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Biggest moments of 2011 #13 Anarchy in the UK

Daniel Piotrowski

by Daniel Piotrowski

11 Dec 05:45am

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Filed under: Biggest Moments Of 2011, England, London Riots, Society

18 comments

What happened
Five days of crime and chaos. Beginning in London and later spreading to other parts of England.

A riot officer directs people away from a burning car. Picture: Getty Images

The temperature first started to rise on August 4, when police shot dead Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old from Tottenham, one of London’s poorest areas. Then, on August 6, an at-first peaceful demonstration in Tottenham over the shooting turned violent.

The situation spun out of control. Petrol bombs were thrown at police, fires were lit, looters pillaged shop after shop, home after home. Over the following days, looting and rioting spread throughout London, and then throughout the country.

What happened next
Thousands and thousands of police were deployed to defend the city. London shopowners and residents banded together to protect their homes and businesses. An army of brooms hit the streets to clean up.

Order returned, eventually. But Brits - and people throughout the world - were taken aback. Why had the country been hit by a new Blitz, one of lawlessness? What had brought out the worst instincts of humanity in so many people, so spontaneously?

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said at the time: “Pockets of our society are not just broken but are frankly sick.” But what did that mean?

We soon found out that it wasn’t just the poor and those without the hope of a better life who took to the streets, who burned and smashed and pillaged. It wasn’t just people “showing the rich we do what we want”, although there were many of those.

Amongst those who were hauled in front of the courts in the aftermath of the riots were university students, a rich businessman’s daughter, an organic chef, a ballerina, a teaching assistant who works with poor and troubled students. A boy aged 11.

What we learned
The riots didn’t just happen because Britain was “Broken”. The riots didn’t just happen because opportunists wanted to get their hands on big screen TVs. They didn’t just happen because some kids had been raised poorly. It wasn’t just about the haves and have-nots.

We learned that the riots were caused by a million dissatisfactions. Some individual. Some systemic.

What we can take away from the response of many Britons to the riots is that with the worst of humanity, comes the best.

How The Punch covered it

I kicked off our coverage of the riots by explaining that there were two Londons: one that is more than ready for the Olympic flame, and the other that was in flames. Here’s a recent, on the ground piece from a reporter at the UK newspaper exploring that theory in much greater depth.

If one word could be used to describe our coverage of the riots it is: Comprehensive. We explored all the theories of what was behind the riots. A Broken Britain. Class warfare. A lack of smacks. Nihilism. Consumerism being wot dunnit.

Why did we look at so many perspectives? Because a lot of inflammable things were poured on this fire. It only required a spark to start it.

Most commented

18 comments

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    • Super D says:

      05:29am | 11/12/11

      You did overlook the fact that the bloke that got shot was an armed drug dealer - or that’s my recollection, in any case it’s inconsequential.

      The riots were the actions of a generation that has never been called to account for antisocial behaviour.  It really is that simple.

      Reply

    • Super D says:

      08:59am | 11/12/11

      Lets go with there is some doubt as to whether he was armed, there is no doubt that he was a drug dealer.  The way you wrote the sentence it seemed to me that you were saying the cops just randomly shot some guy.

      In any case this had absolutely nothing to do with the riots which spread throughout England.  They were borne solely of a realisation that laws were not being enforced.  At some point it was decided that the law can never be arbitrary and everycriminal act can be negoitiated and contextualised.  The point is most young offenders are not pathological, they know the difference between right and wrong and they can also balance the likelihood of being caught and the likely ramifications.  When there is a low likelihood of capture combined with meaningless punishment there is an economic cost to being law abiding.

    • AAAdam says:

      09:37am | 11/12/11

      Armed or not after the fact, the person who pulled the trigger perceived him to be presenting a clear and imminent threat to life in the split second he pulled the trigger. This in itself justifies the use of such force.

      Or would the author prefer we send some lefty lawyer into every dangerous police/military situation first to determine the exact status of every potential hostile person in the area first? Methinks said lefty wouldn’t last long raspberry

    • acotrel says:

      09:10pm | 11/12/11

      Cheer up SuperD. If the LNP had their way and we had belt-tightening during the GFC, we might also have had a few disenchanted youg people - after they had lost their homes ! ! But you’d be OK ! Smug as a bug in a persian rug ?

    • Labor is Toxic says:

      05:22am | 12/12/11

      You do realise that the ALP’s $42B stimulus package has cost Australia $175B. The LNP would not have wasted billions on projects that achieved nothing.

    • Borderer says:

      09:21am | 12/12/11

      Super D is right in a round about way. You guys have to first understand how the drug dealer was shot in the UK. Firstly, armed police are not deployed unless there is an expectation of the person being armed, the only place you see armed police on standard duty is in sensitive areas sch as royal residences, the airport, etc. The situation was high risk for the police, any sudden action by the target has to be interpreted as going for a weapon. If police intelligence had not indicated that he was dangerous, he would have been picked up by a couple of unarmed bobby’s as is standard proceedure. To sit on the sidelines and critique the actions of frontline police who quite literally are risking their lives in what is a deadly situation of trying to arrest a known violent criminal is poor form.
      Second, the MET responded too slowly and in too few numbers to the initial riot, the ones that followed were the opportunistic actions of petty criminals who thought they had the police on the ropes.

    • MarkS says:

      11:37am | 12/12/11

      @AAAdam
      “prefer we send some lefty lawyer into every dangerous police/military situation first to determine the exact status of every potential hostile person in the area first? Methinks said lefty wouldn’t last long”

      Great Idea, the lefty lawyers should be drafted to perform this vital service asap.

    • NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

      07:54am | 11/12/11

      Hi Daniel,

      Looking from a distance the London riots were not about being really being poor, poverty stricken & hungry at all.  Because, thanks to the welfare system very similar to ours in Australia, most people needing assistance actually get the help they deserve, right?  So why did it happen in a place like London? 

      Somehow, I also think the young adults in the Euro Zone are also facing very high unemployment rates since the Great Depression & that is an every day reality. But in the UK there happens to be a Social Security System very much like Australia? Then what is actually lacking in the young generation? 

      I truly believe that it has a lot to do with young generation wanting more materially due to high demands on consumerism, lacking positive role models, a stable family environment as well as lacking the very basic skills to teach them how to survive in the real world, most unfortunately!

      Sadly, it might also be due to the fact that these somehow lost teenagers may have been caught up in an environment, thinking that they will get anywhere by being aggressive & violent to solve their problems.  I also assume that they do not really have a chance to discover their true talents as well as not being able to reach their true potential. We have to reexamine our family structures, educational standards to see if can bring positive & concrete changes into their lives. Best regards to your editors.

      Reply

    • John says:

      09:09am | 11/12/11

      The joys of multiculturalism and immigration, if Britannia never allowed these policy’s, London today would be a great city, because they didn’t it’s predicted to become the new Detroit. In 20 years the place will be abandoned, most likely a den of criminals.  Europe needs to vote for the Nationalist parties, and get rid of Internationalist agenda of creating commie border-less one world. Do you realize all the crimes committed by the third worlds in Europe are sweep under the carpet in order not to threaten the the international one world agenda? Reality is being distorted for the interests of the big agenda, europeans are living under-dangerous conditions, while their governments are stating it’s safe in other to please their new world order puppet masters. It’s utterly insanity not voting for the Nationalist parties of Europe. Hopefully the Nationalist can take hungry, Austria, France, ban immigration and multiculturalism then start dismantling the communist EU, destroy the EURO commie union currency and go back to nationalist currency’s. Finally ending this commie union order in the west.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      09:47am | 11/12/11

      Problem with Britain is that the real cultures of that country - the higher arts of music, literature, dance and painting - means nothing to about 85 % of the population.
      I’d suggest that such a percentage have no idea about how most people live in other parts of the world.
      There’s often an argument that Americans are ignorant of other lives ; Id think that the British should take that honour.

      Culture takes a mind to other places and times, not travel.
      (When we travel, our senses are altered and given new experiences, but not our minds.)
      The behaviour of those Tottenham kids can be described as local : they had no concerns ; the initial violence may have been borne of anger and a long-held suspicion of how hard their lives are - real or imagined - but later, when the ball got rolling, the anarchy came from ignorance and a total unconcern for others, except their own immediate gratification.

      It was really quite serious.
      You’d think that, after 5000 years of civilization and 2000 years of access to a second family, that everybody would be happy, and we’d all interact in a friendly fashion that would make this an easy life.

      I really wouldn’t want to be culturally illiterate, and, poor.
      I don’t know what I’d get up to, then.

      Reply

    • John says:

      10:25am | 11/12/11

      It’s amazing what 50 years of third world immigration and multiculturalism agenda can do. Turn London into a desolate criminal city. Leon Trotsky, we thank you for bring this destruction..all hail Leon! Leon!

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      07:59pm | 11/12/11

      You have what someone famous once suffered from ...  ‘an incomplete view of History’ ; Trotsky was a local hood and a third rate theorist, but your real problem is that the third-world kids who are rebelling in the south of London also have relatives - lots of them - rebelling in Syria, Egypt, Gaza, (no, make that whining) Iran, (the ones who are not over here) Iraq, Morocco, and Saudi women who can now only drive a car (and they are lovely and maybe Qantas can do an express run ?) ; my point is that if they don’t like us - and there is a slight point that the kids of Tottenham were unlike the locals in that not only did they not understand and have a respect for British Culture, (and by the way, doesn’t respect not start with our parent’s expectations, but with our childhood beliefs and our childhood stories, ie culture ? ) and the local Brits didn’t either.
      Now back to my point : consider that it is best that the West - like, you and I - educate naughty boys and girls from the East, here, elsewise it may cost us in warfare.
      Eastern kids are just as dumbfounded as western kids, and this is an opportunity to regale Mohammad’s Horse to the same place as that horse’s soap factory.

    • Cameron says:

      04:23pm | 11/12/11

      Political extortion and mass immigration, even though Britian now has to deal with the mass unrest, Australia is happy to pick up the banner!
      Go Labor! Lets see how long you can keep pushing our buttons and think you can get away with it!

      Reply

    • Shane From Melbourne says:

      08:36pm | 11/12/11

      Only #13?? What’s number 1? Probably something trivial like the Royal family or Australian politics…..

      Reply

    • Paul Walsh says:

      09:29am | 12/12/11

      If only they served out this sort of justice for anarchist banksters ey? Hypocrites…

      Reply

    • Garry says:

      11:11am | 12/12/11

      Let me add here, that although an Aussie and been here over 20 years my birthplace is Walthamstow (not far from Tottenham) and being a spurs fan and local the area was well known to me. Last October I went back (first time in all that time) and twice I went through Tottenham, both times walking.

      This was after the events and although I saw the major changes, the different personalities, colours and cultures.  I saw the boarded up buildings, burnt out buildings too.

      But one thing I did notice in obvious view was how the community was coming together too.

      The people I spoke to were not letting this get to them, they already had begun helping each other. One redeeming feature was seeing what could be deemed silly, bags with ‘I Love Tottenham’ on them, sounds silly but when you see lots of them you start to see how people are working together.

      I still have doubts on Multiculturalism but seeing Tottenham residents carrying those bags made a good sight being carried by many cultural background people

      There are those who hate in every culture but also those that come together.

      Reply
 
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