Speaking in July at the Marxism 2011 festival to promote his brilliant book Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working-Class, the author Owen Jones said that there has been a tendency for British leftists to focus more on international struggles than on the problems currently facing people in the UK. The riots of August 2011 decisively have put an end to that, at least for me, who was one of those leftists Mr Jones was referring to.
But I think there is a lot to be learned from struggles overseas, though not from the more immediate changes brought about by the Arab Spring, rather from democratic movements that have emerged over the past 15 years in Latin America. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia and even their North American counterpart (regardless of what he has subsequently done) Nobel Peace Prize winning (bet the panel are proud of that decision) President Barack Obama of the United States of America, came to power precisely because they mobilised large segments of their respective populations, who felt alienated from and unrepresented by ruling political elites who they rightly believed were more concerned with personal gain, than the concerns of the wider citizenry.
Well removing Mr Obama from the equation, the two aforementioned Latin American presidents have massively improved conditions for the majority of their citizens particularly those from the poorest communities. Don't the riots above all else despite the myriad of reasons given by the myriad of commentators (myself now included) show above all else the desperation of the rioters. Starting with those who demonstrated peacefully in Tottenham who asked the reasonable question of why the police had gunned down a father of four who had not drawn a weapon and then subsequently chosen to lie about it. No response was offered. Members of that community had gotten used to not receiving responses to their enquiries relating to police brutality, or their problems in general; not to flog horse but this shows an acute frustration at a lack of political representation.
Owen Jones in his once again, brilliant-fantastic-go-read-it-now book, seems to indicate what is needed is for the Labour Party, who historically have attempted to reflect the will of working people, i.e. the majority of those living in the UK, to move away from the cross party neo-liberal economic consensus, and once again begin to address working-class concerns . I feel I have to point out that I am not conflating rioting with being working class, as in the condition of being working class somehow automatically predisposes you to riot. This should go without saying, but after reading some of the prejudiced bile vomited up even by seemingly leftie papers, this what should be beyond obvious point needs to be stated.
The broadcast media's skewed coverage in choosing to focus on individual acts of criminality, and the stories of victims rather than looking at the concrete causes of trouble, made the rioters look like wild, feral (how they love that word) loonies. It made simplistic, compelling viewing bad rioters vs. innocent victims, followed by a focus on the clean-up showing us that all is well in jolly old England.
And even if you want to make the argument that the majority of rioters came from what were traditionally working-class areas, as papers on the right so desperately want to, how do you define an area such as Tottenham where you have thirty four applicants for any one single job? What happens to a working-class area with no work, how do you classify it? Are we even partially aware of the reality facing the large segments of citizens in this country? And why have their voices been excluded for so long? What are they telling us about the society we live in that we are not prepared to hear?
Well, when the Labour party says that proposed cuts to the police force should be halted, it is a very clear message that they are not on the side of those who not only stand to lose but are losing most from the Lib-Tory cuts agenda. The message between the lines is, we know that these cuts are destroying already weakened communities, so the repressive forces need to be strong to control those who we expect to fight back.
What is needed is a young person's party of the United Kingdom, not a party that reflects the wishes of young working people, but that is theirs, made up of people from the communities that are most affected by the ongoing cuts agenda. Because political power is what is needed, all further rioting will achieve is, in the eyes of a disappointingly large section of the British population is justification for ever more repressive police tactics, and clampdowns on the right to protest and other civil liberties.
As an aside there are some other points I want to make in brief, though the police have a multitude of sins to answer for, it must be realised that the police and army are made up mostly of young working class people, and if they can be made to realise that in their current role they exist solely to serve the interests of a political and financial elite, that would sooner spit on them than invite them in for a cup of hot chocolate, they will be a huge addition to the burgeoning resistance movement. Chavez when sent as a soldier into the favelas (slums) surrounding Caracas to restore order and protect the richer areas of the city, asked his fellow soldiers, 'who comes from over there?' (pointing to the wealthy area), to which no one in his company replied, then he said, 'well we cannot shoot these people in the favelas, as these are the communities we come from and thus they are our people'.
I do not envy the role of policemen in the upcoming months and years, the question I would ask them is, whose interests are you serving? And then, what kind of society do you believe you are sustaining?
My final two points are that the voting age in the UK needs to be lowered to fourteen, with ever more decisions being taken that will affect the entire course of young people's lives, they need to be involved in the processes that decide their fates. And also with the rate that this government are criminalising both members of the student movement and young people in general, we need to ensure those in prison have full voting rights, because excluding those who fight against the injustices of our society creates a skewing of the voting system which makes our notion of living in a democracy laughable.