is rampant and where criminality gets rewarded. They have seen bankers blatantly stealing the nation’s wealth, billions of pounds have been looted from public funds yet they continue to pay themselves hefty bonuses despite the “debt crisis” and they get away with it. These young people have seen MPs steal our money through fraudulent “expenses” claims and luxury lifestyles. Hospitals and other necessary services are starved of funding, and people die, this is also violence for which the regime is responsible.

No body is prosecuting the bankers for robbing us, or the politicians, Press and Police for corruption.

How can stealing a pair of trainers equate with the billions of pounds stolen by the bankers and politicians, (against whom no charges have been brought) yet these youngsters are being carted off to prison with sentences being meted out that do not reflect the crimes.

COURTS DOLE OUT RUSHED REVENGE AFTER RIOTS

COURTS DOLE OUT RUSHED REVENGE AFTER RIOTS

Tom Walker

The courts have launched an onslaught against poor, working class people in the aftermath of the riots that swept British cities.

Police have arrested more than 2,000 people—and 1,000 have been charged so far. Courts up and down Britain dished out more rushed revenge than "swift justice".

A 23-year old electrical engineering student from south London, Nicholas Robinson, got the harshest sentence so far. He was jailed for six months for taking £3.50 worth of bottled water from Lidl.

And Greater Manchester police sparked outrage when they boasted about one case on Twitter. The cops wrote, "Mum-of-two, not involved in disorder, jailed for FIVE months for accepting shorts looted from shop. There are no excuses!"

Ursula Nevin did not even "loot" the shorts—she just accepted them as a gift from her flatmate. Her children are aged one and five.

But these extraordinary cases are just two among hundreds.

Another mother-of-two, Tracy O'Leary, took home a bag of clothes she found under a bush in a park.

Tracy, who works as a carer at a school for children with severe learning difficulties in east London, was jailed for 16 weeks for receiving stolen goods. Judge Williamson told her "You jolly well ought to have known better".

In Manchester, police accosted Jason Ulett, aged 38. They accused him of being a looter because he was wearing dark hooded clothing and riding a bike past a vandalised shop. He was jailed for ten weeks for struggling with and swearing at the officers—and told he should have been cycling away from the violence.

Meanwhile 50-year old Peter Ellwood was hauled before a Manchester court for shouting abuse at volunteers sweeping up after the riots. He was conditionally discharged for 12 months.

Those accused of actually stealing anything faced even tougher judgments.

Shonola Smith, 22, sobbed as she and her sister Alicia were jailed for six months. They were found inside an Argos in Croydon, and Shonola had ten packets of chewing gum on her. She was set to start university next month.

Violin

And 19-year old Stefan Hoyle was caught with a stolen violin in the aftermath of the looting in Manchester. He was sentenced to four months in a young offender's institution for theft. He told police he "had always wanted" to learn the instrument.

Courts ran overnight and held unprecedented Sunday sittings. There was chaos at Westminster magistrates court as lawyers turned up at a few minutes’ notice with no idea who they were representing.

The enquiries desk worker couldn’t put together court lists fast enough. "Hang on, we’ve just had 12 more come in," he said.

District judge Tim Devas told one man found guilty of obstructing police in Nottingham: "Don't you feel ashamed that you are now counted among the hundreds of yobbos arrested and now considered as scum by the public?"

No Justice No Peace: The Riot is the Rhyme of the Unheared, Let us Begin to Listen by Javaad Alipoor

This article was published a few days ago 3000 people have now been arrested. Democracy and Class Struggle


Five people are dead, more than one thousand in jail and Reuters report that Gaddafi has recognized the Tottenham rioters as the legitimate government of Britain. What the hell is going on?

At the eye of this storm lies the body of Mark Duggan, murdered by the metropolitan police. In the past the cops have been careful to leave what they presumably fell is a “respectful” length of time between political and racial murders, at least so the last can drop out of memory, but the point blank shooting of this young man has come up straight between the beating to death of Ian Tomlinson, so that nicety even, seems of another time.

The events in Tottenham seem to have escalated very quickly. A crowd of residents assembled outside the police station to protest his death, when a number of police officers fell on one young protester (some reports said a sixteen year old girl) beating and arresting her.

The rightwing press and the middle classes are as ever hoping to present this as an unpredictable carnival of the so-called underclass. There only contact with council estates and the poor being through the Hogarthian moralism of Shameless, they chalk up the three days of violence and looting to bad parenting and a lack of “respect”, noticeably absenting themselves from any comparison between this narrative and the Bullingdon escapades of certain current front bench yahoos.

This explanation will not do. Firstly, let’s say people who are poor and Black or Asian (or white in Salford) just like a good ruck. Fine. Then why riot now? The problem with this account is that it does not account for why the riots took place when and how they did. The fact of the matter is that the prime causal factor of all this rioting has been the shooting of Mark Duggan and this should not be forgotten. His poor family, have since been put through, not only his murder, but the continuing defamation of his name in the national press. First he was shooting at police (turns out he wasn’t according to their own sources), then he was on his way to kill someone (no evidence) then his uncle is supposed to have been a gangster (so what?). I am sure, I am not the only one who notices the ridiculous dance follows the same footfalls as that of de Menezes. First he had jumped over the turnstyle (but he hadn’t) then he was wearing a suspiciously padded jacket (only it was denim). In that case it turned out that a combination of murderous incompetence and the racist inability to tell two Brown people apart had lead to the mans life being taken, so forgive me if I jump to conclusions on this one.

The petrol that was lit by the spark of Duggan’s death need not have been allowed to stand out side. The Lawrence inquiry specifically called for an end to stop and search, as the sharpest edge of Police racism. This power has effectively been reintroduced under the terrorism act. It is not coincidental that no serious disturbance occurred in West Yorkshire; after the Bradford Riots of 2001 the WY Police have been very wary about certain aspects of community relations, and a lack of obviously racist stop and search methods, I am sure, contributed to the peace of this area.

Indeed, if we look at all the different areas where the riots happened we see that they seem to be as a result of quite disparate social phenomena. In Tottenham the whole of the rioting seems to have had a very anti Police dimension, and this seems to have been replicated in a lot of predominantly African Caribbean neighborhoods in London. In the texts and tweets that flew about, a real class hatred towards the police is apparent; “See a brother Salut, see a fed shoot” (sic) . Two things need pointing about this. First that in the immediate rioting around London the idea of looting seemed connected to fighting the police, and the farther one gets from the eye of this storm, the less this seems to be the case. Secondly, that no cops got killed. Contrary to the racist and anti working class (never has the word “chav” been thrown around with more bile or frequency) stereotypes that have paralyzed the bourgeois press, this is not a mob of “feral”, “wild” children intent on death and theft. They are poor young men and women sick of being targeted by police, benefits cuts, no prospects. They have no other language.

The fact that mainstream politics has absolutely no answer to the problems of these young people was made apparent in the most allegedly “non political” events of the past few days. The reports from Salford, for instance, suggest that most of the unrest was down to looting, rather than anything else. Karl Marx’s much maligned view of religion, not only as the opium of the people, but as the language through which (lacking anyother) express their discontent is reborn through its perspicuity; a generation brought up o with Fiddy as their prophet and AirMax 95s as their Black Stone will surely express their anger and discontent in precisely these terms.

What is essentially a literal act of redistribution of wealth takes here a particularly neo-Thatcherite, even “Big Society” form. There is no Left, no trade union, hell not even a reformist social democratic party that speaks to young disenfranchised workers, so poor people ape the actions of their masters; I am denied the good things of life, so I will take them by myself, for myself.

The ultimate cause of these riots is the lack of any progressive political route for young working class people. There is nothing wrong with anger, even hatred, but it needs direction. This passage a’lacte that we witnessed will ulitmately make things worse for those people and communities caught up with it. Without a plan anger gives you an ulcer; without outward facing discipline it is nothing but masturbatory self harm.

This lack of political direction is even more apparent in the racist chants of so-called “community defense” groups who grew up in South East London, for instance. These people who betrayed the influence of the EDL did much more than any leftist group to influence the turn of events. As the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, better off sections of the working and lower middle classes may well slowly come to see where their interests lie, but without a plan from left and progressive people to win them over, time and again the post-Fascists of the EDL milieu will come off tops. After all the Daily Mail does their Chav-hating and paki-bashing for them, we need our own propaganda.

As Martin Luther King said; “A riot is the language of the unheard”. I think he is exactly right. We heard the infantile self obsession that passes for politics reflected on the streets this week. If you want something, damn anyone that stands in your way and take it, for yourself. There’s no such thing as a tax raise on the richest two percent, so fighting for a better life just sounds like taking a pair of shoes or a bigger TV. The idea that one might not want to spend every evening gentuflecting before the cold LED throb of a TV of whatever size was missing entirely from a lot of the disturbances, but then again, people do not come onto the streets with ideas fully formed. I imagine, in the early spring, Egyptians would have thought that enough of a payraise for a new telly would have been a good result. Not true any longer.

So in the midst of the competitive condemnation and calls for various prison door keys, there is a message from the storm in our streets. (A recent poll of Guardian readers found that 60% of these San Pellegrino drinkers supported the maximum sentence for someone convicted of stealing a bottle of water from Lidel). The thing is the racism, poverty, lack of jobs, cuts to benefits and overtly political policing that caused this resentment are still there. A critical, disciplined and intelligent movement must find a way to build amongst our communities, or we will not be in a position to provide any shape to peoples anger.

A storm is coming, prepare its path; take the old and rotten to the sea shore and get ready to build again.

Or drown.

London Youth Rebellion Interview

"Robust" Policing Manchester Style

This is what ‘robust’ policing looks like Posted by Really Fit
The video shows a unit of Manchester riot police baton, punch and kick three youths on push bikes. The police carrying on kicking and punching them even when they are on the ground. Is this the sort of 'robust' policing that David Cameron and the politicians of all parties have been clamouring for?