Difficult questions for how the police handled the riots
Both the Prime Minister and the Mayor have raised concerns that the police were slow to deploy and used tactics that didn’t work. It has been too easy for them to jump for tough-sounding solutions like water canons, plastic bullets and an army presence in emergencies. But 16,000 officers seemed to work on Tuesday night, so we need to first ask whether our much-cherished policing model can work with some better tactics.
The fires and violence were incredibly frightening for residents, and must have been for the police and other emergency services. I certainly would not have wanted to go out onto the streets of London three nights in a row to try and deal with it.
Yet, many Londoners feel very let down by the police.
The first and most obvious question is whether we had enough officers out there to deal with the troublemakers. In Catford a group of five brave officers charged a group of 40 looters. Why so few? Once the 16,000 officers were deployed the streets calmed down. Could we sustain 16,000 officers on the streets for longer periods? Will the 12,000 police during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games be adequate?
The Met have said how overstretched they were, which I can understand. But this wasn’t just about numbers available. Where they were present, such as on Mare Street in Hackney, the Met seemed to focus on containing the rioters to stop them spreading. Shopkeepers were incredulous when riot officers didn’t intervene to stop people breaking their windows.
We must also ask why the police took so long to catch up with unfolding events. During the student protests they seemed unable to cope with the speedy, highly mobile protestors using social media and mobile phones to organise themselves. I was critical of the violence employed against too many of those young people, most of whom were taking their first steps into peaceful political activism.
This time, they are facing criticism for almost the opposite – appearing to stand back when faced with crowds of genuine criminals. These riots may have included some angry people, but mostly they were just plain greedy, indulging in a consumer driven frenzy of looting and vandalism. The Met’s public order tactics struggled to catch-up.
This was not a case of mass aggression against the police, with lots of people in one place. Although terrifying, the police have training and tactics to handle this. Instead, we saw organised or at least connected groups emerging in different locations and with different intentions.
The Met must again consider how they can create flexible and adaptive public order tactics and training to cope with what may come in the months and years ahead. We must also ask questions of their intelligence. For example, were the structures and communication networks of London’s gang culture the main drivers of this action?
A further question is whether the police can work more effectively with organised communities who resist outbreaks of criminal behaviour. The spontaneous growth of self organised protection by communities like the Kurds in Dalston demonstrated a realistic assessment on Monday night that the state would not be able to protect their property and livelihoods. Should the Met have worked hand in hand with shopkeepers determined to protect their neighbourhoods, and can they do so without promoting vigilante behaviour?
One final question on police tactics: what role does leadership play? It took the Met until Tuesday to respond adequately to the spreading violence at a time when the Met is without a permanent Commissioner, and when the Prime Minister and Mayor were on holiday. Are the police able to respond quickly to unfolding events without this leadership, whether to dictate a change in tactics or to absorb tensions such as those arising from the death of Mark Duggan, or was this simply an organisational delay due to mustering so many extra police?
These pressing questions about British police tactics must be examined, before calling for the sort of policing we normally associate with repressive states. They must be thought through in a wider debate about our society, its deep inequality and “me, me, me” consumerist culture. The biggest question of all is why a minority of young people were so happy to participate in violence, destruction and theft.
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Note: this article has been edited since the original post, to cut it down.
Kids Company founder: cuts contributed to riots
Camilla Batmanghelidjh is the founder of the children’s charity Kids’ Company, which helps tens of thousands of exceptionally vulnerable children. Her work has been praised by David Cameron, she contributed to their Social Justice policy group, her charity was one of the inspirations for the government’s “Big Society” (she was one of the main guests at one of the many launches of the Big Society), and she is an adviser to the Centre for Social Justice, which was set up by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
Civil Society interviewed her yesterday, and here’s what she had to say about the relationship between spending cuts and the riots:
“Youth services were “at breaking point” even before cuts to their funding and were unable to provide the support needed to prevent this week’s riots, according to Camila Batmanghelidjh.
Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk, the founder of youth charities the Place2Be and Kids Company (pictured) said young people need to feel as if they “belong somewhere” where positive behaviour matters.
“If organisations that kids can belong to have been diminished through the cuts and there’s no secure base or a healthy group for kids to belong to then they’ve got nothing to lose.
“The services were at breaking point anyhow, and to be honest with you, most of them didn’t have sufficient resources to deal with these types of kids in the first place.
“Lots of the youth provisions had become very dangerous because they were too understaffed and the kids’ destructive and savage behaviour set the agenda.
“The counter-action coming from these agencies couldn’t be strong enough because it was too under-resourced.”
She added that the government should lay down a vision for disenfranchised young people which should be wide-ranging but should include additional resources for charities.”
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Conservative Home argues that Right wing politicians will only gain a political advantage from these riots if they “win the battle” and defeat “the idea that cuts are to blame for our social crisis”. The New Statesman thinks that “it is too simplistic to blame the coalition’s cuts for the riots”.
But there’s nothing “simplistic” about the analysis of people like Batmangheldjh, which comes from years of experience of working directly with vulnerable young people. And rather than thinking about how his party could exploit the riots to win support, Tim Montgomerie and other Tory politicians should listen to what she is saying.
Were the riots a working class uprising or inspired by rampant consumerism?
contribution by James Bloodworth
Some on the Left interpreted the riots across London as a sort of awakening. After the student protests and anti-cuts marches, the underclass has entered the arena, bringing to the television screens of Middle England the realities of life in Britain’s inner cities they had up to now forgotten or ignored.
What seems to have passed some by, however, is that disenfranchised youth burning and looting sports gear has far more in common with the “greed is good” mantra than it does with the cooperative control of the means of production.
When the cameras are switched off, it is the lives of the poor which will be blighted by these riots, not the gated communities of Kensington and Chelsea.
continue reading… »
Majority say Tories handled #UKriots badly
A majority of Britons thought David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson badly handled the recent ‘severe disturbances’ across the country.
A poll by YouGov found that Theresa May inched just ahead of Cameron (58% to 57%) in disapproval.
The police just about managed to convince a majority that they had handled the situation adequately.
That is however the only good piece of news from the polls.
The vast majority of people thought the looting & riots were driven by criminal behaviour (42%) and gang culture (26%). Government cuts and unemployment featured in their single figures.
Mortgage approvals still falling; where is the government?
contribution by Paul Sellers
Figures published yesterday by the Council of Mortgage Lenders show approvals for house purchase and remortgage loans continuing to decline in the year up to June 2011 – down by 11% overall and down 8% for first time buyers.
Furthermore, today’s release also shows lenders continuing to demand an average deposit of 20% from first time buyers.
The banks are clearly determined to replace their pre-recession profligacy with excessive parsimony.
continue reading… »
Even looters with Blackberrys can be ‘poor’
Many of this week’s riots have been organised by Blackberry’s Blackberry Messaging Service (BBM). This allows for anonymised, tough to trace messages to be sent for free. It seems this service has been used to coordinate and direct the mayhem that has seen London’s worst violence in decades.
A lot of people seem to think that this means that arguments that the rioters are driven in part by poverty to be silly.
“How can you be poor when you own a Blackberry?!” they cry.
How the Tories dealt with riots in the past
If the people are turbulent and riotous, nothing is to be done for them on account of their evil dispositions. If they are obedient and loyal, nothing is to be done for them, because their being quiet and contented is a proof that they feel no grievance – Edmund Burke, 1797
The trouble in Manchester all kicked off when bogus rumours spread that a mob was besieging parts of inner London. A section of the lower orders, clearly fuelled by drink, set out on a wrecking spree, expressing their solidarity by smashing windows.
I refer, of course, to the situation in 1816, in a Britain so different from the one in which we live today that it is impossible to imagine what things must have been like for the dispossessed.
Help us protect disabled children being hurt by ‘welfare reform’
contribution by Sam Royston
25 national organisations including the Children’s Society, the TUC, Barnardo’s and Action for Children have come together to call for a change in the Government’s plans for a substantial cut to welfare support for disabled children under the new “Universal Credit”.
Sign our petition! The new system will result in many of these children losing up to £1400 per year (£27 per week) compared to the current system – by the time a disabled child reaches 16, this could cost the family £22,000.
In total the Government estimates that 100,000 disabled children would lose out under this change – other estimates suggest the number could be considerably higher.
continue reading… »
Rejecting the simplistic one-sided views of #Londonriots
contribution by Reuben Bard-Rosenberg
On Sunday night, the community in Harringey were out on the streets. Groups of young Turkish and Kurdish men stood outside each of the shops that line this great high road, ready to defend them. Meanwhile other groups of young men, all masked up, came in by rail, ready to loot. The deterrent seems to have worked.
The night before, in Tottenham, I had seen another community out in streets. As I reported I found residents and onlookers to be broadly supportive of the disorder. Yet even those who felt the police were getting what they deserved felt that the targetting of small businesss was “out of order”.
Indeed this anger at the targetting of small shops seems to have been something of a theme amongst the reactions of residents.
continue reading… »
Kate Moss ‘skinny’ t-shirts banned by ASA
A website selling t-shirts for girls as young as ten have been banned from promoting them by the Advertising Standards Authority for their slogans.
The t-shirts state: ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ – a quote popularised by the model Kate Moss in an interview.
The Advertising Standards Authority has banned adverts for the children’s t-shirts, reports the Daily Mail today.
When the controversy first arose, former model Katie Green of the ‘Say No to Size Zero’ campaign said:
There are 1.1million eating disorders in the UK alone. Kate Moss’s comments are likely to cause many more. If you read any of the pro-anorexia websites they go crazy for quotes like these.
Critics said the slogan was irresponsible and could cause harm to children, “because it implied being underweight was desirable”.
Zazzle has reportedly removed the slogan from children’s T-shirts.
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