“I was awed by the
gatherers
Gave myself to the hunters,
I now chase celebrities
And brave hedge fund punters...”
From Laydissnama
by Bachchoo

The alert reader will recall that there were riots in Britain this August, but three months ago. The centres of several cities were looted by mobs and for the first two days — the riots lasted for six — the police seemed to be standing by helpless, unable to muster the force to stop mobs of people, mostly young, smashing shop-fronts in the High Street and taking away electronic equipment, shoes, clothes, groceries and whatever else they fancied from the stores and setting fire to buildings and businesses.
The world watched. The riots in Britain took place at the same time as the Arab Spring blossomed from Tunisia, through Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. There were protesting mobs in the streets and squares of the Arab cities and, proportional to the fight that the state put up in suppressing them and proportional to the support they received from the troops who didn’t want to fire on their countrymen and women, they brought about the downfall of dictatorships.
In Libya, the mobs turned themselves into a rag tag and bobtail revolutionary army and finally conquered Tripoli and turned their firepower on the hideout of Col. Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte and killed him.
The world waits to see whether the Arab Spring will turn into a glorious flowering of the rights of humans or whether it will turn into summers of discontent and heated dissent and result in autumns of despair with the green shoots of spring turning into the dead browns of medieval orthodoxy.
In Britain, the riots were characterised by one and all as the action of the opportunistic and criminal young. Apart from looting and smashing, they indulged in ransom and premeditated arson. One of them said he set fire to a business because some months previously
they had turned him down for employment there.
In three locations they attacked police stations and everywhere they confronted and battled the police with sticks and stones while the police organised themselves into shielded phalanxes like the Myrmidons of Achilles.
Only one commentator, the Trinidadian journalist and broadcaster Darcus Howe, appeared on national television and attempted an analysis comparing the Arab Spring to the riots that were then alarming Britain. He was pilloried and ridiculed.
One must admit that on the surface it was a tenuous even absurd connection and Darcus wasn’t given the opportunity to analyse or pursue it. The protesters in Tahrir Square were there to demand the annihilation of Hosni Mubarak’s undemocratic rule. They were
risking life, limb and
liberty.
The looters of Britain were after trainers from JD Sports, designer clothes, plasma television sets, computers and DVD players from Currys on the High Street. They were not demanding the abdication of the Queen, the penitent resignation of British Prime Minister David Cameron or even the public skewering over a coal fire of their local police chief or member of Parliament. Loot, loot, loot and kick a copper if he gets in the way seemed to be their credo.
Fair enough. Suspend all comparison of our UK riots to the Arab Spring and bear with me while I, in order to pursue the comparison, remind you of a reduced version of Lenin’s definition of the state: A body of armed men which protects the interests of one class against those of another.
In the Arab Spring, as in any other revolution, the revolutionaries had to win over the police and the Army or defeat them. In Egypt, they won over large sections and made the government’s position untenable. In Libya, the Gaddafi forces, whether tribal loyalists or foreign mercenaries, had to be defeated through the barrel of a gun — or through airstrikes by Nato.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the overthrow of those states will not lead to any governing formation that represents “the proletariat and peasantry” as Lenin and Mao both claimed when they won.
What Britain’s rioters glimpsed was the police in a 48-hour funk. The state was in very temporary, self-imposed retreat. Rubber bullets and water cannon would have sent the looters scurrying. Mr Cameron would not have had to recall troops from Afghanistan to fight the rioters on the streets of Birmingham.
And yet... and yet there was an articulated feeling amongst the rioters, amongst those who weren’t arrested and got away with it, that the police had been given a fright and a thrashing. Up to a very small point. Their contention of petty victory amounts to no more than the braggart’s tale. Thousands of rioters were arrested, tried and convicted.
An interesting statistic emerged from these convictions. Forty-seven per cent of the convicted rioters were white, 42 per cent of them were black and seven per cent were “Asian”. (I can find no account of who the remaining four per cent were. Were they zombies, Martians or of indeterminate race?)
Since only two per cent of Britain is black and perhaps four per cent is Asian, it would seem that blacks are hugely overrepresented in the looter/rioter category and “Asians” are marginally “excitable”.
That being said, it is a fact that of the Asians convicted the majority were of Mirpuri origin with a sprinkling of Bangladeshis and Punjabis from both sides of the border. (Perhaps the Gujaratis didn’t loot shops and businesses because it may have turned out that their relatives owned them.) Nobody, but nobody, not even the hardline racists have said that rioting and looting is a genetically determined proclivity. It is obvious that the looters come from the poor and alienated sections of the cities.
The statistic also contains the fact that 17 per cent were gang members. This to me means that the gangs with their disciplined criminality began the rioting and very many of the disorganised, men and women of all ages, some poor and some just greedy, saw an opportunity and joined in. If property is theft, then looting it is retrieval.