See this video and more at Indymedia London
Guardian home page. Dozens of stores ransacked in Manchester, Nottingham police station firebombed
Twitter #ukriots
But the sense is, it’s slowing down. But still.
The Financial Times calls it The intifada of the underclass
London has an underclass (a hateful word to the people in it, but no worse, and more accurate, than “the poor”). To generalise brutally, they are un-nurtured, brought up in a microculture of neglect, arbitrary and erratic discipline, and love without its concomitant need for boundaries and good behaviour.
Meanwhile the wider culture – that is us – has abandoned virtue and adopted the ethics of indifference, dressed as liberalism. We have substituted welfare payments for relationships, rights for love, and the sterile processes of the public sector for the warm morality of living communities. Once the police have put down the riots, the rest of us have more to do than clean up the broken glass.
As to why we haven’t seen riots like that here, Doug Henwood says:
The U.S. population seems more passive, and our police, more violently repressive (a tradition that goes back to the labor violence of the late 19th century, when cops and Pinkertons killed strikers with far more abandon than their European counterparts)
Even London Indymedia isn’t quite sure what all this means.
Last night saw an incredible spread of what some call “rioting”, “looting”, “mindless thuggery”, or simply “anarchy in the UK.” What is certain is no-one quite knows what it actually is or means. Even experienced political activists are not quite sure how to respond.