Who are the rioters?
A number of people have highlighted how, initially, the mainstream media didn’t manage to – or didn’t particularly try to – interview any of the rioters or the looters. However today a little more information is coming out about who they were and what they have to say.
The Guardian’s Paul Lewis who has been tireless in covering the riots in both London and elsewhere in the UK has a piece today exploring who the rioters are: “Young men from poor areas… but that’s not the full story“. He emphasises that the rioters were drawn from no single group, and engaged to a varying extent in the events:
Take events in Chalk Farm, north London. First the streets contained people of all backgrounds sprinting off with bicycles looted from Evans Cycles. Three Asian men in their 40s, guarding a newsagent, discussed whether they should also take advantage of the apparent suspension of law.
“If we go for it now, we can get a bike,” said one. “Don’t do it,” said another. Others were not so reticent; a white woman and a man emerged carrying a bike each. A young black teenager, aged about 14, came out smiling, carrying another bike, only for it be snatched from him by an older man.
They were just some of the crowd of about 100 who had gathered on the corner; a mix of the curious and angry, young and old. It was impossible to distinguish between thieves, bystanders and those who simply wanted to cause damage.
The Guardian also reported today that the first looter to appear in court is a 31 year old primary school assistant.
The Today Programme broadcast an interview with looters in Manchester. They sound young, and mostly say that they are looting “because they can”. But while they are not expressing any kind of coherent political demands, there is obviously anger about government policies – one of them mentions the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance. Similar and more explicit themes come out in a piece by Reuters:
“The politicians say that we loot and rob. They are the original gangsters. They talk about copycat crimes. They’re the ones that’s looting, they’re the originals,” he said.
One of the Kurdish man’s friends pointed to alleged payments made to the police by journalists, claims currently under investigation as part of a wider phone-hacking scandal centred on the now defunct News of the World newspaper, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media conglomerate.
“Everyone’s heard about the police taking bribes, the members of parliament stealing thousands with their expenses. They set the example. It’s time to loot,” the youth said.
To state the obvious it’s clear that a complex array of factors are propelling people to engage in the disorder and looting, and of course this makes it all the more difficult to comprehend. Why would someone engage in looting if they can afford the things they are stealing? When they have a full time job? It’s easy to slap the labels of “greedy” and “criminal” on them and be done with it. It’s harder – but all the more important – to get to grips with the pervasive alienation that has led to the riots.
A few more things to read on the riots:
Even looters with Blackberrys can be ‘poor’
Austerity, Economic Decline, Social Unrest, and Political Instability
London riots
While I’m meant to be enjoying my last month in Cairo and working on my Arabic, for the last 2 days I’ve found myself glued to Twitter, watching my home town riot. I was born and mostly grew up in Haringey – not far from where the riots kicked off on Saturday night – and seeing events unfold as they have done I have been horrified and scared for my family and afraid for the community which I belong to.
The op-eds and blog posts are flowing thick and fast, but London is a big city and all 12m of its citizens have a stake in its future – so I will add my 2p’s worth.
I belong firmly in the camp that believes we need to explore the deeper causes, in order to mend the social fabric which is so clearly damaged. In the heat of the moment it might not be easy to see what those causes are, but they are also not totally obscured. (This doesn’t mean I think the rioters are justified in attacking people’s homes and livelihoods, or that I don’t think they should be punished. We have laws against stealing things and setting things on fire, and people who break those laws should be prosecuted and subject to free and fair trials.)
Race, class, deprivation, family breakdown, alienation are some of the factors probably playing a role, which comes across pretty clearly in the makeup of the rioters. Londoners know who these kids are: the chavs, townies, rude boys, whatever shorthand you call them by. While not 100% mutually exclusive, this is not the same crowd that overran Millbank last November, or the one that pelted TopShop with paint bombs in March. Is it the hoodies and trainers that make this crowd more interested in looting than in smashing up Tory HQ? Or maybe it’s the kind of music they listen to? We can dismiss them as obviously not poor as they all have Blackberries, but show me where the rioting middle class professionals are and then I’ll believe poverty has nothing to do with it.
The immediate priority is obviously to defuse the situation and return to normality. The police have the most important role to play, and I hope that they resist some of the more “creative” suggestions which are being bandied about. I was very disappointed to hear David Lammy argue for a temporary shutdown of the Blackberry messenger service. This has uncomfortable echoes of Hosni Mubarak’s attempt to stop Egyptians protesting by shutting down the internet – not the same situation, but I suspect it would be similarly ineffective. Even worse, local councils are pledging to kick out from local authority housing tenants “found to have taken part in criminal acts“. I find it highly unlikely that this would act as any more of a deterrent than the threat of arrest and prosecution does, and if it does not act as a deterrent, then can we consider it anything other than an act of revenge?
It’s clear that London will take a long time to recover from these awful few days. But I would like to think that we can use this as a wakeup call to address some of the deep social problems which have been left to fester, or treated with sticking plasters, and think about how to heal divisions rather than entrench them. This will involve keeping an eye on the long term effects of policies: rushing to evict rioters from their homes for example will not solve anything in the long run, but rather feed resentments. I hope we take a leaf out of Norway’s book in the aftermath of the Breivik killings, and reaffirm our commitment to an open and democratic society in the face of internal strife.
Some of the comment pieces and blog posts which have given me food for thought on this topic:
London’s Riots: Not Race, Not Politics, But an Explosion of Futureless Youth
Panic on the streets of London
If the rioting was a surprise, people weren’t looking
The City Victorious
I’ve just finished reading Max Rodenbeck’s Cairo: The City Victorious. It’s a very lively and engaging portrait of both the bricks and mortar city and Cairene society. A little overwritten on occasion (verging on flowery) but an otherwise excellent introduction to the history of umm al-dunya – “the mother of the world”, as Egyptians sometimes call Cairo.
By nature I am a lover of big cities, and on my first trip to Cairo a few years ago I was star struck by the vistas across the Nile and the down town aura of faded grandeur. I’m now enjoying a more extended stay here and I’m seeing the harder edges to life here; the tensions and frustrations deriving from the long years of political stagnation, the poverty, pollution and grinding commutes many Cairenes have to submit to. However I’m also here at an extraordinary moment of optimism in Egyptian history: the protests which overthrew Mubarak have changed the rules of the game, and where politics was largely kept for the few, the many are now flooding into the political arena and finding that they can make their voices heard.
Published in 1998, The City Victorious struggles to avoid a narrative of decline. Rodenbeck seems most enamoured with the colonial era, and has little time for the Nasser period (except for Umm Kulthoum) during which, he considers, “Egypt forgot itself”. Nasser’s authoritarianism comes in for heavy criticism while when he notes that the British kept education spending to 1% of the budget in 1920 (leaving three-quarters of Cairenes still illiterate in 1940), it feels like an afterthought to his lengthy romantic descriptions of the European quarter in the colonial era. However the book is rescued from this “decline and fall” narrative by his lively and affectionate descriptions of working class culture in contemporary Cairo.
An evening with Alaa Al Aswany
Last night the well known author and columnist Alaa Al Aswany gave a talk at El Sawy Culture Wheel, Cairo’s amazing youth club and culture centre on the bank of the Nile. This was the first of a planned series of once a month talks Al Aswany will be giving at the Culture Wheel, and the hall was packed, with an audience of at least two or three hundred people.
With the advertised title of “Egypt after the revolution”, Al Aswany’s talk focused on the concepts of reform and revolution. While praising the successes of the 25 Jan revolution, he launched scathing criticisms towards Essam Sharaf’s government and the role being played by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in maintaining the old, corrupt system which should not be reformed, but rather restarted from scratch by a revolutionary government. However despite the fierce criticism he held back from calling for the SCAF to be overthrown.
He also directed criticism towards the Tahrir sit in, arguing that closing the mugama3 (the great bureaucratic domain which ordinary citizens must navigate in order to negotiate various paperwork issues) was a gift to the counter revolution. Between the extremes of the revolutionaries and the counter-revolution, the mass of the Egyptian people are the mutafarrageen, those who watch everything unroll on TV. Actions like the blockade of the mogama3 interfere with their everyday lives, and may turn them against the revolution – protests should instead target the actual loci of power.
He called for the unity of the revolution to be rekindled, lamenting the fracturing of the various political tendencies. Pluralism is healthy in a democracy, but the people need to be united until the aims of the revolution have been achieved.
After his lecture he invited the audience to write questions on comment slips, and promised to answer them all. I slipped out after a few of the questions, but not before witnessing some minor controversies. Inevitably someone went off topic and posed a question about his books, specifically taking him to task over the sex scenes contained in them. More significantly someone argued that he was encouraging people to act irresponsibly in pushing for more radical action: Al Aswany brusquely suggested that the questioner was in the pay of the old regime, and the questioner was heckled by the crowd when he stood up to defend himself.
While much of the talk was well received by the audience, I also heard negative comments about him. I also wonder how in tune he is with the new, young revolutionary politics: while he promised to engage in a dialogue, the set up was very much a lecture by Alaa Al Aswany: even if he did finish reading out the stack of questions handed to him, they seemed to be more interruptions in his lecture than a way to engage in a real conversation.
Egypt in transition
Yesterday Chatham House published the workshop report “Egypt in Transition”. This is the fruit of a trip I made to Cairo last month with Chatham House colleagues to hold a workshop there.
It was an incredible opportunity to meet a wide range of Egyptian political actors and discuss Egypt in the immediate aftermath of the revolution and where Egyptians hope the revolution will lead to.
It was striking to see Egyptians from all walks of life – and of varying political persuasions – talk openly about the problems of the old regime, and about the hope they had for Egypt going forwards. Of course, not all the taboos have been broken: the military’s recent demand for print publications to obtain permission before mentioning the armed forces is unsurprisingly described as a “substantial setback for press freedom in Egypt” by the CPJ.
What I took away most of all from our workshop was that Egyptians know the hard work starts now. They achieved a stunning victory in ending Hosni Mubarak’s rule, but there is a lot to be done in order to truly dismantle the regime and effect broad-based change in the political landscape.
Here are the key findings from the report:
- Egyptians feel that in the post-Mubarak era they have an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the political landscape.
- Challenges that will be faced include increasing political awareness at the grassroots; connecting activists and the political elite to the needs of marginalized populations, especially in rural areas; and encouraging/enabling a fragmented opposition to coalesce into coherent groups.
- The military’s role in politics is seen as problematic and it should be replaced by a civilian government as soon as possible.
- The Mubarak era has left a bitter legacy in Egypt’s relations with the West, as most Egyptians perceive Western governments to have been supporters of his rule; Western policy-makers will have to make serious efforts to build relationships of trust with the new political actors in Egypt.
A comparative perspective on protest politics
I’ve just been reading Zeinobia’s comment on the events in Tahrir Square on Friday night, when the Egyptian army forcefully cleared the square of protesters who refused to obey the curfew. (For a fuller description of what happened, see this post from the Arabist).
There’s much to discuss around what this means for people’s perception of the military in Egypt, around whether the army can control the media narrative, and so on. Zeinobia makes some very important points around the need for transparency and accountability from the ruling military council, and its ham-fisted approach to PR.
However it’s her criticisms of the protesters which has set me thinking. Lots of Egyptian activists and commentators are discussing the fallout from Friday night’s events, and it’s clearly a divisive issue: the protesters were challenging the army through their actions, and knew they were likely to face a pushback, but is it an effective tactic for achieving their ultimate goals?
Zeinobia thinks not:
The [SCAF – Supreme Council of Armed Forces] has made terrible mistakes but Egyptian activists have turned in to their own worst enemies. The Egyptian activists do not want to play politics , they do not want to leave the Tahrir at the right time and return to it at the right time to deliver to get what they want.
She also echoes one of the main concerns I heard on my recent trip to Cairo about the need for the new generation of activists to make better connections with a wider section of the Egyptian population:
Unfortunately Some of these activists despite bragging of being in the streets all day have lost all the connection to the rest of the Egyptian people who will stand with the Egyptian army despite they know very well that it suffers from corruption just like any other institutions in the country.
Zeinobia is not the only one asking questions about what can now be achieved by more Tahrir protests. Sandmonkey wrote a very persuasive piece a few weeks back arguing that the Jan25 coalition need to “Start organizing yourselves into an offline grassroots movement, Zenga Zenga style”.
Not being on the ground or part of the movement I couldn’t make a strong case for or against the protest tactics currently being used, but reading these discussions struck a chord with me: I have been having parallel conversations with friends about protest tactics in the anti-cuts movement, following the demonstrations in London on March 26.
While the repercussions of pushing protest boundaries in the UK are nowhere near as severe as those faced by activists in Tahrir, the non-TUC actions on March 26 are something of a parallel issue. I don’t think the non-TUC actions were harmful to the movement, but there are questions about how successful activists who took part were in communicating what they stood for and whether they were able to connect with the majority of the UK public.
UK Uncut has been quite a savvy campaign and successful in encouraging a broader range of people to engage in peaceful direct action. But targeting Fortnum & Mason – while in no way an illegitimate target – had overtones of “class war”, and in the moment it was difficult to get the message out widely about how the occupation fitted in with UK Uncut’s campaign. Following the mass arrests after the action there is now a risk that UK Uncut activists will get engulfed in the fight against political policing – not unworthy, but also not typically of concern to the non-activist population.
Activists in both the UK and Egypt are taking a step back to think about wider strategies beyond protest for achieving their political goals. In the UK we’ve had much greater freedom to protest than Egyptians in the last 30 years, but we’re still having the same conversations about how to use protests as an effective tactic.
Engaging the radical margins
Outside Fortnum & Mason, March 26
The March 26 protests in London against public spending cuts and tax avoidance by big corporations have elicited a fair amount of media attention and discussion as to what constitutes legitimate peaceful protest.
Questions of proportional policing and legitimate protest tactics are complex political issues that merit in depth debate. Like UK Uncut I’m not going to condone or condemn the actions of the “black bloc”; instead I’d like to make a point about the nature of the debate both within left wing circles and in the mainstream media.
While some have made valiant efforts to start a grown up discussion on this topic, others have been less mature. The Guardian has done some good reporting interviewing black block activists, but most comment and coverage of the black bloc has focused on its actions rather than its ideas.
Taking a lesson from my main area of academic interest – politics in the Middle East – I’d like to point out that the key to good policy is informed debate. Refusing to engage with the complex motivations and ideologies of insurgent movements or terrorist groups gets us no closer to resolving the conflicts which produce those movements.
In comparison with many political extremists, the hard left in the UK is pretty cuddly – smashing a few windows is small fry in the grand scheme of political violence. It’s understandable that the majority of Britons want to condemn these actions, but the media should do more than hold up a mirror to national knee-jerk reactions – it should inform a better understanding of the political context.
I’m not expecting Daily Mail journalists to start reading the Anarchist FAQ, but the anti-cuts movement would benefit its internal debates by facing head on the ideas present in the radical margins.
wordstothateffect 
