Fanning the flames of rage in the capital
London has seen a weekend and more of rioting in several different boroughs across the capital with extensive property damage, mass looting and sustained attacks against the police by thousands of mainly young people. We have not witnessed such intense scenes of social unrest on such a scale for more than 25 years.
The catalyst was a demonstration on Saturday 4th August in Tottenham, North London to demand justice for local man Mark Duggan who was shot and killed by armed police in suspicious circumstances two days earlier. As the peaceful crowd of no more than 100 people made up of largely of friends, family and supporters gathered at the police station to speak to the senior officer and demand answers, a 16 year girl was pushed to the ground and hit with batons and shields by police. The crowd responded by setting alight two police cars and attacking the police with missiles. A full scale riot then erupted along the main high street with buildings set on fire, vehicles torched and retail shops looted along with running battles and further violent confrontations with police.
Hundreds came out onto the streets in an explosion of rage that had been building up through years of police harassment and dire economic circumstances. Throughout most of the night flames flickered against the impoverished skyline as sirens echoed sporadically along the damaged streets above the constant whir of helicopter blades hovering overhead. This was the spark that ignited a weekend of disturbances that were to spread like wildfire throughout London’s socially deprived neighbourhoods.
The following night there were riots in other parts of London, clashes with police and continued looting. Enfield, Islington, Walthamstow and Brixton in South London. On Monday saw Hackney, Lewisham and Peckham consumed with riots. Again it was largely youths whose anger had yet to dissipate, in contact with each other through social media, and saw opportunity amongst the burning shells and shattered safety glass of the capitals’ high streets.
But the fundamentals are not lost on any of us. When you take away more of our basic needs, offer us nothing but penalties we can never pay off, when you threaten us with greater poverty, and punish us if we resist, when you bully us into believing we are not worth the profit we make on your behalf something has to give. In the gloom of a poor north London suburb, something eventually gave.
And with it an outpouring of anger, discontent, bitterness and rage. We know these are acts of desperation as much as they are acts of defiance. Destructive urges – we as anarchists have learnt to expect and demand but never quite fulfil. Politics isn’t an agenda written to suit the ideology of the dispossessed. People live their lives and struggle with the consequences, where the future is simply borrowed from us and never returned. Tottenham ignited to the sound of alienation made concrete. A sound we will be coming more and more familiar with over the coming months. The sound of austerity being smashed apart.
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This article originally appeared in the #7216 edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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