The Great Recession gave birth to a lost generation across the world, where youth unemployment rates stretch into the 20s, 30s and even 40s. Those millions have responded with violence.
REUTERS
The riots and fires consuming London are a story about senseless violence and crime. They are also a story about urban politics, race relations, education inequality, and British culture and society. But underneath all of that, they are part of an economic story that is universal.
For the last year, Great Britain has embraced austerity to a degree that would make some American conservatives blush. The purpose of shrinking government was to reduce debt. But the effect has been to kill the economy. With the UK tottering on the razor's edge of recession, consumer confidence is at a record low, unemployment is rising, and even the most optimistic economists predict one-percent expansion for the rest of the year.
For 100 years, across the world, more cuts have led to more crime.
The scourge of young restlessness growing in this noxious petri dish is potent enough to have a nickname. The British call them the NEETs, as in "Not in Education, Employment, or Training." Last year, British Employment Minister Chris Grayling called chronic youth unemployment a "ticking time bomb." That bomb is way past ticking.
The theft and violence and street crime and lawlessness in London is shocking. But it's not unique. Around the world, the burden of unemployment falls hardest on the young, who often respond with violence. The average jobless rate between 18-29 years was nearly 20% last year in OECD countries, the Wall Street Journal has reported. High unemployment was a factor in protests in Spain, uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
The connection between joblessness and violence comes to life in a timely August research paper Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009, which found "a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability." Authors Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth examined the relationship between spending cuts and a measure of instability they termed CHAOS -- "the sum of demonstrations, riots, strikes, assassinations, and attempted revolutions in a single year in each country."
Their conclusion: Austerity breeds anarchy. More cuts, more crime.This clickable graph helps to tell the story.
"Educated youth have been in the vanguard of rebellions against authority certainly since the French Revolution and in some cases even earlier," Jack A. Goldstone, a sociologist at George Mason University School of Public Policy, told journalist Peter Coy in February. If that's true, we are only in the first chapter of a worldwide rebellion against lost opportunities for the young. In North Africa and the Middle East, people aged 15-29 make up the largest share of the population ever. In Iran, they account for a third of the country. In Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, they make up 30 percent.
What about us? One in five Americans are between 15 and 29-years old. And one in five of those Americans are unemployed. For minorities and the under-educated, the picture is much worse. Black teenagers have an unemployment rate of 44 percent, twice the rate for white teens.
And yet, somewhat miraculously, crime has fallen in the U.S. through the Great Recession. James Q. Wilson offered four explanations: (1) More criminals in prison; (2) Better police tactics for finding and patrolling crime hotspots; (3) Better home security technology; and (4) Fewer drugs, including lead in our blood and cocaine. The long decline of American crime is one of the quiet miracles of the last 40 years. We're about to find out if it can hold up to American-style austerity.
over raddraaiers, imbecielen, stormrammen, linkse idioten en wijze zotten
"In an article that appeared in the print edition and online version of the Mail on Sunday on 7 August 2011, it was suggested that according to Mail on Sunday sources Société Générale, one of Europe's largest banks, was in a 'perilous' state and possibly on the 'brink of disaster'. We now accept that this was not true and we unreservedly apologise to Société Générale for any embarrassment caused.
als je de britse pers leest en de televisiebeelden bekijkt van de huiszoekingen dan heb je de indruk dat ze ginder in volle oorlogstijd leven. Uitzonderingswetten, nachtrechtbanken, officiële en minder officiële websites die oproepen om foto's van plunderaars en relschoppers op te sturen of hun namen door te geven. Er staat geen enkele maat meer op ! Alle wetgeving over privacy, democratische rechtsspraak...niet meer nodig WRAAK!. Het bewijst nog maar eens hoe vlug dit soort regels de vuilbak worden ingegooid als opstand en oproer dreigt. Normaal zal je zeggen. Rechtsregels moeten geldig blijven. Er dreigt daar immers geen burgeroorlog. Dat er gestraft wordt en de orde wordt hersteld is inderdaad de basistaak van een staat. Dat er huiszoekingen gebeuren met stormram en vijfentwintig zwaar bewapende agenten in een sociaal appertement binnenstormen voor het oog van 100 camera's en fotografen heeft daar dus niks meer mee te maken. Wij publiceren hier geen fotoos van mensen waaronder heel wat kinderen die weglopen met 10 pakskes chips of een fles wijn of een hobbelpaard. We weten ook dat dit niet de echte relschoppers zijn. Dat ze een vemening of boete krijgen na herkenning en de gestolen goederen terug moeten geven of vergoeden, ok, no problem. We vermoeden dat een aantal rechters hiermee wel rekening zullen houden omdat niet iedereen Cameron heet, getrouwd is met een barones en bekakt Engels spreekt maar het zal afwachten woren. En de journalisten die als scharrelkippen achter de stormrammen aanhollen mogen zich misschien wel eens de vraag stellen wat ze daar aan het uitspoken zijn. Als je de laatste tijd hebt gevolgd hoe sommige kranten werken en politieoversten omkochten om aan de nodige schandaaltjes te geraken...Moeten zich misschien eens dringend bijscholen over de deontologische regels van hun beroep. De laatse stunt van dat soort primaten was ook niet mis. Je keldert zo maar even de kredietwaardigheid van één van de grootste Franse banken op basis van een krantenverhaal waarvan ze niet eens hadden begrepen dat het een soort feuilleton was gebaseerd op pure fictie. Resultaat, een bijna wereldwijde crisis omwille van het feit dat een ander soort ongeletterde apen namelijk de zogenaamde beursspecialisten dit soort fabels als economische wetenschap gingen beschouwen. Wel, we zullen hier nog maar eens zeer duidelijk zijn: wij verkiezen zeer duidelijk de reacties van mensen die zich even hebben laten gaan en een paar zakken chips of een hobbelpaard meepikken in een geplunderde winkel. Het wordt hoog tijd dat we onze waardenschalen even beginnen te checken. Vooral de bekakte politici ook van zogenaamd links, waar hun al even omhooggevallen tuinkabouter Milliband niks beters te vragen heeft of het verstandig is dat de regering 16.000 politieagenten zou schrappen wegens bezuinigingen. Schrap dat soort idioten onmiddellijk hun uitkering als links politicus, please! Links mag NOOIT vergeten dat ze zijn groot geworden dank zij opstanden en soms ook plunderingen van wanhopigen! Ze hebben deze mensen ooit een stem gegeven en een begin van waardigheid. Wat links nu doet staat daat mijlenver af. Zeker in Engeland! Wat betreft waardenschalen hadden we toch ook graag een kleine vergelijking willen maken tussen bijvoorbeeld doodrijders die vluchtmisdrijf plegen en mensen die aan het plunderen slaan (we hebben het hier even niet over de echte "casseurs" die huizen in de fik steken en mensen aanvallen). Of recent, hoe de edelman van Knokke, meneerke Lippens, het toch nodig vond om het soort onderkruipsel te vededigen dat vanop hun VIP-tribune die ze omwille van instortingsgevaar moesten ontruimen, het leuk vonden om magnumflessen Veuve-Cliquot naar hun medefuivers te keilen. Wel, dat soort iets minder uitzichtloze niet-werklozen staat op onze waardenschaal op gelijke hoogte met de raddraaiers die hun plaatselijke winkeliers aanvallen en hun winkeltjes in brand steken. En misschien moeten jullie vandaag maar eens De Morgen kopen om de bijdrage van Nigel Williams te lezen over de Britse rellen...of hoe een "zot" de waarheid spreekt...
We should not be surprised at riots in inner-city areas like Lewisham. A whole workless generation has been abandoned by society
The Welfare of the People is the First Great Law. So goes the motto for Lewisham Council, my home town in south east London. Last night as the sirens wailed and the helicopters roamed restlessly overhead, it felt more like a war zone than the beneficent local state its motto suggests. This morning, Catford, just down the road by the Town Hall, has the feel and appearance of a battle scene. Lewishams shopping centre has closed early this afternoon, in anticipation of a well-tweeted proposal to attack Europes largest police station standing faceless and unwelcoming, where the boroughs last department store once made sure that we were being served.
Ours werent the worst of yesterdays riots, but it would have come as no surprise if they had been. A long-time net exporter of labour, with a diminishing number of local jobs, Lewisham tops the UKs league table for youth unemployment . According to the Office of National Statistics, almost 36% of Lewishams 16 24 year olds were out of work last year, compared to a UK average of 19.5%: alarming figures by any standards. Meanwhile, Croydon and Hackney also under siege last night were almost as bad with youth unemployment levels of 33%.
In 2010, a TUC report showed that Job Seekers Allowance claimants in my hood outnumbered overall job vacancies by almost 14:1. Compare this to to a national average of 5:1. This made Lewisham the third worst centre of unemployment in England, after Haringey and Hackney. In 2010, it was the 31st most deprived council in England up from 52nd in 2004. Meanwhile, CanaryWharf with its Big Bonus-earning Bankers and their ever-expanding pension pots nestles a complacent 5.6 miles away across the river another world indeed. Beginning to make some connections?
Unemployment and poverty are not Lewishams only distinguishing characteristics. Those readers who recall the Battle of Lewisham against the National Front in 1977, the dreadful tragedy of thirteen young black peoples deaths in the New Cross Fire of 1981, the Dread, Beat and Blood of Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Catford ministry of the Revd Desmond Tutu, will also know that Lewisham has long been a sustaining home to many black and ethnic minority people, as well as the locus of historic struggles against racism and white supremacist organisations. 34% of Lewishams population are from black and other ethnic minorities, compared to a 6% average across England.
Grandparents and parents from the Caribbean, Africa, India and Pakistan as well as the white working class once worked hard for a living in local hospitals, transport, the council and low paid jobs in the private service sector. They now see their children and grandchildren facing the interminable prospect of lives without even low paid work, as the great law of the welfare of the people unravels in the haze of George Osbornes deficit reduction strategy and a global economy in crisis. That means lives without money and all those things that turbo capitalism has made us think we need even if we could only afford them in the boom times on the sort of credit that helped bring the global economy close to its knees. Most live out a ground down existence on the dole and the margins of Londons consumer society.
Thats bad enough in itself, but Coalition cuts have wreaked savage revenge on Lewishams Labour majority council, which has barely put up any kind of a fight against the ensuing meltdown in services for young people. Earlier in the year the council decided to shut down the Connexions service, which played an important part in supporting workless young people along the way through learning and unemployment and occasionally found them a job too! (I was impressed by the very kind and gentle Connexions advisor who called a couple of times last year to check that my gap-year son was doing OK and who was delighted to hear that hed scored a temp job in John Lewis.) It was the largest cut yet made to a Connexions service anywhere and has led UNISON to explore a judicial review on the grounds that Lewisham is failing to meet its statutory obligations to provide Information, Advice and Guidance services. Add to this the five libraries and IT centres that were closed in May, cuts to youth work, restricted access to the EMA and unimaginable university tuition fees and you can see why young people in my neck of the woods are angry.
Policing practice in Lewisham shows that black people are on the end of the strongest arm of the law when it comes to stop and search too. Between March and May 2011, there were 7 searches per 1000 white people, compared to 30 for blacks, 15 for Asians and 12 for others, although white arrests slightly exceeded those for black people. Not at all surprising then that the death of Mark Duggan should trigger the latent anger of those singled out for such special attention.
Of course, none of these facts and figures justify the sort of wanton and personal violence meted out to hard working and terrified residents of Lewisham and elsewhere over the last couple of days. It is hard to construe the riots as the moral economy depicted by Edward Thompson, renowned historian of the English working class. The sight of dispossessed, forgotten young people destroying the heart of their own communities is as sickening as it is saddening. But it should come as no surprise. Those who have been deprived of the chance to use their own imagination, skills and labour to find the self-respect and material comforts that we are led to consider normal in this crazy world, have been literally forced outside of society.
Many of my young Lewisham neighbours no longer feel that there is any trace of a local Great Law ensuring their welfare. Without the beneficent aspects of the state, many are left with nothing material or psychological to hang on to. The moral codes that evolve from citizens who feel a responsibility to those around them no longer apply. MPs fiddling expenses, tax evaders, phone hackers and multi-nationals who screw their workforces are hardly an example to anyone either, are they? The big question is, where to now?
En blijkbaar is de discussie toch aan de gang en ons lijkt deze discussie, ondanks alle meningsverschillen, een zeer positief iets. In Engeland verzandt dergelijk debat niet meteen in het oeverloos rechts gelal dat we hier tegenkomen op de discussieplatformen. In Vlaanderen lijkt de nazi-ideologie nog steeds de meest gewaardeerde mening op dit soort sites. Dit is een mooi voorbeeld hoe je ondanks de zeer duidelijke ideologische verschillen toch een discussie kan houden waarbij niemand het monopolie van de waarheid claimt. En zoals iemand zeer terecht zegt: er is een belangrijk onderscheid tussen het zoeken van oorzaken en het rechtvaardigen van wat is gebeurd.
Radio 4 were in the first court sessions dealing with rioters yesterday. Young men charged with burglary, theft and public order offences. There were graphic designers, graduates, a YOUTH WORKER Most of them had jobs.
Enough with the liberal soft soaping. Every jail in and around London is filled to bursting with black youth this morning. Im black. Ive worked hard and so have my family. For years weve put in the effort to live and work hard in Lewisham Borough.
There is NO excuse for this behaviour. The violence and disorder in the borough and surrounding areas was not disaffected youth protesting, it was simple criminality.
Lewisham has schools, colleges, special needs provision, libraries with free internet access, teaching assistants, black mentors, educational psychologists, ESOL teaching. Kids have parents. What else do you want?
Every possible social intervention measure you can think of is available in this borough. Many schools have been lavished with rebuilding money, some have been renamed. Yet with all the money spent its still not enough the boroughs kids still came out to loot and pillage.
Enough with appeasing these kids and their lousy parents. ENOUGH NOW.
In 3 days they have set back race relations 40 years. Everything racists (and liberals behind closed doors) have said about black youth has been displayed over the past few days in front of the world.
It wasnt a small minority of kids. Lewisham and Catford businesses were attacked by massive groups of its own kids. This was no political reaction against the withdrawal of the EMA, this was acquisitive, recreational looting. Look at the riot videos, the jubilant, celebratory videos, photos, tweets of teens high on their looted booty. Look for the video of JD Sports and Argos being looted and the face offs with the police in the high street.
This is not a police failing this is parenting failing. A massive morality failing. And a COUNCIL failing. Decades of ridiculous, expensive, interventionist projects, over spending and left-wing education dogma have produced 2 generations of wild snarling, overly-entitled parents and kids they have no impulse control, no sense of right and wrong, no self discipline, no respect for self or others.
Try and ask a kid or an adult in Lewisham to pick up dropped litter, or turn their music down on the bus you wouldnt dare. Moreover, try as Ive recently had to recently asking children educated in a Lewisham school to do fractions, draw a graph or do simple algebra.
Lewishams education results are disastrous and for year upon they have got away with it; together with parents they have churned out inarticulate, uneducated, immoral teens with zero empathy for anyone.
Parents where is YOUR responsibility? Stop blaming the police, how could you let your kids outside during riots? You child has come home with new trainers, clothes and electrical goods where did they come from? What are you going to do about to do it? Yesterday Catford parks and town centre was littered with discarded shoe boxes and packaging.
Weve had police and tv helicopters flying over head for hours at a time in Lewisham. This is our community we live here.
A cold fury has come over me. I feel utterly defeated and ashamed of the young people in this community. Just read the local twitter feeds from the last few days and youll see why. Every possible prejudice of black youth proved correct. Who will listen now about unfair stop and search, or job discrimination?
And its outrageous for professionals like you to justify this base criminality in sociological and to blame society for it when they are personal failings. Time is up for this failed paradigm.
You and liberal professionals like you who litter education and social work are the worst enemies of the young black urban dweller.
You are apologists for the worst of behaviour black youth are on the rampage. It doesnt need explaining, it needs confronting and condemning.
I agree will some of what mel said in her statement above but i have one thing to say and that is WHY BLAME THE PARENTS? yeah some parents are slack universally across races, but what you are forgetting is that in this country you get penallised for disappling your kids, you cant smack, shout, if you lock them in there room your on kidnapping charges, so when they get bigger and start back chatting parents or hitting them what can you do, maybe if parents were alloewd to dissapline there children without fear of criminal charges then maybe these future adults would be different Just putting it out there also and i have seen a number of white people involved in this chaos infact i saw a white guy taking a tv people stood around and was laughing, same situation with a black boy and it is oh my god And i saw this with my own two eyes, media is diverting the attention to specifics but what about the chaos in orpington no one is talking about thatthey were all white .
Id agree with almost all of this article, although race as a cause of lack of opportunity has become rather tired and outdated: being part of an unemployable underclass, or defining yourself as a part of a gangsta youth culture thats self-fullingly worthless, that will do it though.
In a borough like Lewisham its well worth mentioning the demotivating effect that the suspension of the Education Maintenance Allowance will have had on youngsters.
In response to Max, the interventions dont work especially well because they are attempts by local authorities to put little Band-Aids on massive wounds inflicted by right wing governments (including the Tony and Gordon show). Yes, we have a small sub-culture of feral youth that is unsocialised, uneducable and unemployable, largely because no government in over 30 years has been prepared to carry out the large and expensive social programs that are required to tackle the problems.
Its also worth mentioning that this is hardly all Lewishams youth. How many were out in Lewisham? 100? That would be pretty much all the local sink estate gangs.
Seeing the numbers of kids who come to the attention of Social Services locally on a daily basis is horrible and horrifying, but set against that the numbers on the street were low.
Im all for cracking down as hard as possible on gangs, on gangsta sub-culture, on feral youth. Im also for some of the simple and cheap reforms we could make to turn out schools back into places of discipline, socialisation and places that instil some sense of pride, achievement and standards. Ever stood in Catford when the schools come out? They have to have police there every day.
But before we totally demonise kids lets remember what their prospect in Lewisham is: most of the little allowance they were getting to stay on at school has gone, higher education is now a total pipedream for the poor (who the hell would take on that kind of debt?), the training they are being offered, such as it is, is in large part just warehousing that offers mickey mouse qualifications, their chances of a job are near zilch (I suspect that the figures are actually now rather worse than the ones shown above, they were taken from before this years draconian destruction by the Tories), they are about to having their housing benefit limited to flat share only and even that is rather hopeful because with the housing crisis (or as successive governments have called it, Crisis? What crisis?) they have not a hope in hell of ever being able to find anywhere to live. would you like to be starting out and facing that?
No one can deny or ignore the fact that the difference between those who have plenty and those who have very little is getting wider. The recent changes mean that the majority of the poor will no longer afford to pay 40k to get a university education. The cost of living has gone up dramatically and the absence of job opportunities for the young and the over 50′s is virtually zero. These factors contribute to the anger felt by many but no one can or should accept that burning down and looting your own community is acceptable. Those involved with the disgraceful display of violence against their own are thugs, their action damages the fight to achieve equality. Walking out of a shop with a 50in HD ready telly is not a political act!! Nick
It seems like the only humane analysis that one could make. We have to ask, how could so many people think it OK to behave in this way? The narrative of a generation with few prospects, confronted with a widening gap between themselves and the better off, in a culture that celebrates crime makes some kind of sense.
Like Mel (commenting above), Im furious about what has been happening, but while theres part of me thats tempted to re-introduce public flogging as a counter-measure, my better nature tells me that a steady, measured response is whats needed.
In the medium to long term its economic policy, town planning, and services for young people that will make a difference; and somewhere, lurking behind it all perhaps, is a poorly defined ideological argument about the nature of our economic system itself. How can it be morally right, to have a system that cultivates such grotesque inequities?
The UK is not a social state anymore there is a big gap between classes .unemployment, low wages for working class, cuts of benefits, education, nhs .and so on . so I am not surprised by this anger ..
I completely disagree with the article and could not agree more with mhs comment. I am a parent myself and am fully aware of my role and responsibility in shaping my childrens futures and bringing them up to be decent, respectful adults. Stop blaming poverty, society yada yada for the disgraceful, blatant lawlessness of the people that committed these crimes. Parents are childrens first and biggest role models and they need to regain control!
Why blame the parents? Because morals, behavior, respect for others, general conscience and manners are all set in standards born out of the HOME from a very early age this isnt myth, its fact, age-old fact.
I think this article is extremely poor I think there are a LOT of unemployed people from ALL ethnic backgrounds that would take great offence to whats said in it. Nothing changes what is right and what is wrong, even supposed social abandonment. Why is it that so many Europeans can come here and find work or make work etc.? If the locals cant do it, someone else will. I think this highlights my point exactly if youre motivated and have good morals, you can do anything.
The people we have witnessed on our TVs over the last few days are nothing short of scum and if society HAS abandoned them, I for one am pleased! They deserve nothing from the rest of us that contribute to society or those who are unfortunate enough to not be able to, but are nice, honest and morally sound people who will contribute one day when their opportunity arrises.
There are people FAR worse off than those thugs, arsonists and looters in the world who would give their right arm to live here and have a chance. A teacher from a school today has been sent to the Crown Court for sentancing after being found looting how does HE fit in to your awful steretyping aricle exactly?
And what is it with blaming the coalition? If Labour hadnt put this country on its knees for the 2nd time in one generation, we wouldnt be in the economic mess were in. And were still arguably THE most prosperous country in Europe.
Youre just using this issue, like Miliband does, as a way of attacking the government. Its weak, very weak, like Mel I believe its dangerous journalism.
I moved to this country 10 years ago to Lewisham and have lived here ever since. My visa would not allow me even the basic of services but if you get on with it and get out and about you will easily find a job. Granted, it wont be much more, if at all that what the dole pays at the bottom end but when you have no other option it is pretty easy to make the right choice between getting up and going to work or to join the criminals. It is exactly this authors ideas that the state owes people a living that is the reason behind the progressive worsening of the socio-economic issues affecting Lewisham. Take the cash out of the benefits system and get the supermarkets to fund development of a pre-paid debit card system that only allows purchases of food and essentials. Top up the oyster cards, pay the landlords from housing benefit and even let them off paying the council tax that the rest of us workers pay to enable these people to stay idle. All of a sudden the bone idle have no cash in their pocket and have to think about finding a job. They wont starve and they will be able to get to job interviews. All of a sudden though they will realise they will have to sign up as participating members of society if they are to have all the things they so violently tried to steal over the previous few days and nights.
Parents who think it is the teachers jobs to teach children discipline need re-educating. Absent fathers need to be cut adrift from the benefits system if they choose the same life for their offspring by not meeting their responsibilites. They may not be able to meet them financially but they should still be made to act like fathers and more importantly like role models. At parent teacher interviews when the teacher says little Johnny isnt paying attention in class or is being disruptive they should be backing the teacher and not their little urchins.
Why do the rest of us that can get ourselves out of bed, pay taxes be obligated to help people who choose not to help themselves. It is nobodys fault but the children and their parents if their school years are wasted and the kids turn out unemployable. Lewisham has some good schools, some excellent teachers and a support system for parents and their kids if they choose to work within the system.
It isnt rocket science to understand that when teachers say to the kids that they need to apply themselves to get anywhere in life they actually mean it. Why should the kid whose school years are not as exciting as others because they spent their time studying be made to feel guilty and pay ever increasing taxes as an adult to fund a life of idleness for those who chose to waste their potential.
It would be great if more people would distinguish between explaining something and justifying it. They are not the same! We shall all not be able to deal with such awful problems as the current riots if we dont try to understand WHY they are happening. That is what Heather was doing in the excellent original posting. I therefore can find myself agreeing with her and also with much of what Mel and others say. Yes, of course we have a right to be furious but we also need to understand why .
MHs piece hits the issue head on. I am a white middle aged middle class male living in an affluent area. I have worked very hard and originate from a very poor working class background and I have achieved an enviable lifestyle.
There is NO excuse for this sort of behaviour and to blame the situation on poor parenting and lack of opportunity is a lame excuse. I know many black people that have achieved success in their lives. If it is a colour issue why do Asian people seem to succeed in business and the professions?
Ook in Chili komen jongeren op straat met eisen waar we volledig kunnen achter staan. Maar dus ook daar breken rellen uit en ook daar spreken ze natuurlijk van bendes criminelen...ook daar weer spectaculaire beelden op alle zenders en ook daar tracht men dus iedereen de stuipen op het lijf te jagen met te sprteken over onverantwoorde elementen...
Bij studentenprotesten in de Chileense hoofdstad Santiago en andere steden zijn rellen uitgebroken. Winkels werden geplunderd en autos gingen in vlammen op. De politie greep in met traangas en waterkanonnen. Dit meldt persbureau AP.
Het protest van tienduizenden scholieren en studenten voor beter onderwijs verliep vreedzaam, tot gemaskerde jongeren autos in brand staken. Ze gooiden straatmeubilair naar de politie en enkelen van hen vielen een apartementengebouw aan met stenen. De oproerpolitie zette traangas en gepantserde voertuigen met waterkanonnen in om de relschoppers in bedwang te krijgen.
Tegen middernacht waren 273 betogers aangehouden, waarvan 73 in Santiago. Zeker 23 politieagenten raakten gewond bij de rellen.
Volgens een studentenleider van de Universiteit van Chili waren zon 150.000 mensen op de been in de hoofdstad, vooral in zijstraten omdat de overheid hen, net als vijf dagen geleden, verbood de hoofdstraat te gebruiken voor het protest. Vijf dagen geleden liepen betogingen in de stad ook uit op onrust en werden 900 mensen opgepakt.
De onrust in het Chileense onderwijs houdt al een maand of twee aan. Studenten aan hogescholen en universiteiten weigeren naar klassen te komen, nemen scholen over en organiseren demonstraties om hun eisen voor verandering in hoe de Chileense regering het publieke onderwijs financiert.
Veel Chilenen steunen de betogende studenten en het vertrouwen in de regering van president Sebastián Piñera daalt.
Bij massaal studentenprotest tegen de regering van de Chileense president Sebastian Pinera zijn 396 mensen gearresteerd. Bij de politie vielen er 55 gewonden, onder de burgerbevolking 23. In heel het land kwamen duizenden mensen de straat op om gratis en kwaliteitsvol publiek onderwijs te eisen. Het was het meest massale protest in Chili sinds het einde van de militaire dictatuur van Augusto Pinochet in 1990. In de hoofdstad Santiago alleen al waren er zowat 100.000 betogers.
Gemaskerde betogers kregen het aan de stok met de politie, vandaliseerden private eigendommen en gooiden barricades op. De Chileense regering beklaagde zich erover dat het om gewelddadige demonstranten ging. Studentenleiders ontkenden dat wie dan ook van hun betogers crimineel had gehandeld. Bij gelijkaardige protesten vorige week waren er 874 arrestaties en raakten 90 politiemensen gewond. (dpa/afp/lpb)
Ha, we horen nu weer de traditionele zedepredikers orakelen over "de verloren jeugd", de bandeloosheid en zedenverwildering. We willen er toch eventjes op wijzen dat rellen en opstanden hun eigen soort dynamiek kennen die vrijwel ongewijzigd bleef over de eeuwen heen. Je kon recent in Parijs nog een tentoonstelling bezoeken over de opstand van187, beter gekend als de Commune. Er was een mooie verzameling fotomateriaal en je kon daar heel duidelijk uit opmaken dat er massaal was geplunderd en gebrand door de opstandelingen die trouwens zeer terecht zich hadden trachten te verzetten tegen "les Versaillais". Maar in elk geval hadden ze in hun eerste spontane opwelling toch maar de helft van Parijs afgestookt waaronder het Palais des Tuileries, symbool van de macht. De latere politierapporten spraken bijna net de zelfde taal als de Britse imbeciele politiekers van zowel Labour als de aan de macht zijnde conservatieven. Van deze laatsen moet je trouwens niks anders verwachten. Breek de staatsinstellingen af tot op het minimum, politie incluis en alles wordt beter...en dan gebeurt dit...politie wordt terug uitgebreid en enkel de repressie wordt opgevoerd. Sociale maatregelen? Ho maar, veel te duur en toch onzinninge investeringen in krapuul dat er enkel op uit is alles kapot te slaan wat hardwerkende burgers trachten op te bouwen...het eeuwenoude verhaal...niks geleerd...steeds even dwaas! Als je leest dat een 11jarige veroordeeld wordt door een uitzonderingsrechtbank voor het stelen van een vuilbak dan weet je het wel. Wat dachten die intellectuelen misschien? Dat een elfjarige uit een rotbuurt als hij temidden zijn stelende en plunderende buren en vrienden staat, plots de bijbel begint te citeren of Marx, laat staan Baudrillard? Die ket wil ook wel wat lol en iets meegraaien en dan pakt ie maar wat overblijft. Een vuilnisemmer van 50 pond.... totaal verloren is ie dan voor de maatschappij. Diegenen die zoiets uit hun nek slaan, kunnen best eens een jaar verplicht verblijf in één van die rotwijken worden opgelegd met de zelfde inkomsten als hun leuke buren. We zullen dan meteen merken hoelang dat soort politici en betweters het zullen volhouden zonder hun kalmeerpillekes die ze nu al moeten slikken als hun alarm het laat afweten of als hun tweede auto niet start. Laat ons niet vergeten dat er (terug) een onderklasse bestaat die plots in al haar hopeloze razernij onze zekerheden kan bedreigen. Dat is de les die we moeten onthouden en waarvoor oplossingen moeten gezocht worden. Laten we ook niet vergeten dat al dat gelul over "wie echt wil, vindt wel werk" al lang tot de verloren tijd behoort. Het heeft zelfs nooit bestaan voor mensen uit dit soort buurten...Misschien een luizenjob van veertien dagen waar je best niet vraagt hoeveel je zal verdienen...En de romantiek van de Commune en andere opstanden vind je enkel in de romantische boekskes die werden geschreven door de linkse filosofen van toen. De realiteit was rauw en weinig bevlogen maar er was hoop op een betere wereld en die blijkt nu ook afwezig te zijn...Een staat die niet meer gerespecteerd wordt omwille van haar inspanningen om ook de armsten te beschermen draait uiteindelijk uit op de dictatuur van rijk over arm. Blijkbaar kunnen onze zogenaamde democratieên ook uitgroeien tot zulke dictaturen zonder dat er wezenlijk iets aan het politiek systeem wijzigt. De regels blijven geldig maar niemand stemt nog omdat ze de politiek niet meer vertrouwen en louter op zichzelf zijn aangewezen ook wat betreft de primaire behoeften als veiligheid. Ofwel stemt men op populistische idioten met mirakelrecepten.
A man looks out of the broken window of a mobile telephone shop that was looted in Tottenham (Reuters)
Thu, 11 Aug 2011 8:40a.m.
By Paisley Dodds and Meera Selva
Young rioters clogged Britain's courthouses Wednesday (overnight NZT), each one painting a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old gangster arrested for stealing a garbage can.
Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots - some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.
Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any one plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.
"Nobody is doing nothing for us - not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who lives near Tottenham, the blighted London neighbourhood where the riots started. He only gave his nickname "Freddy," because he took part in the looting and was scared of facing prosecution; he was not among the youths in court.
Britain also has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU and alarmingly high youth unemployment - roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all young black youths are out of work.
As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's blinkered to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.
"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham.
"The argument that this doesn't have anything to do with expenditure cuts or economics doesn't stand up to the evidence. If that's true, then what we have here are hundreds of young, crazed kids simply acting irrationally. I don't think that's the case."
Nearly 1,200 people have been arrested since the riots erupted Saturday, mostly poor youths from a broad section of Britain's many races and ethnicities.
It's unclear what role racial tensions have played in the riots, if any.
In Tottenham, most residents are white, but blacks from Africa or the Caribbean account for around a quarter of the ethnic mix. It's also home to Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Asian immigrants. The rage has appeared to cut across ethnic lines, with poverty as the main common denominator.
But there's a history of racial tension in many of these neighbourhoods, and the riots themselves were triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham.
In 1985, the neighbourhood was home to the Broadwater Farm riot, an event seared in the memories of many of the rioters' parents. Back then, violence exploded area when a black woman died from a stroke during a police search. The area remains a hotbed of ethnic tension: In the past year, police have logged some 100 racist or religion based hate crimes.
Other social problems afflict the places where rioting erupted: high teen pregnancy rates, gun crime and drug trafficking.
Daniel Cavaglieri, one of the lawyers for a 17-year-old black teenager who appeared with dozens of others at Highbury Magistrates Court on Wednesday, said the youth was studying mechanics and trying to finish school. He was accused of following his older cousin into looting a clothing shop, and charged with intent to steal.
"His mother is furious he was out and about at that time. She genuinely thought he was at a friend's house," Cavaglieri told the court. "He's going to be grounded."
Britain's Conservative-led government is implementing painful austerity measures in an attempt to get the country's finances in order. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged £80 billion of spending cuts and £30 billion in extra taxes to trim Britain's huge deficit, swollen after the government spent billions bailing out foundering banks.
The plans to cut services from welfare to education sparked violent protests last year, as students took to the streets to demonstrate against the tripling of university fees. The government is also cutting civil service jobs and benefits, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66, hiking the amount public sector employees contribute to pensions and reducing their retirement payouts.
The austerity measures will also slash housing benefit payments used to subsidise rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families out of their homes and force them toward the fringes of the country's capital.
Economists at the Centre for Economic Policy Research say such cuts promise more unrest. Most of Britain's deepest cuts haven't even come yet.
"There's usually something that sparks these things off," said Hans-Joachim Voth, a research fellow at the centre. "The question is why is it that in 90 percent of these cases that nothing happens? Why is it that some places just end up like a tinder box?"
An 11-year-old boy was among one of the youngest to appear in court on Wednesday.
The boy, from Romford, Essex, told the court he had joined in a gang of youths who looted a department store. Wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, the youngster spoke only to confirm his name, age and date of birth. He pleaded guilty to burglary, after stealing a waste bin worth 50 pounds. A charge of violent disorder was dropped.
Courts have been running nearly 24 hours a day to hear all the cases since the rioting began. Most cases are heard in a blink of an eye and only give a snapshot of some of the youngsters' lives. Most of the youths also can't be named because they are minors.
The courts have been chaotic with a near-constant stream of defendants - many of whom haven't had a chance to talk at length with their attorneys or some whose records have been sent to the wrong courts or wrong attorneys.
Another of the boys who appeared Wednesday was a 15-year-old charged with using or threatening unlawful violence, a charge to which he pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said the boy, who already has a criminal record of theft, is an only child who lives with his widowed father. He came to Britain from Germany three years ago after leaving Ukraine when his mother died.
Police say he was in the thick of Tuesday's rioting in London's Hackney area, throwing stones and missiles.
Under the Labour-led government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, authorities tried to penalise badly behaved youth with Anti-Social Behavior Orders, or ASBOs. The orders have since become badges of honour for many of Britain's youth.
In 2008, there were more than 1 million reported cases of violent crimes in England and Wales alone. By comparison, there were 331,778 reported incidents in France and some 210,885 incidents in Germany. Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers is also among the highest in Europe.
"There's income inequality, extremely high levels of unemployment between 16 and 24-year-olds and huge parts of this population not in education or training," Goodwin said. "There's a general malaise amongst a particular generation."
A man looks out of the broken window of a mobile telephone shop that was looted in Tottenham (Reuters)
Thu, 11 Aug 2011 8:40a.m.
By Paisley Dodds and Meera Selva
Young rioters clogged Britain's courthouses Wednesday (overnight NZT), each one painting a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old gangster arrested for stealing a garbage can.
Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots - some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.
Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any one plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.
"Nobody is doing nothing for us - not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who lives near Tottenham, the blighted London neighbourhood where the riots started. He only gave his nickname "Freddy," because he took part in the looting and was scared of facing prosecution; he was not among the youths in court.
Britain also has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU and alarmingly high youth unemployment - roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all young black youths are out of work.
As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's blinkered to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.
"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham.
"The argument that this doesn't have anything to do with expenditure cuts or economics doesn't stand up to the evidence. If that's true, then what we have here are hundreds of young, crazed kids simply acting irrationally. I don't think that's the case."
Nearly 1,200 people have been arrested since the riots erupted Saturday, mostly poor youths from a broad section of Britain's many races and ethnicities.
It's unclear what role racial tensions have played in the riots, if any.
In Tottenham, most residents are white, but blacks from Africa or the Caribbean account for around a quarter of the ethnic mix. It's also home to Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Asian immigrants. The rage has appeared to cut across ethnic lines, with poverty as the main common denominator.
But there's a history of racial tension in many of these neighbourhoods, and the riots themselves were triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham.
In 1985, the neighbourhood was home to the Broadwater Farm riot, an event seared in the memories of many of the rioters' parents. Back then, violence exploded area when a black woman died from a stroke during a police search. The area remains a hotbed of ethnic tension: In the past year, police have logged some 100 racist or religion based hate crimes.
Other social problems afflict the places where rioting erupted: high teen pregnancy rates, gun crime and drug trafficking.
Daniel Cavaglieri, one of the lawyers for a 17-year-old black teenager who appeared with dozens of others at Highbury Magistrates Court on Wednesday, said the youth was studying mechanics and trying to finish school. He was accused of following his older cousin into looting a clothing shop, and charged with intent to steal.
"His mother is furious he was out and about at that time. She genuinely thought he was at a friend's house," Cavaglieri told the court. "He's going to be grounded."
Britain's Conservative-led government is implementing painful austerity measures in an attempt to get the country's finances in order. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged £80 billion of spending cuts and £30 billion in extra taxes to trim Britain's huge deficit, swollen after the government spent billions bailing out foundering banks.
The plans to cut services from welfare to education sparked violent protests last year, as students took to the streets to demonstrate against the tripling of university fees. The government is also cutting civil service jobs and benefits, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66, hiking the amount public sector employees contribute to pensions and reducing their retirement payouts.
The austerity measures will also slash housing benefit payments used to subsidise rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families out of their homes and force them toward the fringes of the country's capital.
Economists at the Centre for Economic Policy Research say such cuts promise more unrest. Most of Britain's deepest cuts haven't even come yet.
"There's usually something that sparks these things off," said Hans-Joachim Voth, a research fellow at the centre. "The question is why is it that in 90 percent of these cases that nothing happens? Why is it that some places just end up like a tinder box?"
An 11-year-old boy was among one of the youngest to appear in court on Wednesday.
The boy, from Romford, Essex, told the court he had joined in a gang of youths who looted a department store. Wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, the youngster spoke only to confirm his name, age and date of birth. He pleaded guilty to burglary, after stealing a waste bin worth 50 pounds. A charge of violent disorder was dropped.
Courts have been running nearly 24 hours a day to hear all the cases since the rioting began. Most cases are heard in a blink of an eye and only give a snapshot of some of the youngsters' lives. Most of the youths also can't be named because they are minors.
The courts have been chaotic with a near-constant stream of defendants - many of whom haven't had a chance to talk at length with their attorneys or some whose records have been sent to the wrong courts or wrong attorneys.
Another of the boys who appeared Wednesday was a 15-year-old charged with using or threatening unlawful violence, a charge to which he pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said the boy, who already has a criminal record of theft, is an only child who lives with his widowed father. He came to Britain from Germany three years ago after leaving Ukraine when his mother died.
Police say he was in the thick of Tuesday's rioting in London's Hackney area, throwing stones and missiles.
Under the Labour-led government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, authorities tried to penalise badly behaved youth with Anti-Social Behavior Orders, or ASBOs. The orders have since become badges of honour for many of Britain's youth.
In 2008, there were more than 1 million reported cases of violent crimes in England and Wales alone. By comparison, there were 331,778 reported incidents in France and some 210,885 incidents in Germany. Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers is also among the highest in Europe.
"There's income inequality, extremely high levels of unemployment between 16 and 24-year-olds and huge parts of this population not in education or training," Goodwin said. "There's a general malaise amongst a particular generation."
The deputy Mayor in charge of Londons police authority and Scotland Yards high command have both repeatedly claimed that nobody could have foreseen that an initial protest over the shooting dead of a black suspect in Tottenham would mushroom into a riot situation. However, Chris Gilson finds that recent history should have provided plenty of pointers to how deaths at police hands or in police custody can often act as triggers for wider outbreaks of lawlessness.
The philosopher George Friedrich Hegel once despairingly remarked: What experience and history teach us is this that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. This quote certainly seems applicable to events in Tottenham on Saturday evening (6 August) when the London police faced an initially small protest over the shooting of a 29 year old man (Mark Duggan) by armed police two days earlier.
Credit: Lenin's Tomb
From the start, doubts were quickly raised over the circumstances in which Duggan was killed. Yet there were no senior officers available at the time of the initial protest to answer the many queries and issues of the crowd of family, friends and supporters, who were unhappy at the lack of communication about how Mr Duggan died. Subsequently confrontations developed between elements of the crowd and local police, which then quickly morphed into rioting. The long delays in Scotland Yard subsequently responding to this situation suggested vulnerabilities in their capacity to act, which then helped ignite copycat rioting in other areas that same night, and in many other areas of London on subsequent nights.
Scotland Yard senior officers defended their response and along with the London deputy-Mayor Kit Malthouse, have repeatedly argued that no one could have foreseen that an initially peaceful protest over a single death at police hands would turn into a riot. Yet there is a long history of the suspicious deaths of ethnic minority people in police custody or at police hands, and sometimes other kinds of heavy-handed policing, functioning as triggers for disturbances that morph into large-scale riots. This history stretches all the way back to the urban riots of the mid 1960s in the USA. My first Table here shows commonalities with two well-known more recent incidents.
Table 1: Major riot waves sparked by triggers
Riot
Year
Place
Trigger
Aftermath
Initial Tottenham riot, followed by copycat looting
2011
Tottenham,
London, later spreading to many areas
Fatal shooting of 29-year-old black man Mark Duggan by police
Riot in Tottenham and later looting in other parts of London. Millions of £ worth of damage. 100 arrests, 26 police officers injured in the initial riot.
Civil unrest
2005
Paris suburbs and other towns in France
Three young boys escaping police, climbed into an electricity substation and were electrocuted.
Acquittal of police officers of the severe beating of Rodney King
Several days of rioting, 53 deaths, 2,000 injured. $800million $1billion damage
Most of the tactics used by rioters in Tottenham that the London police found so hard to combat were also strongly foreshadowed in the 2005 French disturbances especially the arson of cars and odd buildings, and the rapid movements of feral youths from one area to another.
Paris 2005
London 2011
Credit: Beacon Radio (Creative Commons NC)
Looking further back in British history, the Metropolitan Police should also have been aware of an apparent electoral-riot cycle pattern in the UK that occurred under the last Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Here severe disturbances broke out in stressed urban areas after periods when Tory governments severely squeezed public spending at times of high unemployment, almost invariably during the mid-years between general elections. Again Table 2 shows that the triggers were always incidents that imperil the legitimacy of policing with some sections of local communities.
Table 2: Key events in the electoral/riot cycles during the 1979-97 period
Riot
Year
Place
Trigger
Aftermath
Brixton riots
1995
Brixton, London
Death of black 26 year old, Wayne Douglas, in police custody
Standoff between 100 demonstrators and police. Police attacked, shops, cars damaged.
Broadwater Farm riot
1985
Tottenham, London
Brixton riot; Death of Cynthia Jarrett during police search of her home.
Day of rioting, murder of PC Keith Blakelock by rioters. 3 convicted of murder, but later cleared due to lack of evidence.
Brixton riot
1985
Brixton, London
Shooting of Jamaican Dorothy Groce by police while seeking her son on firearms offences
48 hours of riots, 1 building destroyed. The police officer who shot Groce was acquitted of malicious wounding.
Brixton riots
1981
Brixton, London
Police thought by crowd to have not been getting medical help for a stabbed black youth.
364 injuries (299 police), 82 arrests, 28 buildings destroyed. The Scarman report later found indiscriminate use of stop and search powers by police.
Toxteth riots
1981
Toxteth, Liverpool
Heavy handed arrest of young black men under SuS law
9 days of riots, 1 death, 468 police injured, 500 arrests, 70 buildings destroyed
St Pauls riot
1980
St Pauls, Bristol
Tension over stop and search of young black men (SuS law)
90 charged. 19 police injured. All those prosecuted were acquitted.
Of course, under the last Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown there were strong efforts to improve policy-community relations and to improve social cohesion. All of the riots listed in Table 2 were triggered by the heavy handed policing of young black men, and strenuous efforts at police-community liaison were subsequently made to stop such problems recurring, which for more than a decade seemed to have succeeded. So perhaps the Metropolitan Police felt that this was an era that lay behind them. Yet different warning signs of deteriorating relations with youths in many communities were also evident. And policies such as the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance for 16 to 18 year olds directly affected the urban youth cohort.
However, Table 3 below shows that there have been some deaths at police hands which did not spark unrest or riots, and for which no policemen have yet been convicted in UK courts.
Table 3: Deaths at police hands
Event
Year
Place
Trigger
Aftermath
Death of Iain Tomlinson during G20 protests
2009
City of London
Tomlinson struck by police officer and fell. Died of injuries soon after.
Inquest jury found unlawful killing. PC Simon Harwood to stand trial for manslaughter.
Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes
2005
Stockwell, London
de Menezes shot by plain clothes police who suspected he was a terrorist.
Jury returned an open verdict. Legal settlement with family reached.
James Ashley
1998
St Leonards, East Sussex
Shot dead by police while unarmed
Enquiry found evidence by chief officers to conceal information. Five officers later found not guilty of the killing.
Death of Blair Peach, allegedly by police
1979
Southall, London
Anti Nazi League Demo against National Front
Report concluded he was killed by police, but killer impossible to identify.
However, even in cases where there was apparently there was no little or no damage to police-community relations, the reputational effects may linger for years. An example was the 2005 execution style shooting of the unarmed Jean Charles de Menenzes at close range in Stockwell tube station by Met officers, who mistakenly formed the view that he was a terrorist. A key element in sparking the initial disturbances over Mark Duggans death were completely unfounded viral rumours that he too was the subject of an execution style shooting rumours which the Independent Police Complaints Commission only denied after the first riot had occurred.
Finally, it seems beyond coincidence that the past weekends riots have come at a bad time for the top command of the Metropolitan Police, some of whose officers were heavily implicated in the recent News of the World phone hacking scandal, clearly raising issues for police governance. Last month saw the resignations of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson over an expenses issue, and Assistant Commissioner John Yates because of failure to investigate the News of the World scandal. (In October 2008, less than three years before the loss of Stephenson, London mayor Boris Johnson forced out his predecessor as Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair). The Home Secretary Theresa May also announced a review by Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary into police corruption and the relationship between police and the media, focusing on the Met.
Add in the absence of all the senior ministers in the government on holiday at the same time, and the extraordinarily reluctant stance of London Mayor Boris Johnson, the PM David Cameron and the Home Secretary Theresa May to end their vacations early, and it seems that the police were not the only decision-makers who seem to have learnt little from past history.
Fire rips through a retail store in Manchester, in northwest England, Tuesday, marking a fourth night of violence in Britain. Looters have targeted electronics and clothing stores.
With 16,000 police officers out in full force in London's streets in an effort to put a stop to violent riots that have ravaged the city for three days, the British capital was "relatively calm" Tuesday, says the BBC.
But despite the quieter scene in London, fires, riots, and looting erupted in Manchester and other cities. And on Amazon's British website, sales of baseball bats have apparently risen by 3,263 percent in the past day. Andrew Sullivan's The Dishfirst reported the sales spike.
Many buses and train services between potential trouble spots have been discontinued, an attempt to make it more difficult for rioters to meet in large groups.
The BBC has established a feature page with text messages from its reporters, key developments, and a live video feed of its coverage.
Britain's venerable bookstores have been weathering the riots, often staying open even as gangs gathered nearby. And they've done so with panache.
On Monday the store tweeted, "10 mounted policemen have joined the riot police outside the shop, which we did close in the end, shortly before Harris on the corner looted."
On Tuesday, the store was open for business again and keeping British traditions alive: "We're open, we're ok, morale is low," the store wrote, "but we're drinking a lot of tea."
Large chain stores Waterstone's and WH Smith have been consulting with police and closing shops deemed to be at risk. But most have simply shortened their hours, and booksellers reported little damage Tuesday. Most of the rioters seemed to be targeting electronics and clothing stores, according to reports.
One tweet became particularly popular after last night's looting. Posted by Eleanor Orebi Gann, it read: "Waterstone's staff member to me last night: 'We'll probably stay open. If they steal some books, they might actually learn something."
Writing for Global Post (and published here at NPR), Michael Goldfarb gives a striking first-person account of the riots, and how they've affected daily life for him and his wife.
Noting the news channels' helicopter coverage of the riots and looting and the announcement of new targets by cellphone Goldfarb says, "It isn't hard to imagine that young people from the same social background around the city watching those pictures and getting texts from people they know in Hackney decided it was worth the risk of arrest to go out to the local shopping area and take what they wanted."
He also gives a glimpse of what he sees as the average British rioter:
The rioters were overwhelmingly teenagers and kids in their 20s. About 20 percent of 16-24 year olds in Britain are unemployed. That figure is much, much higher on council estates the British term for housing projects. (You can leave school at the age of 16 in this country). Unemployment statistics in Britain are sadly vague, but a reasonable estimate of youth unemployment just in Hackney is 33 percent.
Daar komt Baudrillard : England's burning en B-H-V-jeugd brandt shoppingcentrum Anderlecht plat...
we krijgen nog steeds commentaren over de plunderingen van Engelse steden in de stijl van "het zijn een paar jonge criminelen" terwijl al meer dan 500 jongeren werden opgepakt en er, na Londen, steeds meer Engelse steden geplunderd worden. Oproepen om het leger in te zetten en rubberkogels te gebruiken zijn schering en inslag en komen zelfs van labourvertegenwoordigers die waarschijnlijk even vergeten zijn welke klasse zij vandaag zouden moeten vertegenwoordigen. Kunnen deze plunderingen worden goedgekeurd? Natuurlijk niet. Kan er misschien toch eens een les getrokken worden? Hopelijk wel, anders ziet het er heel akelig uit. We weten nu stilaan allemaal dat het gedaan is met de ongebreidelde economische groei en dat de westerse landen zich eindelijk zullen moeten neerleggen bij, in het beste geval, een trage groei en eventueel zelfs een stabilisering. Dat wil dus onvermijdelijk zeggen dat er een herverdeling van de rijkdom zal moeten komen. In een economie die blijft groeien kan er een tijdje geduld worden dat rijken stinkend rijk worden zo lang de armere lagen van de bevolking ook een toename van hun welvaart kennen. Dit is dus definitief ten einde. Bovendien zijn veruit alle morele waarden volledige vervangen door idiote zaken die het systeem zelf heeft uitgevonden om de mensen te laten dromen. Als we even kijken welke rolmodellen de jongeren tegenwoordig voorgeschoteld krijgen, voetballers die miljoenen euro's ontvangen bij hun tranferts en in bed duiken met fotomodellen. In Frankrijk is zelfs hun president bijna zulk rolmodel. Geen enkele jongere is immers vergeten dat hij zichzelf een riante loonsverhoging toekende bij het begin van zijn ambtstermijn, hij heeft een vrij cru taalgebruik, denk maar aan zijn Karcheruitspraak, daagt mensen uit tijdens publieke optredens en trouwt tenslotte met een sexy fotomodel...het cliché van "the king". Maar ook in film, tv-feuilletons, muziekclips worden zulke rolmodellen opgevoerd. Gangsterrap is zowat de meest populaire jongerenmuziek. Veel wriemenlende sexy babes rond een stoere aap, ongeacht zijn huidskleur, die volhangt met gouden kettingen, joekels van blinkende ringen en een compleet debiele outfit. En plots staat iedereen verwonderd te kijken dat een ganse generatie 13-tot en met 30jarigen zonder de minste toekomstperspectieven zich als een bende middeleeuwse plunderaars op kleding- en juwelierswinkels stort. Hoe hypocriet kunnen we zijn? Had iemand misschien verwacht dat die jongeren misschien netjes naar Disneychannel zouden blijven kijken? Naar afgelikte adolescenten in mooie villawijken met puberhartproblemen? Gaat het over criminelen? Het antwoord is niet zo eenvoudig. Hun gedrag kan je crimineel noemen, ongetwijfeld. Maar volgens ons zijn het in de eerste plaats de perfecte producten van een maatschappij die hen totaal genegeerd heeft en volgepropt met lege consumptiebehoeften die ze NOOIT in hun ganse leven hadden kunnen bevredigen. De oorzaken zijn natuurlijk velerlei, kapotte huishoudens, gebrekkig onderwijs, werkloosheid enz. Maar voor dertien-veertienjarige plunderaars moet je niet meteen de oorzaken enkel en alleen bij de maatschappij leggen. Als je als jongere al van bij het openen van je babyogen merkt dat je eigenlijk niet gewenst was, noch door je ouders, noch door je omgeving, noch door de rest van de maatschappij. Voor duizend en één reden. Van de uit het zicht verdwenen "vader is een klootzak" en jij gelijkt er op... Tot en met je huidskleur waarmee je nergens echt welkom bent zeker niet als je dan bovendien telkens een woonadres moet opgeven in een totaal "verkeerde" buurt...tja...moeten we dan beginnen roepen om rubberkogels te gebruiken tegen dit soort "gespuis"? We kunnen inderdaad best bang zijn van wat we gedurende jaren hebben gekweekt in de stedelijke verloederde wijken. Ze hebben daar totaal niks te verliezen. Niet eens hun eer. Niks. Ze hadden niks te verwachten. Nada. Hun straffen en opsluiten zal hen hun eerste fierheid geven. Voor de eerste keer zal er rekening met hen gehouden worden ook als dertienjarige. Eindelijk zullen ze een beetje "king" worden. Het huidige systeem heeft geen oplossingen voor deze generatie jongeren uit dit soort buurten. In hun wereldbeeld grijpen ze nu hun enige kans om iets te betekenen, iets te hebben en om de gehate maatschappij schrik aan te jagen...blindelings branden en plunderen. Wie neemt het hen kwalijk? Laten we eens goed in de spiegel kijken want we konden perfect weten dat dit zou gebeuren en zal blijven gebeuren. Zelfs 16.000 tot de tanden gewapende flikken zullen het weinig fraaie wereldbeeld van deze jongeren over een wereld die hen niet lust blijven versterken. In welke wereld leven we trouwens dat 16.000 politieagenten moeten worden ingezet om grote delen van onze jeugd te beletten sport- en telefoonwinkels te plunderen? We zijn veraf van de bekende bankenreklame voor specifieke jeugdrekeningen met vrolijk lachende meisjes en jongens. Europa ontwaakt plots in zijn eigen smerige realiteit! Hoog tijd om na te denken en eindelijk eens andere onderwerpen aan te snijden dan ratings van Standard & Poors, kwakkelende banken, dalende beurskoersen, openbare schuld. Volgens onze cynische mening mogen we deze plunderaars misschien zelfs dankbaar zijn. Ze hebben ons eindelijk duidelijk gemaakt dat het steeds gaat over mensen en keuzes en niet over winsten, bonussen of bbp en ratings. Laat staan in Belgistan over B-H-V! Laat ons eindelijk iets doen aan kansarmoede. Wijken als Kuregem en Molenbeek of Borgerhout enz..., ons eigen Brixton en Enfield zijn grotere tijdbommen dan het arrondissement Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde. We verwachten niet meteen dat de jeugd van B-H-V het shoppingcentrum van Wijnegem of Anderlecht platbrandt...
en we vonden een steengoeie bijdrage nogmaals in The Guardian:
The UK riots: the psychology of looting
The shocking acts of looting may not be political, but they nevertheless say something about the beaten-down lives of the rioters
Looters ransack a corner shop in Hackney, London. Photograph: Olivia Harris/Reuters
The first day after London started burning, I spoke to Claire Fox, radical leftwinger and resident of Wood Green. On Sunday morning, apparently, people had been not just looting H&M, but trying things on first. By Monday night, Debenhams in Clapham Junction was empty, and in a cheeky touch, the streets were thronging with people carrying Debenhams bags. Four hours before, I had still thought this was just a north London thing. Fox said the riots seemed nihilistic, they didn't seem to be politically motivated, nor did they have any sense of community or social solidarity. This was inarguable. As one brave woman in Hackney put it: "We're not all gathering together for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker."
I think it's just about possible that you could see your actions refashioned into a noble cause if you were stealing the staples: bread, milk. But it can't be done while you're nicking trainers, let alone laptops. In Clapham Junction, the only shop left untouched was Waterstone's, and the looters of Boots had, unaccountably, stolen a load of Imodium. So this kept Twitter alive all night with tweets about how uneducated these people must be and the condition of their digestive systems. While that palled after a bit, it remains the case that these are shopping riots, characterised by their consumer choices: that's the bit we've never seen before. A violent act by the authorities, triggering a howl of protest that bit is as old as time. But crowds moving from shopping centre to shopping centre? Actively trying to avoid a confrontation with police, trying to get in and out of JD Sports before the "feds" arrive? That bit is new.
By 5pm on Monday, as I was listening to the brave manager of the Lewisham McDonald's describing, incredulously, how he had just seen the windows stoved in, and he didn't think they'd be able to open the next day, I wasn't convinced by nihilism as a reading: how can you cease to believe in law and order, a moral universe, co-operation, the purpose of existence, and yet still believe in sportswear? How can you despise culture but still want the flatscreen TV from the bookies? Alex Hiller, a marketing and consumer expert at Nottingham Business School, points out that there is no conflict between anomie and consumption: "If you look at Baudrillard and other people writing in sociology about consumption, it's a falsification of social life. Adverts promote a fantasy land. Consumerism relies upon people feeling disconnected from the world."
Leaving Baudrillard aside, just because there is no political agenda on the part of the rioters doesn't mean the answer isn't rooted in politics. Theresa May indeed most politicians, not just Conservatives are keen to stress that this is "pure criminality", untainted by higher purpose; the phrase is a gesture of reassurance rather than information, because we all know it's illegal to smash shop windows and steal things. "We're not going to be diverted by sophistry," is the tacit message. "As soon as things have calmed down, these criminals are going to prison, where criminals belong."
Those of us who don't have responsibility for public order can be more interrogative about what's going on: an authoritarian reading is that this is a generation with a false sense of entitlement, created by the victim culture fostered, and overall leniency displayed, by the criminal justice system. It's just a glorified mugging, in other words, conducted by people who ask not what they can do for themselves, but what other people should have done for them, and who may have mugged before, on a smaller scale, and found it to be without consequence.
At the other end of the authoritarian-liberal spectrum, you have Camila Batmanghelidjh's idea, movingly expressed in the Independent, that this is a natural human response to the brutality of poverty: "Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped . . . It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped."
Between these poles is a more pragmatic reading: this is what happens when people don't have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can't afford, and they have no reason ever to believe that they will be able to afford it. Hiller takes up this idea: "Consumer society relies on your ability to participate in it. So what we recognise as a consumer now was born out of shorter hours, higher wages and the availability of credit. If you're dealing with a lot of people who don't have the last two, that contract doesn't work. They seem to be targeting the stores selling goods they would normally consume. So perhaps they're rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can't afford it."
The type of goods being looted seems peculiarly relevant: if they were going for bare necessities, I think one might incline towards sympathy. I could be wrong, but I don't get the impression that we're looking at people who are hungry. If they were going for more outlandish luxury, hitting Tiffany's and Gucci, they might seem more political, and thereby more respectable. Their achilles heel was in going for things they demonstrably want.
Forensic psychologist Kay Nooney deals impatiently with the idea of cuts, specifically tuition fees, as an engine of lawlessness. "These people aren't interested in tuition fees. In constituency, it's most similar to a prison riot: what will happen is that, usually in the segregation unit, nobody will ever know exactly, but a rumour will emanate that someone has been hurt in some way. There will be some form of moral outrage that takes its expression in self-interested revenge. There is no higher purpose, you just have a high volume of people with a history of impulsive behaviour, having a giant adventure."
Of course, the difference is that, in a prison, liberty has already been lost. So something pretty serious must have happened in order for young people on the streets to be behaving as though they have already been incarcerated. As another criminologist, Professor John Pitts, has said: "Many of the people involved are likely to have been from low-income, high-unemployment estates, and many, if not most, do not have much of a legitimate future. There is a social question to be asked about young people with nothing to lose."
There seems to be another aspect to the impunity that the people rioting aren't taking seriously the idea it could rebound on them. All the most dramatic shots are of young men in balaclavas or with scarves tied round their faces, because it is such a striking, threatening image. But actually, watching snatches of phone footage and even professional news footage, it was much more alarming how many people made no attempt at all to cover their faces. This could go back to the idea that, with the closure of a number of juvenile facilities and the rhetoric about bringing down prison populations, people just don't believe they'll go to prison any more, at least not for something as petty as a pair of trainers. I feel for them; that may be true on a small scale, but when judges feel public confidence seriously to be at issue, they have it in themselves to be very harsh indeed (I'm thinking of Charlie Gilmour). But there is also a tang of surreality around it all, with the rioters calling the police "feds", as though they think they are in The Wire, and sending each other melodramatic texts saying: "So if you see a brother . . . SALUTE! If you see a fed . . . SHOOT!"
Late on Monday night, news went round Twitter that Turkish shopkeepers on Stoke Newington Road in Dalston were fighting off the marauders with baseball bats, and someone tweeted: "Bloody immigrants. Coming over here, defending our boroughs & communities." And it struck me that it hadn't occurred to me to walk on to my high street and see what was going on, let alone defend anything. I was watching events on a live feed, switching between Sky and the BBC, thinking how interesting it was, even though it was audible from my front door and at one point, when I couldn't tell whether the helicopter noise was coming from the telly or from real life, it was because it was both.
The Dalston clashes remind us, also, that it wasn't just JD Sports, even though the reputation of that chain is, for some reason, the most bound up with everything that's happened. Smaller, independent corner shops, the kind without a head office in Welwyn Garden City, that aren't insured up to the teeth, were ransacked as well, for their big-ticket items of booze and fags. When a chain is attacked, the protection of its corporate aspect means that, while we can appreciate the breakdown of law and order, we do not respond emotionally. When a corner shop is destroyed, however, the lawlessness has a victim, and we feel disgusted. That's what drags these events into focus: not the stuff that was stolen, but the people behind the stuff.
Will actions such as this address black deaths in police custody?
On Thursday, 4 August, 29 year-old Mark Duggan was shot dead by police as they attempted to arrest him in Tottenham whilst he was in a minicab. Following a peaceful demonstration by his family and supporters violence erupted as youths torched buildings and looted shops. The key question which must be asked however is will this riot and has this riot addressed black deaths in police custody?
Twenty-nine year old Mark Duggan was killed in Ferry Lane, Tottenham Hale by police officers working for Operation Trident which investigates gun crime in the black community. Three shots were fired and one bullet was found lodged in a police radio.
According to a BBC report (Mark Duggan shooting: Bullets results within 24 hours: 8 August 2011) the Independent Police Complaint Commission (IPCC) has refused to comment on a Guardian article (Doubts emerge over Duggan shooting as London burns: Sandra Laville, Paul Lewis, Vikram Dodd and Caroline Davies: August 2011) claiming that the bullet found lodged in the police radio was from a police gun, not Duggans.
According to a Guardian report (Mark Duggan handgun tests show conversion into lethal weapon: Sandra Laville: 8 August) Duggan was carrying a handgun, but a C019 firearms officer who was at the secene told Sky News that he never claimed that Duggan had shot at him.
The contradicting evidence and lack of communication from the police to the Duggan family led to the peaceful demonstration for the truth.
Duggans fiancee admitted that he was known to the police but denied that he was ever in prison. She also denied he was a gangster as portrayed in the media but said If he did have a gun which I dont know Mark would run. Mark is a runner. He would run rather than firing and thats coming from the bottom of my heart. This suggests that she was aware of his criminal activities. The Guardian (Mark Duggan: profile of Tottenham police shooting victim: 8 August 2011) says that Duggan wore a t-shirt with the words Star Gang across the front on his face-book page. The Guardian also says that The Voice newspaper linked Duggan to the Star Gang in north London which had been responsible for at least three deaths in the past few years.
The argument here is not whether Duggan was the criminal portrayed by sections of the media, it is his suspicious death at the hands of police which is a common oocurance within the black community. In my article Black deaths in police custody: We should never forget I covered the suspicious deaths of British reggae singer Smiley Culture real name David Emmanuel after a police raid of his home and the death of Kingsley Burrell Brown in police custody.
The statistics from the IPCCs own report titled, Deaths in or following police custody: An examination of the cases 1998/99 2008/09 is disturbing. It was found that 68% of people who died in police custody were arrested for non violent offences. There was a breach of police procedure in 27% of cases and that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds were more likely to be restrained whilst in police custody than whites.
Zephaniah Samuels (IPCC report highlights need for action over deaths in police custody: 3 December 2010: Black Mental Health UK) said, This report shows that over one-third of cases in which a Black detainee died occurred in circumstances in which police actions may have been a factor, this rises to almost one-half if the cases of accidental death where the police were present compared with only 4% of cases where the detainee was White.
Black lives are in danger when it comes to police arrests and this is a series issue which needs to be addressed but was not addressed by the looting youths who went on a rampage for what appears to be their own selfish consumerist needs rather than the subject raised by the Duggan family and other black lives that has been lost in police custody.
Rioting youths in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol looted Debenham stores and other shops on the high street. Tesco was looted in Bethnal Green. In Croydon, south London a big fire consumed Reeves furniture store. A bus was set alight in Peckham. A bakery was also set alight. Children as young as 14 were seen by local people looting local shops.
None of this has anything to do with black deaths in police custody, nor will these actions address black deaths in police custody. The mainstream media will focus on the violence and looting and by the time all this dies down the message will have been lost to the public.
All those involved in the looting arson has let down the Duggan family and the countless number of black people who have died in police custody.
Police in riot gear in Enfield, north London, on Sunday night. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.
The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.
One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.
Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)
Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.
As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur
uit Wiki: het valt op dat de politie nogal selectief te werk gaat en in armere wijken weinig weerstand biedt. Ze stelt soms zelfs voor aan "allochtone" winkeliers om zelfverdedigingsgroepen te vormen...we gaan er dus weer een stuk op achteruit en het principe van het monopolie van het geweld in staatshanden wankelt. Daar zijn zeker de minstbedeelden niet mee gebaat. Het volstaat niet om charges uit te vieren om Louis Vuitonwinkels te beschermen of een discussie in gang te trekken over het al dan niet aankopen van waterkannonnen. Het gaat hier om sociale onrust van de ergste soort. En de lijst wordt stilaan erg lang zoals jullie onderaan zullen kunnen lezen...
A march by some 200 people in Tottenham became violent and descended into rioting. Disturbances continued into the following days and spread to other areas of the city, including Wood Green, Enfield Town, Ponders End and Brixton. Vandalism, arson, looting and violent disorder were also reported in several boroughs of London, extending as far south as Croydon. At least 35 police officers have been injured. On 8 August 2011, the widespread rioting and looting spread to parts of Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Bristol, Kent and Leeds.[1][2][3][4] Over 525 people have been arrested since the start of the disruption, and the Metropolitan Police have announced their willingness to use baton rounds against rioters should there be another night of violence on 9 August 2011.
In response to the incidents, Prime Minister David Cameron, Home Secretary Theresa May and London Mayor Boris Johnson cut short their holidays to return to Britain. It was announced that Parliament will be recalled on 11 August to debate the situation.
Background
Historical context
Widely viewed as "the worst disturbances of their kind since the 1995 Brixton riots,"[11] the unrest occurred in the context of tense relations between the police and the black community in London, as well as other cities with significant black populations, such as Birmingham, which has been the setting of protests regarding the death of Kingsley Burrell.[who?][15][16] Commentators have drawn parallels to the Broadwater Farm riot of 1985, during which one police officer, Keith Blakelock, was murdered. [17][18] The disturbances were preceded by escalating calls for better oversight of the Metropolitan Police, extending calls which go back to the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the New Cross Fire, in relation to the deaths of black people. For instance, during the summer of 2011 there was a large nonviolent march to Scotland Yard over the summer spurred by the death of Smiley Culture, but this march was largely overlooked by the press.[19]
Placing the riots in a broader context, suspicion and resentment towards the police was attributed by one commentator to the 333 people who have died in police custody in England and Wales since 1998 without a single officer having been convicted of a crime. Other exacerbating factors include high poverty and unemployment, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the lowest social mobility in the developed world.[20][21][22]
Shooting of Mark Duggan
More immediately, the riots in Tottenham were spurred by the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011 during a planned arrest, in which one officer was injured.[23] The incident took place on the Ferry Lane bridge, next to Tottenham Hale station.[24]
The incident was referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).[23] This is standard practice whenever a member of the public dies as a result of police action. It is not yet known why police were attempting to arrest Duggan, but the IPCC said that the planned arrest was part of Operation Trident, a unit which investigates gun crime in London's black community to which Duggan belonged. Operation Trident specialises in combating gun crime relating to the illegal drug trade.[12]
Friends and relatives of Duggan, an alleged cocaine dealer and member of the 'Star Gang', claimed that he was unarmed.[14] The IPCC stated that a non-police-issue handgun was later recovered at the scene.[25] Duggan's girlfriend told the Evening Standard that she was shocked to learn her boyfriend of 13 years was carrying a gun.[24]
After the shooting, the media widely reported that a bullet was found embedded in a police radio, implying Duggan fired on the police.[26]The Guardian reported that initial ballistics tests on the bullet recovered from the police radio indicate it is a hollow-point bullet which matches those issued to police.[27][26]
Protest march
On 6 August, a peaceful protest was held, beginning at Broadwater Farm and finishing at Tottenham police station.[28] The protest was organised by friends and relatives of Duggan to demand justice for the family.[12][29][30] Around 200 people participated in this protest.[11]
Incidents
6 August
TOTTENHAM
A series of disturbances by people in Tottenham followed the protest march on 6 August. Attacks were carried out on police cars, a double-decker bus and local businesses and homes from around 22:30. Police vans and officers from the Territorial Support Group attended the scene of disorder on Tottenham High Road. Stores were looted by rioters after windows were smashed.[31] A number of people were left homeless.[32] Fireworks, petrol bombs and other missiles were also thrown at police.[12] Twenty-six officers were injured, including one who sustained head injuries. Firefighters experienced difficulty reaching a burning building due to the disorder.
A BBC News correspondent said his news crew and satellite vehicle came under attack from youths throwing missiles.[33] Some news crews left the scene due to the threat of violence. A Mail on Sunday photographer was beaten and mugged.[citation needed] The police had set up a cordon around Tottenham police station and a nearby group of BBC and Sky journalists. Some of the police were on horseback.[28]
A gang of youths burnt down Tottenham's post office at 22:15. Rioters threw bottles at a car in which a family of three, including a baby, were taking shelter after being forced to flee their burning home.[32]
Wood Green
At 20:00, the rioting had spread to Wood Green, but some riot police were on hand.[32]
Tottenham Hale
The violent clashes were followed by the looting of Tottenham Hale retail park, which continued until dawn without intervention by the police.[11]
7 August
Wood Green
There was further disorder in neighbouring Wood Green, two miles away, during the early hours of 7 August, when widespread looting broke out[34] in which around 100 youths targeted high-street game shops, electrical stores and clothing chains.[35] Others ransacked local shops on Wood Green High Road.[36] A family-run jeweller was among the retailers affected.[37]
Again, the police did not intervene to stop the looting.[11]
On Sunday evening, 7 August, violent disturbances erupted in Enfield, to the north of Tottenham, among heavy presence of riot police.[38]
Enfield Town centre, Enfield Town Park and alleyways between there and the PalaceGarden shopping centre were being guarded by police. A heavy police presence was seen outside Enfield Town railway station where people arriving were being searched for security reasons.[39]
Riot police had arrived in EnfieldTown by the afternoon of 7 August as several small groups of hooded youngsters arrived in cars, buses and trains. Around 100 people were waiting in small groups in the vicinity of EnfieldTown station in Southbury Road.[13]
Some disorder sparked from around 17:30; a police car in Church Street was pelted with bricks.[40]HMV's branch in Church Street was amongst the other shops that were reportedly attacked.[41] A police helicopter hovered over the area to monitor events.[13]
At around 19:00, police tackled a group of around thirty youths to push them back onto Southbury Road towards the junction with Great Cambridge Road. Police dogs were also deployed at the scene.[41] Similar action drove back approximately fifty people along Southbury Road via Queens Street, after a preceding clash with hooligans outside a nearby supermarket.[42]
At 21:30, both Metropolitan Police officers and reinforcements from Kent Police turned Enfield into a cordoned off "sterile area" and began to tackle the local disturbances.[5] These included robberies of the EnfieldRetailPark.
The scenes of Enfield were 'reminiscent of Tottenham, though smaller.'[38]
Brixton
Six fire engines tackled a blaze at a Foot Lockershoe shop in Brixton.[43][44] Riot police and youths clashed near a local Currys store that was broken into during disturbances in Brixton.[5] Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, a local resident described "hundreds" of men and women entering the electrical store and emerging with TVs and other electrical goods.[45] Upon police arriving, the looters attacked, throwing rocks and the contents of bins at officers.[45] A branch of Halfords was targeted and looted by youths.[45]
One Brixton resident said: People were coming to Brixton from outside the area. I was getting out of Brixton Tube last night about 22:30 and going up the escalator when about 10 teenagers ran up the escalator and pushed me to one side.[46] By 11:57, both Tesco and Foot Locker were targeted by looters. Lambeth Councils leader, Councillor Steve Reed said the mobs in Streatham "They were looters not rioters"[47] Looting had spread to Brixton in the evening.[48]
Other areas
·Islington: The windscreen of a police vehicle was smashed out as groups of youths caused a disturbance in Islington during the night of 7 August.[43]
·Oxford Circus: Overnight, the evening's violence spread to Oxford Circus, central London, as about 50 youths gathered, and damaged some local property.[5][49]
·Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire:Looters and rioters attacked two police cars and two jewellers in Waltham Cross High Street at around 21:50. A specialist public order unit was sent to the area, along with sections of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Police Dog Unit.[50]
·Streatham: the T-Mobile, JD Sports and other shops were ransacked. Councillor Mark Bennett said the owner of one store in Streatham High Road was hospitalised after a mob attacked the shop.[46]
By 07:59, the Metropolitan Police Commander Christine Jones said: "This is a challenging situation with small pockets of violence, looting and disorder breaking out on a number of boroughs."[52] Jewellery stores across Tottenham, Enfield and Wood Green have all suffered break-ins, Professional Jewellers reported.[37] The Victoria line was closed between Stockwell and Brixton "due to civil unrest", according to London Underground.[48] Angel, Islington, Stoke Newington and Wood Green were in police lockdown.[48] All 32 boroughs of London have been placed on riot alert.[53]
Enfield and Ponders End
On the morning of 8 August, several shops in Enfield Town and in the nearby A10retail park were vandalised and looted, and there were reports of two vehicles set on fire.[5] A large crowd of youths moved westwards, toward nearby Ponders End and wrecked a local Tesco.[54] Hundreds of riot police and canine units arrived with vans and charging at groups of teenagers until they disappeared into local side streets, smashing cars and shop windows on the way.[54][43] Looting had spread to Enfield.[48] A large Sony distribution centre was set alight and the fire destroyed the building.[55]
Walthamstow and Walthamstow Central
Over 30 youths wrecked and looted shops, including a branch of BHS, in Walthamstow Central on the morning of 8 August.[5] Looting had spread to Walthamstow.[48] A Santander branch had been broken into. A Barclays cash machine had been ripped right out of the bank.
Chingford Mount
Three police officers hospitalized after being hit by a fast-moving vehicle in Chingford Mount, Waltham Forest, at 00.45 on 8 August. The officers had started making arrests after a shop was in the process of being looted by youths.[43]
Hackney
Sporadic skirmishes were reported to have occurred between police and groups of young people in the area around Mare Street, Hackney.[56] There are also reports of petrol bombs being thrown and youths throwing bottles and contents of bins. Some bins have also been set on fire. Disturbances on-going in Hackney as the mounted and riot police charge retreating gangs.[48] Cars were on fire.[48]
Croydon
Police closed the entire area around West Croydon station on the evening of 8 August. Bricks, bottles and stones were thrown at police, and an Argos store was broken into and looted. A large furniture store, House of Reeves, which had been in Croydon since 1867,[57] was set alight and burned to the ground.[58][59][60][61]
Ealing
Some Ealing businesses were asked by police to close at 5pm.[62] On Ealing Broadway a group of 200 people[63] attacked police cars[64] and vandalised and looted shops.[63]
Later on around Haven Green, by Ealing Broadway tube station, cars and a bus were set alight and many other cars vandalised,[62] shops had their windows smashed and a supermarket was looted[65] and nearby residential properties were burgled.[66] Near Ealing Green several more shops were looted[67] and several cars torched[67] and a supermarket set alight with petrol bombs.[66] Rioters attempting to vandalise two pubs in this area were dissuaded by the customers and staff.[68] Later on hundreds of young people looted shops in West Ealing.[69]
Elsewhere in London
Rioters and looters on Walworth road in Elephant and Castle, Southwark, London
·Barnet: About 60 youths were chased off by riot police after looting shops in Barnet in the night. [70][74] Minor disturbances occurred at the Brent Cross shopping centre. [75]
Who Are These People? Where Will They Go From Here?
"How Godly Are Thy Tents?"
By URI AVNERY
FIRST OF all, a warning.
Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.
At that point, there will be a temptation perhaps an irresistible temptation to warm up the borders. To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.
Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border to prevent the launching of a rocket, a fire fight, a salvo of rockets and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
In September, just a few weeks from now, the Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the recognition of the State of Palestine. Our politicians and generals are chanting in unison that this will cause a crisis Palestinians in the occupied territories may rise in protest against the occupation, violent demonstrations may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
* * *
THREE WEEKS ago I was interviewed one morning by a Dutch journalist. At the end, she asked: You are describing an awful situation. The extreme right-wing controls the Knesset and is enacting abominable anti-democratic laws. The people are indifferent and apathetic. There is no opposition to speak of. And yet you exude a spirit of optimism. How come?
I answered that I have faith in the people of Israel. Contrary to appearances, we are a sane people. Some time, somewhere, a new movement will arise and change the situation. It may happen in a week, in a month, in a year. But it will come.
On that very same day, just a few hours later, a young woman called Daphne Liff, with an improbable mans hat perched on her flowing hair, said to herself: Enough!
She had been evicted by her landlady because she couldnt afford the rent. She set up a tent in Rothschild Boulevard, a long, tree-lined thoroughfare in the center of Tel Aviv. The news spread through facebook, and within an hour, dozens of tents had sprung up. Within a week, there were some 400 tents, spread out in a double line more than a mile long.
Similar tent-cities sprang up in Jerusalem, Haifa and a dozen smaller towns. The next Saturday, tens of thousands joined protest marches in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Last Saturday, they numbered more than 150,000.
This] has now become the center of Israeli life. The Rothschild tent city has assumed a life of its own a cross between Tahrir Square and Woodstock, with a touch of Hyde Park corner thrown in for good measure. The mood is indescribably upbeat, masses of people come to visit and return home full of enthusiasm and hope. Everybody can feel that something momentous is happening.
Seeing the tents, I was reminded of the words of Balaam, who was sent by the king of Moab to curse the children of Israel in the desert (Numbers 24) and instead exclaimed: How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Oh Israel!
* * *
IT ALL started in a remote little town in Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian man. He set himself on fire. What followed is history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.
The Israeli government saw all this with growing concern but they didnt imagine that there might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs, could hardly be expected to follow suit.
But follow suit it did. People in the street spoke with growing admiration of the Arab revolt. It showed that people acting together could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.
Some of the most popular posters on the tents were Rothschild corner Tahrir and, in a Hebrew rhyme, Tahrir Not only in Cahir Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the Arabic name for Cairo. And also: Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu.
In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was The People Want to Overthrow the Regime. In conscious emulation, the central slogan of the tent cities is The People Want Social Justice.
* * *
WHO ARE these people? What exactly do they want?
It started with a demand for Affordable Housing. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere are extremely high, after years of Government neglect. But the protest soon engulfed other subjects: the high price of foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The ridiculously low salaries of physicians and teachers, the deterioration of the education and health services. There is a general feeling that 18 tycoons control everything, including the politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up in the tent cities were chased away.) They could have quoted an American saying: Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
A selection of the slogans gives an impression:
We want a welfare state! Fighting for the home! Justice, not charity! If the government is against the people, the people are against the government! Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words! If you dont join our war, we shall not fight your wars! Give us our state back! Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms! The answer to privatization: revolution! We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel! I have no other homeland! Bibi, go home, we'll pay for the gas! Overthrow swinish capitalism! Be practical, demand the impossible!
WHAT IS missing in this array of slogans? Of course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.
This is by design. The organizers, anonymous young men and women mainly women are very determined not to be branded as leftists. They know that bringing up the occupation would provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the tent-dwellers and derail the protests.
We in the peace movement know and respect this. All of us are exercising strenuous self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not succeed in marginalizing the movement and depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.
As I wrote in an article in Haaretz: No need to push the protesters. In due course, they will reach the conclusion that the money for the major reforms they demand can only come from stopping the settlements and cutting the huge military budget by hundreds of billions and that is possible only in peace. (To help them along, we published a large ad, saying: Its quite simple money for the settlements OR money for housing, health services and education).
Voltaire said that the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other. This government takes the money of decent citizens to give it to the settlers.
* * *
WHO ARE they, these enthusiastic demonstrators, who seemingly have come from nowhere?
They are the young generation of the middle class, who go out to work, take home average salaries and cannot finish the month, as the Israeli expression goes. Mothers who cannot go to work because they have nowhere to leave their babies. University students who cannot get a room in the dormitories or afford accomodation in the city. And especially young people who want to marry but cannot afford to buy an apartment, even with the help of their parents. (One tent bore the sign: Even this tent was bought by our parents)
All this in a flourishing economy, which has been spared the pains of the world-wide economic crisis and boasts an enviable unemployment rate of just 5%.
If pressed, most of the protesters would declare themselves to be social-democrats. They are the very opposite of the Tea Party in the US: they want a welfare state, they blame privatization for many of their ills, they want the government to interfere and to act. Whether they want to admit it or not, the very essence of their demands and attitudes is classically leftist (the term created in the French Revolution because the adherents of these ideals sat on the left side of the speaker in the National Assembly). They are the essence of what Left means - (though in Israel, the terms Left and Right have until now been largely identified with questions of war and peace).
* * *
WHERE WILL it go from here?
No one can say. When asked about the impact of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously said: Its too early to say. Here we are witnessing an event still in progress, perhaps even still beginning.
It has already produced a huge change. For weeks now, the public and the media have stopped talking about the borders, the Iranian bomb and the security situation. Instead, the talk is now almost completely about the social situation, the minimum wage, the injustice of indirect taxes, the housing construction crisis.
Under pressure, the amorphous leadership of the protest has drawn up a list of concrete demands. Among others: government building of houses for rent, raising taxes on the rich and the corporations, free education from the age of three months [sic], a raise in the salary of physicians, police and fire-fighters, school classes of no more than 21 pupils, breaking the monopolies controlled by a few tycoons, and so on.
So where from here? There are many possibilities, both good and bad.
Netanyahu can try to buy off the protest with some minor concessions some billions here, some billions there. This will confront the protesters with the choice of the Indian boy in the movie about becoming a millionaire: take the money and quit, or risk all on answering yet another question.
Or: the movement may continue to gather momentum and force major changes, such as shifting the burden from indirect to direct taxation.
Some rabid optimists (like myself) may even dream of the emergence of a new authentic political party to fill the gaping void on the left side of the political spectrum.
* * *
I STARTED with a warning, and I must end with another one: this movement has raised immense hopes. If it fails, it may leave behind an atmosphere of despondency and despair a mood that will drive those who can to seek a better life somewhere else.
We stellen vast dat overal ter wereld de zelfde problemen opduiken. De middenklasse die protesteert omdat ze nog maar moeilijk op een decente manier kan overleven. Plots blijken andere problemen naar de actregrond te verschuiven. Maar de huidige machthebbers bestempelen hun protesterende burgers nog steeds als een bende oproerkraaiers
Following decades in which the public has curled up in its indifference and allowed a handful of politicians to run the country as they wished, the rules of the political game have changed.
For more than three weeks Israeli society and polity have been shaken by waves of social protest of the sort that has never been seen here before. This protest reached a new peak on Saturday night with demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets. Such a display of power is apparently far from being over.
The protest has already achieved much. It has stirred civil society to become involved, and to show solidarity following many years of complacency. It has also altered the social agenda in Israel, and political-security discourse has given way to a socioeconomic one, which has taken center stage in an unprecedented way.
The group of young protesters has also managed to instill an element of popular democracy, managing its affairs far away from politicians and political parties. The demonstrators have shown exemplary organizational abilities, which also peaked during the latest, incredibly orderly demonstration in Tel Aviv. The group of speakers during the demonstration was impressive for its diversity.
The themes of the protest have, to a certain extent, also managed to hit home. When the masses cry out throughout the country "the people demand social justice," it does not yet suggest an orderly and detailed socioeconomic theory or defined set of demands, but it is doubtful whether these are necessary at this stage, in the forging of a new movement.
We are in the midst of what is increasingly shaping up to be an Israeli revolution. Following decades in which the public has curled up in its indifference and allowed a handful of politicians to run the country as they wished, with no significant involvement from civil society, the rules of the political game have changed.
The public has realized that it has much more power and influence than it imagined. Henceforth, every prime minister in Israel will have to take into consideration this emerging force.
It is still hard to know where this protest will lead, and how it will end. For the time being, we can be impressed by its power and the direction in which it seeks to move. We must therefore praise the protesters for the changes in perception they have already instigated and hope that they will be able to continue their efforts in the future, in the same impressive way that has characterized them to date - and bring about genuine change.
2011-08-06 Historic protest in #Israel: over 300,000 demand social justice
Submitted by FuturePress on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 02:38
Largest rally in Israeli history sees four percent of the population out in the streets that would be 12 million people in the streets of the US! (Photo: ActiveStills)
The Israeli social justice movement has just gone into orbit and exploded into previously unchartered territories. According to police estimates (which tend to be conservative), 300,000 protesters took to the streets across the country in what constitutes the largest-ever protest in the countrys history. And still no coverage in the mainstream media!
The stellar growth of the J14 movement, which was sparked when a young Israeli woman named Daphni Leef pitched a tent in Tel Aviv three weeks ago to protest against the unaffordable cost of housing in the country, has put immense pressure on the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In just three weeks, the Prime Minister has seen his approval rating tumble nearly 20 percent, to a dismal 32 percent.
The protests, while feeding on the widespread anger in the middle class about the unbearable cost of living, have since matured to take up a number of other progressive issues and have now morphed into a full-blown social justice movement, contesting the free-market zealotry of Benjamin Netanyahu and the crony capitalist system that lurks behind the neoliberal edifice his government is trying to keep intact.
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu immediately tried to play down the protests, saying the media had inflated the numbers. But the only numbers that are being inflated appear to be the economic data from Netanyahus government, according to which Israel is doing great. In reality, the country experienced home prices jumping some 35 percent between 2008 and 2010. Because wages remained stagnant, many families have simply been priced out of their homes.
Years ago, current President Shimon Peres warned that Netanyahus economic polices would lead to 6,000 millionaires and 6 million beggars. In recent years, his gloomy predictions appear to have materialized. Israel is now the second most unequal country in the developed world behind only the United States. And with many middle class families spending half their income on their rent or mortgage, it was just a matter of time for the outrage to surface.
After three weeks, there are signs that the internal cohesion of the protest movement (which is broadly representative of the Israeli middle class) might be fracturing into progressive and nationalistic cores. In the protest camps, Jewish supremacists increasingly clash with left-wing protesters demanding more attention for the Palestinian question. Some progressives are demanding the removal of racist and fascist elements within the movement.
The swelling of the protests comes at the same time as anti-neoliberal protests in Spain and Chile have reached new heights. From Latin America to Europe and the Middle East, there is something in the air. 2011 is still in full swing.
Economische crisis, beurscrash, depressie, inflatie ons verwondert het niet dat een systeem waarbij voetballers als onderpand worden gebruikt crasht. Dit is geen economisch systeem meer maar waanzin
Spaanse bank geeft Ronaldo en Kaká in onderpand voor lening van ECB
Bankia, de grootste spaarbank van Spanje, wil twee stervoetballers van Real Madrid als onderpand gebruiken om een lening los te krijgen bij de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB). Dat meldt de Spaanse krant El Pais. Bankia - een fusie van 7 regionale banken- heeft snel aanvullend kapitaal nodig omdat het ternauwernood slaagde voor de Europese stresstest voor banken. Een van die 7 spaarbanken, Caja Madrid, leende Real in 2009 nog 76,5 miljoen euro om de voetballers Cristiano Ronaldo en Kaká over te kunnen nemen. De ECB wil Bankia wel uit de nood halen maar vraagt garanties.
"Zou het zover kunnen komen dat de ECB beslag laat leggen op een van beide voetballers? vraagt de Süddeutsche Zeiting zich af. Theoretisch is dat mogelijk. Eerst zou Bankia bankroet moeten gaan en vervolgens zou Real niet meer in staat moeten zijn om zijn leningen af te lossen. Real Madrid zit inderdaad voor ettelijke honderden miljoenen euros in de schulden, maar in Spanje zijn ze er al heel lang meester in om voetbalclubs, alsof het banken zijn, met overheidsgeld van de ondergang te redden.
l'économie, quelle que soit son importance pour le bien général, ne peut prétendre étouffer les autres valeurs, la vie étant le plus grand bien de tous les biens et devant être protégée jusqu'aux limites les plus extrêmes.
De mijn Bois du Cazier bij het Charleroise dorp Marcinelle was met twee schachten zeker niet de grootste. Het bekken van Charleroi telde 25.000 mijnwerkers, van wie er alleen al 8000 werkten in de mijnen van Monceau-Fontaine, die met twaalf schachten jaarlijks 16 miljoen ton steenkool genereerden. Maar in de Kolenslag, de race om de productie tot het uiterste op te voeren, deed ook de Bois du Cazier meer dan zijn best. Zevenhonderd mijnwerkers brachten er elk jaar 160.000 ton steenkool naar boven;in 1955 zelfs 170.558 ton.
Mijnwerk is zwaar en gevaarlijk. Veiligheidsregels waren er wel, maar in alle twintig mijnen van België stond de productie voorop. Ongelukken hoorden erbij, ook in de Bois du Cazier, waar in 1906 negen mijnwerkers 1000 meter diep te pletter vielen toen de kabel van hun liftkooi het begaf, en waar in 1930 zestien mijnwerkers omkwamen door de gevreesde coup de grisou, ontploffend mijngas.
Het risico moet vaak voelbaar zijn geweest, aanwezig op de achtergrond, al die ochtenden dat mannen en jonge jongens hun huis verlieten om aan de slag te gaan. De ochtend van acht augustus 1956 is zon gewone ochtend. Tegen inlevering van hun penning krijgen 274 mannen hun elektrische helmlamp, direct uit de oplaadmachine en met de waarschuwing dat ze persoonlijk voor het ding verantwoordelijk zijn. Ze hebben hun eigen kleren verwisseld voor hun werkkleding en ze, via een mechanisme met takeltjes, samen met horloge, sigaretten, aansteker en fotootjes opgehangen aan het plafond in de galgenzaal. Om zeven uur moet iedereen aanwezig zijn, om acht uur moet de productie op stoom zijn.
Een mijn ziet er boven de grond heel simpel uit. Alleen wat bijgebouwen en de torens van de ophaalmachines zijn te zien. Bovenin zit een machinist die de vrachten steenkool, vier bakken met elk 1000 kilo boven elkaar, ophaalt met een snelheid van zestig kilometer per uur.
Maar onder de grond gebeurt het allemaal. In schaars licht wrikken daar de steenkoolhouwers, de enige echte mijnwerkers, met houwelen en pneumatische boorhamers de steenkool los, laden en sjorren de slepers de wagonnetjes naar de kooiladers bij de verticale schachten, graven en stutten de steenganghouwers nieuwe gangen. Er zijn ook de gespecialiseerde schietmeesters, voor het plaatsen van dynamiet, en de porions, de ploegbazen. In de grotere mijngangen werken ook tientallen paarden, die eens per jaar tijdens de verlofperiode even boven komen om te grazen in de weide, waarbij hun ogen in de stal een dag moeten wennen aan het licht.
Om tien over acht die ochtend werken de 31-jarige kooilader Antonio Ianetta en zijn helper Gaston Vaussort op 975 meter. Ianetta is vier jaar eerder uit de buurt van Rome geëmigreerd en spreekt amper Frans. Hij laadt en lost wagons uit de lift, iets wat hij duizenden keren heeft gedaan.
Zodra de lift op zijn niveau stopt, duwt Ianetta er met volle kracht een loodzware wagon in. Hij duwt er aan de andere kant een lege kar mee naar buiten. Maar dan gebeurt het: de lege kar blijft halverwege staan vanwege een defecte stuitnok. Ianetta probeert door te duwen, maar dan zet de lift zich in beweging naar boven. Aan beide kanten hangen de wagons er half uit. Ze blijven hangen achter een balk. Die buigt en doorsnijdt twee telefoonleidingen, een olieleiding, een leiding met perslucht en twee stroomkabels onder 3000 volt.
Olie, perslucht en een vonkenregen. Er breekt onmiddellijk brand uit. Vaussort komt om, Iannetta vlucht en ontsnapt via de lift in de tweede schacht. Hij kleedt zich razendsnel om en maakt zich in paniek uit de voeten, om de rest van zijn leven op de vlucht te zijn. De verwijten doen hem eerst Marcinelle verlaten en later emigreert hij naar Canada, waar hij enige jaren later aan kanker sterft.
Maar als Ianetta vlucht, is de ramp nog maar net begonnen. Waarschijnlijk vallen vele slachtoffers bijna direct, maar kort voor halfnegen zien zeven mannen nog kans om een lift in de tweede schacht te bereiken. Ze geven het sein om te hijsen, maar er gebeurt niets. Marceau Caillard stapt uit om een bel te bedienen. Precies op dat moment komt de lift in beweging. Hij blijft achter, terwijl de andere zes mannen naar boven razen. Onderweg komen ze de Nederlandse ingenieur Jan Stroom tegen in de lift naar beneden. Hij wil zijn ploeg waarschuwen en in veiligheid brengen, maar wordt nooit meer gezien.
De vuurzee is niet te stoppen. De eerste schacht is buiten werking, en binnen een uur staat ook de tweede schacht in lichterlaaie. Een dikke rookwolk alarmeert de bevolking van Marcinelle. Journaalbeelden van toen tonen vrouwen en kinderen die hartverscheurend huilen en schreeuwen, zich vastklampend aan de hekken. De directie van de mijn heeft bij het eerste alarmsignaal opdracht gegeven om de hekken te sluiten. Op deze dag worden 248 vrouwen weduwe en verliezen 417 kinderen hun vader.
Ondergronds zorgt de steenkool voor een enorme hitte. De kabels van de liftkooien in de tweede schacht breken en de liften storten in de diepte. Boven werken mannen als gekken om een nieuwe kabel te leggen en drie uur later dalen twee redders af in een geïmproviseerd bakje. Op 715 meter horen ze kreten. De zwaargewonde Franz Lowie, Alphonse Verbeek en de zestienjarige Alphonse Van de Plas schuilen onder een omgekeerde wagon. Ze hebben geürineerd op hun zakdoeken om zich te beschermen tegen de rook. Met Albert Peers, Louis Salvuyts en Karel Wuyts zijn zij de laatsten die levend worden gevonden.
De grote moordenaar bij dit ongeval is niet het vuur, maar de koolmonoxide die door de luchtventilatoren van de mijn tot in de verste hoeken wordt gedrongen. Het gas heeft zijn dodelijke werk gedaan, uren voordat koning Boudewijn arriveert. Een parmantig mannetje, geknipt en geschoren en machteloos, dat zich laat informeren over het reddingswerk en in de avondschemer weer verdwijnt.
De reddingsacties gaan door in de weken die volgen; je weet maar nooit. Experts uit het Ruhrgebied brengen apparatuur om de lucht in de mijn te analyseren, maar het duurt zes dagen voordat reddingswerkers niveau 907 bereiken. Pas op 23 augustus dringen ze door tot de grootste diepte. Door de telefoon schreeuwt redder Angelo Berto het uit van ontzetting: Tutti cadaveri!
Het zal maanden duren voor alle lichamen uit de mijn zijn gehaald en zijn geïdentificeerd. De slachtoffers zijn 136 Italianen, 95 Belgen, acht Polen, zes Grieken, vijf Duitsers, vijf Fransen, drie Hongaren, één Brit, één Rus, één Oekraïner en één Nederlander. Hun dood inspireert de Europese Gemeenschap voor Kolen en Staal tot strengere regels; bijvoorbeeld dat olie-, zuurstof- en stroomleidingen niet meer naast elkaar mogen liggen. De Europese steenkoolsector spreekt voortaan van de periodes vóór en ná Marcinelle. Hoeveel er is verbeterd, blijkt uit het feit dat er voor de ramp in de Bois du Cazier duizenden mijnwerkers zijn omgekomen in België; na de ramp minder dan tien.
Maar vele mijnwerkers houden het voor gezien. De Belgische regering probeert het werk nog aantrekkelijk te maken met gunstige arbeidsvoorwaarden en door mijnwerkers af te beelden als de redders van de natie. Maar de Italianen wijken uit naar de staalfabrieken, de Belgen vinden beter werk. België haalt eerst mijnwerkers uit Griekenland en Spanje, later uit Turkije en Marokko. In 1984 sluit in de Kempen de laatste Belgische steenkoolmijn.
De Bois du Cazier hervatte al in april 1957 de productie, enkele weken na de laatste begrafenissen. Zoals de zes Italianen die in hun vaderland, in het dorpje Lettomanoppello, werden begraven en waar nu nog een ontroerend gedenkteken staat. De Administratie van het Mijnwezen concludeerde na onderzoek dat niemand schuld had. Alleen de directeur van de Bois du Cazier, Adolphe Calicis, werd veroordeeld, met een voorwaardelijke straf en tegen de zin van vele nabestaanden. Hij had zich bij de reddingswerken tot het uiterste ingespannen en wordt door velen nog als een held gezien. Net als Angelo Galvan, de reddingswerker die de bijnaam de vos van de Cazier verwierf omdat hij zich door de kleinste gaten en gangetjes wist te persen. Nog lang na de ramp ging Galvan bijna elke dag naar beneden. In de etage waar hij zijn vrienden had gevonden, zei hij dan foutloos alle 262 namen van de slachtoffers op.
In januari 1961 sloot de Bois du Cazier officieel, maar illegaal werd er nog tot in 1967 doorgewerkt. De economische aantrekkingskracht van de gros pierre, de zeer rijke steenkoollaag, was te groot. Nu ligt de mijn er bij als een historisch slagveld. De torens zitten goed in de verf en er is een onberispelijk museum. De schachten zijn afgesloten met beton en volgelopen met grondwater. Eromheen bepalen de terrils, de steile bergen van stenen en grond, voor altijd het landschap. Alleen Wallonië telt er al tweehonderd, en ze hebben allemaal een eigen naam. Mensen hebben het materiaal van de heuvels bijna geheel met de hand boven de grond gehaald. Het zijn de ultieme getuigen van het industriële tijdperk.
Le 8 août 1956, à Marcinelle, une fumée toxique a obscurci le ciel du Bois du Cazier. Seuls treize hommes sont remontés vivants. L'un a succombé. Retour sur le lieu de la tragédie.
Fin mai, à Marcinelle, comme la visite d'Albert et Paola touchait à sa fin, au Bois du Cazier, quatre femmes étaient silencieuses dans la crypte du mémorial aménagée sous le châssis à molettes de la mine qui tua 262 hommes, le 8 août 1956. Parmi les photos gravées sur des plaques de métal, dans cet espace où la lumière de l'extérieur filtre à peine, elles cherchaient des visages connus. Sous chaque photo, un nom, des dates, une nationalité, un lieu d'origine.
Face au visage de son papa, Ciro Natale Piccolo, Loris, 58 ans, avait le coeur serré par les souvenirs. De son portefeuille, elle a extrait la photo où la famille Piccolo fixe l'objectif, devant les baraques en tôle du Sart Nicolas. Loris a revu sa maman allant aux grilles. « Elle ne pleurait pas, pour nous épargner le chagrin. Elle avait le même courage que papa. »
Les filles du sauveteur Angelo Galvan, Angelina et Rosina, se rapprochèrent d'elle. Et, un peu plus loin, Michelina Dattoli, une dame portant un châle noir et des lunettes d'écaille, venait de reconnaître son voisin. Ces femmes formaient un bloc. Comme au cimetière qui domine le terril et le charbonnage, elles ont fait le tour des victimes. De loin en loin, elles se sont arrêtées devant une plaque sans photo, où ne figurait qu'un nom. Par exemple, celui de Martin Iwanow, de Baranovitchy, en Russie. Les victimes du Cazier formaient une communauté de onze nationalités : 136 Italiens, 95 Belges dont 35 Flamands, 8 Polonais, 6 Grecs, 5 Allemands, 5 Français dont 3 d'origine algérienne (l'Algérie était encore française...), 3 Hongrois, 1 Anglais, 1 Russe, 1 Ukrainien et 1 Hollandais né à Ushuaia, Argentine.
Trente ans après la catastrophe, quand il récitait la liste des 262 prénoms des disparus, Angelo Galvan,, un des sauveteurs qui risquèrent cent fois leur vie, rappelait ceci, et c'est important car cette réalité participe de l'identité wallonne : « Dans la mine, ce qui comptait était de savoir que ton copain serait peut-être l'homme qui te sauverait la vie. » Cette fraternité veillera sur les cérémonies du cinquantième anniversaire. Elle devrait porter le message d'humanité qu'incarnaient les mineurs. Tous prenaient des risques pour arracher au sous-sol le charbon qui ferait tourner l'industrie du pays. Beaucoup, pour gagner leur vie dans le fond, étaient venus de loin, avaient osé tout quitter, s'arracher à leurs racines, pour nourrir leurs familles. C'était le leitmotiv d'Angelo Galvan.
Cet homme était un monument vivant. Il s'est éteint, victime de l'emphysème qui asphyxiait ses poumons, lui coupait le souffle, épuisait son énergie. Le chef porion de nuit du Cazier, l'homme qui a fermé la mine, n'a jamais quitté le quartier. Il était incapable de trouver la force de s'arracher à cette terre qui, à ses yeux, était une tombe. Angelo avait mal quand il disait qu'il n'avait pas pu sauver plus de compagnons. Dans le carnet qu'il m'a confié, après des mois d'entretien, il terminait ainsi son récit : « Je tiens à dire la grande solidarité, la discipline et la camaraderie qui ont joué entre sauveteurs et mineurs de toutes nationalités. On avait gardé espoir jusqu'au bout. Nous avons perdu et n'avons pu empêcher la mine d'avoir ses victimes. Trente ans après cette tragédie, je tiens encore à remercier ces hommes qui ont risqué leur vie pour essayer de sauver leurs camarades. Et je leur dis toute la fierté que j'ai d'avoir travaillé avec eux. Merci. »
Angelo venait de remonter, après la pause de nuit. Il habitait une maison de la rangée qui s'étire jusqu'au café du Cazier, au-delà de la grille. Il est redescendu avec d'autres sauveteurs et l'ingénieur Calicis. Dans l'ouvrage sur la catastrophe publié par l'ASBL Bois du Cazier aux éditions Labor, dont les auteurs sont Jean-Louis Delaet, Alain Forti et Francis Groff, ce dernier fait la synthèse des faits. À 8 heures 10, une heure dix après la descente des mineurs de jour, à l'étage 975 du puits d'entrée d'air, une cage a démarré, emportant un wagonnet, mal encagé, qui dépassait de 35 cm. En montant, le wagonnet emporta une poutrelle, qui déchira la canalisation d'huile destinée à alimenter la balance du 975, puis deux câbles électriques et une canalisation d'air comprimé. Des arcs électriques enflammèrent l'huile.
Alimentées par l'air envoyé sous pression par un ventilateur situé à la surface, les flammes se développèrent très vite. Les fumées toxiques remontèrent à la surface et se propagèrent dans les galeries, vers le puits de retour d'air. Les victimes ont été tuées par l'oxyde de carbone. Le 8 août, grâce au courage des sauveteurs, sept mineurs revirent le jour. L'un d'eux, Germain Wilmart, qui était le doyen des ouvriers de cette pause, respirait encore, à 21h30. Il s'est éteint dans les bras de Geneviève Ladrière, l'assistante sociale du Cazier, en dépit des soins qui lui furent prodigués.
Le 22 août, après des semaines d'une attente usant les nerfs, le sauveteur Angelo Berto, revenant de l'étage 1035, hurla « Tutti cadaveri ». Ce qu'appréhendaient Angelo Galvan et tous les acteurs du sauvetage depuis le premier jour venait de se vérifier... Décrire ce que fut la recherche des mineurs, dans les entrailles du charbonnage, en passant par les veines les plus étroites, les chantiers refermés depuis longtemps, est impossible à imaginer. C'est pour cette raison qu'un dimanche de l'hiver 1985, trois ans avant sa mort, en mars 1988, Angelo Galvan posa sur la table de sa maison de la Cité, près du Cazier, cette liasse de feuillets où courait son écriture fine. « Tiens, Marcel, j'ai écrit pour que tu comprennes ce que c'était et que tu l'écrives dans ton journal. »
Galvan témoignait, à la date du 13 août : « Moi-même et une dizaine de sauveteurs avons ordre de visiter 835 et de progresser le plus loin possible dans les travaux. Nous découvrons des morts et encore des morts, dispersés les uns sur les autres. Il me semblait revivre la guerre. (NDLR : Galvan a été résistant en Italie.Une rue du village de Roana porte son nom, en hommage à la manière dont il s'est battu dans le maquis.) Les sauveteurs se regardent en face. Beaucoup ont les larmes aux yeux et certains maudissent la mine. Au pied d'une communication montante, nous trouvons une dizaine de morts, réunis autour de leur chef porion. Eugène Bauwen était couché à plat ventre entre les rails, le visage face à la terre, il tenait encore son flacon de café dans sa main gauche et dans sa main droite sa lampe de sécurité. Sur un carnet entrouvert, il avait griffonné son dernier message, « Je reviens de l'enfer ». À côté de lui, le cadavre d'un garçon de 15 ou 16 ans qui croyait se protéger de la fumée en s'entourant la tête de pierres. Ce gosse, qui travaillait à 907, avait fait une course incroyable dans les fumées, plus de deux kilomètres pour rejoindre son chef. À voir ce spectacle, j'ai pleuré. Il me semblait trop injuste de voir ces hommes jeunes couchés par terre. Et nous ne pouvions plus rien pour eux. À cet instant, je me suis
juré que mes fils ne descendraient jamais dans la mine. Le plus dur restait à faire, affronter les parents, les veuves et les enfants de ces victimes, qui étaient des amis. Les familles gardaient encore de l'espoir mais moi je savais que plus un seul ne remonterait vivant. »
Aujourd'hui, au Bois du Cazier, une salle porte le nom de Galvan. À travers cet homme, tous les sauveteurs sont salués. La catastrophe a meurtri 248 familles et fait 417 orphelins.
Marcinelle a déclenché la réflexion sur la sécurité dans l'industrie. Et le Cazier est devenu un lieu de mémoire et de conscience. Sur le terril, des arbres d'essences différentes jalonnent un sentier. Un par nationalité. Dont un palmier d'Algérie. L'arbre pousse bien dans le sol noir de charbon du Cazier.
Zeer interessante lectuur over de dubieuse praktijken om Italiaanse migranten naar de belgische mijnen te lokken vinden jullie hier:
Let vooral op de frequentie van rampen te wijten aan water en mijnen vooral die laatste zijn op een indrukwekkende manier aanwezig
en tenslotte een eerbetoon aan GASTONE LODOLO
En 1954, un syndicaliste italien, Gastone Lodolo (dont le témoignage, dans le quotidien du PCI, lUnità, est traduit et reproduit en annexe) avait dénoncé de manière nette les problèmes de sécurité dans les charbonnages belges lors dune conférence à Dampremy en octobre1954: il fut expulsé sur ordre du ministre de la Justice pour «nuisance à léconomie du pays»
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The deputy Mayor in charge of Londons police authority and Scotland Yards high command have both repeatedly claimed that nobody could have foreseen that an initial protest over the shooting dead of a black suspect in Tottenham would mushroom into a riot situation. However, Chris Gilson finds that recent history should have provided plenty of pointers to how deaths at police hands or in police custody can often act as triggers for wider outbreaks of lawlessness.
August 9th, 2011 | 
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Largest rally in Israeli history sees four percent of the population out in the streets that would be 12 million people in the streets of the US! (Photo: 
