Some reactions after the riots in Hackney

ANGER

August 2011. Riots in Hackney.

Already we hear from everywhere people trying to find THE explanation of these events. How weird is it? How can there be one single main
explanation for something that involves so many diverse people in so many different parts of London and UK? We heard them all, from “sheer
criminality” to “that’s what happens when tories cut public services” and “working class revolution!” or “disenchanted youth”. Maybe it’s just
everything. How can we know what was in the mind of thousands and what dictated their actions? What exactly is the point of trying to pinpoint WHY this happened?

One thing for sure is that there was, amongst a lot of very different things, confrontation. And some of this confrontation was directed towards the state, the police, the authorities. Those of us who find ourselves falling in the trap of thinking we are some sort of political elite/social change experts, that we should “educate people” and drive their anger towards the right target, quickly lose our patronizing tone and realise that there are people out there also very experienced and skilled in being confrontational. Smashing bank windows, going on strike, looting a chainstore, opening a squat, throwing empty bins at the police, bringing cakes to workers pickets, burning some cars, growing tomatoes collectively… which is more “political”/”radical”? which makes more sense? who gives a shit? We want everything!

Sometimes, some of us (who spend a lot of times in meetings) wonder: but where is the anger? why isn’t there more anger amongst and around us? Is anger important? is anger “political”? Are people less angry than they used to be? Is anger control a capitalism and state issue? Could one of the welfare state function be to shut down people’s anger? If there is any kind of truth in these, and if it’s agreed that there was quite a lot of anger in the streets of London and Hackney during these riots (anyone disagree?), then maybe these were some very interesting events.
They’ve happened, they’re there, they’re part of the history of Hackney and they might well bring us some hope for the future!

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We keep hearing the words ‘pure criminality’ and ‘sheer criminality’ because the police and politicians are desperately trying to  make sure that nobody can claim that the riots are political but, of course, they are.

It’s no coincidence that the riots kicked off in Tottenham following the murder of yet another black guy who just happened to get on the wrong side of the police and it’s also no coincidence that Monday’s  activities kicked off in Hackney, one of the five Olympic boroughs with a long history of insurrection and large black and homeless populations. A Hackney resident interviewed by one of the news networks said ‘This is an Olympic borough. There’s a lot of money been spent here recently but none of it is trickling down’. There’s a video on YouTube right now where a masked up woman coming out of a shop is asked what she’s doing and she says ‘Just getting my taxes back’.

It’s also no coincidence that the majority of the people involved are from the generation that are suffering most from the cuts to government spending. They’re the same kids that got politicised last year when they marched to demand the re-instatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the money allocated to poor families to help teenagers study for university entrance exams, which was one of the first casualties of the cuts. People have been tweeting that they don’t understand how this could happen less than a year before the start of the Olympics but what they are really not understanding is that these kids couldn’t care less.  Support for the Olympics was manufactured in the first place. Since then, the most vulnerable people have been the ones to suffer most. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you see services being cut all around you and you or members of your family are suffering while a huge Olympic park is being built in your neighbourhood which you, indirectly, are paying for but which is completely irrelevant to your life then you are going to take action to take back some of that wealth right from the source, ie., the corporations that will be the only ones to benefit in the long run.