I was on holiday in Ireland last week, nearly getting myself killed in a car crash (all my own fault!). But there was wall to wall coverage in rural County Galway.
It all seemed so clear. And it still does. Tottenham Police murdered a young Black man, Brian Duggan, opening fire twice without warning and lying about it (normal for the Police) and claiming they were shot at. When the family held a picket at the station the fuzz refused to send out an officer at first to meet them and then only a Chief Inspector. The result was that the spark of Duggan’s murder set fire to the brushwood.
Yes of course all social revolutions and uprisings are not pure. Just as the BBC portrayed Israel’s murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as an attack on them, so they portray the riots as nothing more than individual murder and attacks on the innocents.
Of course there were absolutely unacceptable actions by individuals. The murder of 3 people in Birmingham, the pensioner in South London etc. But where was Cameron when Ian Tomlinson was murdered by the Territorial Support Group at the G20 protests in London last year? It took a coroner’s jury verdict to even charge the pig concerned with manslaughter when it should have been murder since there was a clear and obvious intention to commit serious injury and grievous bodily harm.
Yes the have nots ‘stole’ from the shops they looted and electrical stores in particular. That is a consequence of mass advertising! Shop till you drop or loot till you drop! It’s all the same.
We have had a government which has increased tuition fees, cut expenditure on hospitals, stolen disability benefits – all for the sake of their banker thieves and capitalist spivs who invest in low-wage economies whilst preaching immigration controls and seeking division.
Well the riots were a good example of multi-cultural Britain at its best! Both Black and White rioted together. Yes some businesses went up in flames but that probably says much about the role they were perceived to play in their localities.
The problem was that there was no political direction or demands behind the riots. They were an expression of anger by those who had seen their paltry £30 a week Educational Maintenance Allowance stolen whilst Eton Cameron and the rest of his toffs bailed out their banker friends.
Parliament broke from its long holidays (no outcry there against gold plated holidays) to condemn the rioters. Who would have thought it? A Prime Minister who had to repay his expenses, i.e. he fiddled them in the first place, is now demanding vengeance against those who rioted last week. And Manchester MP Gerald Kaufman waxed lyrical about vengeance. One woman got 6 months for stealing a Bank & Olufsen TV worth £750. Strange Kaufman claimed £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television which he had to pay back but he wasn’t prosecuted for fraud. Neither was former Home Secretary Jack Straw who tried to thieve his Council Tax from the taxpayer despite having already received a 50% rebate. And Hazel Blears, she who stole some £12,000 in capital gains tax on her second home, was vociferous in condemning those who stole a fraction of that.
The British establishment is calling for vengeance and of course our ‘independent’ courts are doing their best to satisfy them. Soldiers killing over a million people in Iraq are ‘heroes’ and torturing and committing atrocities are ok, including bombing the hell out of Tripoli, but to damage property in Britain is a gross crime! This is the traditional British hypocrisy. But those who sow the seed will reap the whirlwind.
Tony Greenstein