On the Tottenham Riots
I don't have much to add beyond what's being reported, but I should note that these have a major precedent. This was Margaret Thatcher's response:
Mr. President, the whole country is rightly concerned about security at home, about violence in the streets. We utterly condemn anyone and everyone who takes part in riots in Britain. Whoever these people are who riot, burn and murder; whoever they are organised by, there is no excuse, no justification whatsoever, for such crime and vandalism. Those who take to the streets on the first available pretext, to fire, loot and plunder, will be subject to the full rigours of the criminal law.
In Tottenham and Handsworth the police suffered a hail of bricks and petrol bombs, apparently ready to hand.
Yet one of the delegates to the Labour Party Conference was loudly applauded when he called the police "the enemy." Enemy? The overwhelming majority of the British people regard the police as friends: They admire and are deeply thankful for their courage and the coverage of their families.
In the 1930s, when unemployment was proportionately higher, and virtually unrelieved by benefits, crime levels were not higher, they were lower.
In a free country everyone has to choose. And the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens—black or white, in or out of work, living in the suburbs or city centres—freely make their choice. They respect the law; and they will have no truck with crime masquerading as social protest. the Government will continue steadfastly to back the police. If they need more men, more equipment, different equipment, they shall have them. We don't economise on protecting life and property.
And we shall oppose politicians, national or local, who want to interfere in the operational independence of the police. There is no place for politics in policing.
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Jun '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
In the 1930's Britain had something known as societal cohesion. Today formally "great" Britain has been balkanized into competing tribes based on grievence. Same goes for the United States. It's the logical outcome of identity politics. As the lights go out across the civilized world, they will be replaced with the eerie glow of burning cities. Scared yet?
Apr '11
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote an essay he called "Snapshot of a Sick Society," about a woman who was murdered by a teenager when she stopped to wash her car on the way to work. The 'money quote' in Hanson's pieces is the reaction of a police captain who said: "The teen “simply wanted to kill somebody that night” and [the victim] McVay, 49, was “in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a purely random act.”
How many of us, when reading about the Tottenham riots, or the London riots, or the new phenomenon of so-called flash-mobs looting stores or beating-up random passers-by, simply shrug our shoulders and say, "Too bad, they were in the wrong place a the wrong time."
We seem to be entering a new age of barbarity and the barbaroi are already inside the walls of the city.
Apr '11
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
Incredible photos....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023254/Tottenham-riot-Mark-Duggan-shooting-sparked-police-beating-girl.html
Mar '11
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
And Conservatives, including Mrs Thatcher, are now being blamed for these riots - so far has the UK sunk.
Nov '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
UPDATE: 21:20 BST
"Initial ballistics tests on the bullet that lodged in a police officer's radio when Mark Duggan died on Thursday night show it was a police issue bullet."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-police-duggan-live#block-44
This tends to undermine earlier reports that Mark Duggan had traded shots with police. There could be an innocent explanation; but anyone inclined to prejudge that the police acted improperly in the encounter won't find succour here.
Twitter is now bristling with reports of youths rioting in nearby Enfield. There are also mixed suggestions (hopefully not self-fulfilling) of impending rioting in South London.
Dec '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
I don't believe any of this story. Everybody knows there are no guns in the UK.
Mar '11
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
Clearly you haven't been to a UK airport.
Dec '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
David Williamson
Clearly you haven't been to a UK airport. · Aug 7 at 2:47pm
I have, but of course I mean no private ownership of handguns. Why that was stamped out a long time ago, wasn't it? I thought they were working on knives right now.
Dec '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
Please be careful, and put your boots on.
There is no solution to this sort of thing except to work. And smile.
I, personally, have been dragged out of the window of my car, beaten to the ground, then kicked until I had multiple fractures, including major head injuries. In the United States, merely for "being in the wrong place"
I grew up in southeast Asia, during the Vietnam war and lived in Jamaica during the era referred to in Marley's Trenchtown Burning. I go out of my way to avoid mayhem, but mayhem occurs and it is now occuring in developed countries.
Work. Help. Smile. Win converts that will help the next group of thousands that are set upon by hundreds.
Apr '11
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
Round 2, night 2. Follow the riots in London, live
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8687177/Tottenham-riot-live.html
Nov '10
Re: On the Tottenham Riots
BST: 21.09 pm 08/08/011
Several building in now Croydon ablaze. Dramatic pictures on Sky News and on BBC. Unbelievable.
This is purely gratuitious violence.