Britain Burning: Cause and Consequence

With a certain apprehension, I write from just outside Manchester City Centre as the riots that have spread widely across the country are mounting for a fourth night of action: today, the first in which my city has been involved.

London and the rest of the UK are now under siege from within. Personal vendettas and localised looting is dominating cities nationwide with subsequent apparent anarchy. What began as an isolated incident in a London suburb on Saturday night (6/08/2011), has quickly and ferociously developed into the most diabolical scenes of rioting witnessed in this country in some decades. 

Trouble in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool has been labelled ‘copycat’ behaviour, following the unparalleled waves of violence seen in London boroughs. The catalyst for this widespread outpouring of feeling was the shooting of one Mark Duggan. Whether one describes the actions as disaffected or a fuelled release of pent up frustration, there can be no apologies for the violence which has been directed at innocent members of the public, small business owners, and other people doing their daily business who now are incapacitated in some form.

Peaceful protests provide persons with an ample forum in which to highlight and showcase their grief and issues with public administrations. In general, they help in not only quelling dramatic attacks, but reflect nationwide sentiments that can be taken into account. Therefore, the march in Tottenham on Saturday afternoon was an event with justified merit that was later tarnished by mere opportunists and vandals. 

However, we need closer analyse underlying unrest that has plagued both the capital and certain national suburbs over the immediate period prior to these disasters. In Tottenham, the original focus of the violence, residents were becoming increasingly begrudging of police stop and search actions that are reported to have been widely unjustified and yielded few results for public safety. With the mounting power abuse that the police actioned in the surrounding areas, there became a unilateral belief that the scaremongering tactics were introduced to reduce crime and yet had intruded on lives to such an extent that police were subject of ridicule.

Of course, continual mistreatment and suspicion of youths in the past has led to a mounting air of mistrust that has featured predominantly as the violence has spread. In blaming a great deal of social problems as rising solely from those of young adult status, the support of those under-25 is understandable, even if not condonable. 

Moreover, Tottenham is an area that suffers rife unemployment. Together with later targeted Lewisham and Peckham (which were featured in a recent newspaper editorial as amongst the top 25 areas in the country for people out of work), onlookers are able to establish that the dissatisfaction is also fed off both lack of job prospects and the subsequent idle and sedentary lifestyle that comes hand in hand. Sparking of other social injustice only provided a platform for this plethora of misfortunes to manifest in physical outbursts.

In addition, spending and budget cuts amidst global recession, Eurozone crises and worldwide credit down-gradings only adds to the country’s financial woes. The widespread effects are that as well as unemployment, local facilities and amenities shut down so there are further disruptions and lack of distractions in daily life. Ironically, for all the attacks, no one has launched a mounted assault on big businesses at Canary Wharf. 

More to the point, the number of destroyed independent businesses is completely inexcusable: almost as if vengeance for those few in the area who were struggling with small enterprise pressures already. Two teenage girls speaking to a BBC reporter this morning said that “This is to show the rich that we can do what we want.” However, there appears no distinction between the rich and those who have private, small businesses that do not make the mega-buck revenue of which the girls naively spoke. 

Reverse dichotomy: this is certainly not the image of the Big Society that Cameron had in mind.

Although the public are being heard, this is no way to reverse any standing belief of disenfranchisement: but rather provides reason that tighter measures need be in force to govern the public. 

Army drafting, water cannons, tear gas, Tasers. Over the past 72 hours, there has been a great deal of social debate as to how the country’s management should proceed in order to restore order and maintain livelihoods for the majority. Options are many and certainly diverse.

However, it is not so much dealing with the immediate onslaught as the subsequent aftermath. Perhaps one of the poignant comments after pictures from London fires have been circulated was that “it looks as though London has been bombed, in a war”. Irrevocable damage has been incurred and the mounting costs are certainly a serious issue and concern for all involved. 

Already a country dealing with daily money misery, the cost of the cleanup will cause national taxes to be increased. The unprecedented need for extra dependence on the emergency services will rise the amount of money needed to be paid to the state. Stockbrokers will invest less as millions is wiped off those businesses who are unable to deal with the continued clashes, whilst insurance prices will rise in supposedly troubled cities, such as those aforementioned.

In an already struggling economy, the sense of any such riots is lost (if, for that matter, it existed in the first place). Despite this entry having acceded money issues as facilitating events while they were first brought before the public, there is only a continual problem in our nationals thus wasting their own money in the long run: ergo constructing a continuum of debt generation.

Taking a different slant, government officials convening emergency Cobra meetings and recalling parliament will for a long time yet have an image of an unruly mob in their mind when putting forward any changes to country legislation. While some may argue that it is government action which has caused unrest, these scenes have only served to further widen the divide in trust between those in Westminster and their citizens: tougher rule would appear a more democratic action in the interests of the majority.

Information released just today details that the bullet found wedged into a police officer’s radio, at the scene where Duggan was shot on Thursday, was in fact police issue. The most recent statement at this time is that there is no evidence of the victim having shot at the met. Since violence had pre-empted such a finding, there is no sense how this may yet effect the public feel towards the riots. Yet, this is also a crucial piece of information regarding how police will be viewed within their constituencies: little trust being honoured with unjustified action.

But more than these monetary and bureau escapades, the real consequence will be a loss of public sentiment and compassion, especially toward youths (as earlier mentioned, blanket punished). Living with the shells of buildings and lost businesses haunting high streets across the country will always conjur images of a week where citizens, in “a moment of madness” according to lawyers convening in courts today, simply took to wanton destruction to prove a public power without direction or motive. 

What began as a moving and socially meaningful demonstration, now a marred public effigy to anarchy.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-incident-map

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We Lost Our Way": A Media Blame Game

Current climates suggest that it would be a difficult time to join my desired profession. Already being a domain of decline since the advent of internet and the more recent economic recession, the industry has taken a huge blow of late that shows no relent. The continuing saga of the phone hacking scandal, subsequent closure of ‘The News of the World’ (one of Britain’s most widely distributed and read papers) as well as the forced withdrawal of the Murdoch BskyB takeover plans leaves a rather precarious sphere, where press is continually scrutinised for more proof of these events.

“Simply, we lost our way” read the final editorial statement from News of the World, whose last edition circulated on 10 July 2011. The sentiment is deeply interesting: whilst the actions of the paper were undoubtedly grossly misjudged in their event, the conception of such tactics is grounded in a much more logical problem: worldwide newspaper readership is declining in favour of other mediums. Simply, the paper lost its way amongst a conglomerate of internet sites affording more up-to-date stories.

Moreover, there has been established a universal scandal dichotomy. Public interest is skewed so as the vast majority want to read cutting edge stories: scandals, new information, no matter whose privacy is taken away. Originally a specialist niche of the gossip column, tabloid news now has to cater for a population who want to have hidden secrets uncovered; the resultant number of injured parties reads like a dictionary of showbiz. Now add NotW to the collateral damage, for in its mission to bring the public an ever more reliable service, it ventured to extremes that the readership secretly covets, yet was stung by the social etiquette by which we are openly governed.

As such, the public, as well as those involved at News of the World, lost their way and are equally as culpable in the continued and relentless invasion of privacy which papers are expected to carry out.

Consequently, the media domain is under a watchful eye that is all too reminiscent of a certain George Orwell novel (ironically the aforementioned author was quoted in the final edition of the News of the World). The arrests of several members of the staff team are merely scapegoat routines: in order for a prolonged change, there need be a revolution in our consumption of the news. Whilst it is all too tempting to lay full blame on figures such as former editor in chief Rebekah Brooks, a fully functioning news room works on an independent and free flowing nature: in order to achieve maximum output, not every journalist can (or should be expected to) pitch, write and have each idea checked for concrete backup. The sphere of reported news would slow to a pace not considered acceptable since the railroad revolution. 

Extended ripples have meant the withdrawal of the BskyB bid. Indeed, the event is exemplary of how fragile any industry is to a cynical nation without faith in a product. A takeover that was once considered a fundamental step in the unity of Murdoch’s media empire is now the bane of social contempt. Yet, for all the furore, the planned purchase of the group was quite the separate entity and completely unrelated to the media scandal. Ergo, public demands for scandal comes full circle, so crippling an industry that functions based on their personal whims.

However, there remain serious lessons to be learnt. The hacking and various attacks, slanders and invasions should not have been allowed to continue for such an extended period. Individual journalists should be using legitimate and trustworthy sources and methods. This is both a business of freedom of information and data protection as is conversely necessary. From the ashes of a floundering news system, may a new generation of considerate publications take care as to both print and approach. Integrity of the media and the public interest are both balanced on this sensitive issue. 

An issued statement of apology, signed by Murdoch himself, tells that “a free and open press need be a positive force in society. We need to live up to this.” However, the burden is not one of the press alone. To play a positive role, the demands of the consumer need be socially acceptable on all levels.