London Riots: opportunistic Criminality

Sadly, what was witnessed in London last night was the downside of social media: orchestrated criminality. ‘Rioting’ spread from Tottenham to Enfield, Walthamstow and Brixton. An estimated 200 ‘youths’ took to the streets for a night of vandalism and exchanges with the police in Enfield, wantonly trashing shops and cars. The Guardian reports that looters gathered under cover of a festival in Brixton and stole goods from Footlocker, H&M and Vodafone, removing their bounty in cars and on scooters. Unrest in Brixton continued into the early hours.

You will hear many media voices in the days, weeks and months ahead, claiming that this outburst of criminality is in some way connected with ‘youth disaffection’, ‘lack of opportunity’, ‘discrimination’, ‘poor police-community relations’, ‘economic deprivation’ and so on. It is not. This violence is a simple manifestation of criminality; criminality facilitated by the new social media and mobile phones, bringing together likeminded criminals and thugs who hitherto would not have been able to coordinate their actions. Interestingly, The Guardian notes that the looters' phone of choice may be the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) because 

'Unlike text messaging or Twitter, BBM is a free, private social network where almost all messages are encrypted when they leave the sender's phone – meaning that many messages are untraceable by the authorities.'  

Some of these criminals are primarily interested in opportunistic looting, some in gathering for a ‘ruck’ with the police, and others for a bit of both and whatever other opportunities should offer themselves up when law and order are suspended: vandalism, arson and random assaults upon members of the public.

They have realised that such coordination allows them to outmanoeuvre the police, and by latching onto a ‘protest’ about the death of an armed drug dealer in Tottenham, they attempt to pass off their wilful antisocial acts as somehow ‘legitimate’ in the eyes of certain media commentators and politicians. The dominant meme at play in the media and mainstream political parties is that the actions of such people can be explained through reference to social and economic marginalisation and ‘powerlessness’. The looters and rioters are thus dignified with a political status that they do not deserve. Those individuals who have chosen to take to the streets to attack people and property have done so because they have made a conscious decision to act in that way. They have not been compelled to indulge in violence, they have willed themselves to violence. It is the individuals conducting this violence, and they alone, who are responsible. Any governmental response which seeks to lavish taxpayers’ money upon those areas that have witnessed this disorder would not only be myopic, but immoral and utterly ineffectual. It is time for ‘community workers’ and ‘leaders’ also to stop behaving opportunistically by using such criminality as a pretext for bidding for more regeneration and ‘social-cohesion’ project funding. Deal with the criminals through the legal system and confront the attitudes underpinning the criminal subculture: this is the correct way to deal with this problem.

Enfield Town targeted by Rioters

It would seem either that criminal elements that conducted last night’s rioting in Tottenham have moved on to target Enfield Town, or a separate mob has gathered for a copycat confrontation with the police. Reports from the Haringey Independent, London 24 and the Enfield Independent state that there have already been minor clashes between police and rioters following an afternoon of rumours on social networking sites that Enfield would witness violence this evening. The first trouble took place at around 6.30pm, with some 100 rioters smashing shop windows and trashing a police car. As of 9.30pm, it was reported that the number of rioters had risen to circa 200.

The Metropolitan Police had made some allowance for potential trouble by sending 20 riot police to protect Enfield Town Station. As to the identities of the rioters, reports have little to say other than that they were ‘youths’ kitted out in stereotypical contemporary rioter attire, wearing hoodies with scarves drawn across their faces. A group of about 30 is said to have been driven back by the police along Southbury Road, and was last sighted heading towards the centre of Enfield. Anticipating that the Met could be overstretched this evening, the Daily Telegraph reports that additional officers have been drawn in from the following neighbouring forces: City of London, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Thames Valley, but it has not been revealed where precisely it is intended to deploy them. 

The opportunistic nature of this criminality has been demonstrated by the fact that this evening's rioters targeted a jewellery shop and briefly entered, although the Guardian does not mention whether they happened to make off with any of the shop's wares. Moreover, other opportunistic criminals keen to conduct their business behind the smokescreen of 'social protest' appear to have been squaring up for a confrontation with the police in Brixton earlier this evening, where they hurled bottles at police vans. According to the Telegraph, three police officers have been hospitalised following the incident in Coldharbour Lane. It remains to be seen whether the recently formed vigilante groups in Wood Green will be put to the test tonight in defending their businesses.

Vigilantism in North London: ‘Local Protection Units’ formed to confront Rioters

Last night’s rioting in Tottenham is reported to have spilled over into Wood Green, and it is feared that there will once again be unrest tonight. Reports indicate that it took only 200-300 rioters to wreak havoc in Tottenham, endangering life and limb as they looted and set light to properties, businesses and vehicles. The cost of the damage is already estimated to be many millions of pounds, and fearing that the Metropolitan Police will again be overwhelmed by violent criminals, the London Daily News reports that a number of shop owners have formed their own ‘local protection units’. A spokesman for the Green Lanes ‘unit’ told the paper "We do not have any trust in the local police, our shops are next on the target list by the thugs who have ransacked Tottenham, we will protect our property."

That people feel that they need to do this is a shameful indictment of the inadequacy of the police force. Nobody should feel so fearful for their physical safety and that of their property that they feel compelled to form voluntary defence associations, but this is what is happening. This failure to honour the most basic duty of any government – to safeguard the physical safety of citizens and their property and to uphold the rule of law - whilst the ConDem administration prioritises foreign aid and costly wars which have nothing to do with our national interest, indicates that there is something dangerously wrong with the thinking of those in government. To cut police budgets and spending on other essential public services and allowing civil order to disintegrate whilst appropriating our money to spend on their pet projects abroad represents a grotesque abuse of office. Moreover, it is of course not only the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats who approve of increasing foreign aid and meddling in overseas conflicts, but the Labour Party too.

It is time that it was made crystal clear that the duty of any government that purports to represent its citizenry is first and foremost to preserve public safety and the rule of law. Without seeking to prioritise and secure these basic preconditions of a stable civil society, it cannot be said to be a government in any meaningful sense of the term. Worryingly, those who have banded together to form ‘local protection units’ in Wood Green, Turnpike Lane and Green Lanes, are said to be Kurds and Turks, or, to put it bluntly, Muslims. If our forces of law and order are seen to be failing so spectacularly, to whom and to what do you think they might turn?

Tottenham High Road Ablaze

Tottenham Riots: Opinion and Videos

Mark Duggan, a well-known gun-toting drug dealer dies in an exchange of gunfire with the Metropolitan Police on Thursday and members of the wider criminal community in Tottenham promptly stage a ‘protest’ which ends with them burning buildings, police cars and a bus. Whilst Tottenham burned, looters afforded themselves the opportunity to ransack local shops, wheeling away trolley-loads of stolen goods. There are also reports, as yet lacking in detail, that the rioting spread to Wood Green. Worryingly, the police response has been seen to be so ineffectual that vigilante units have been formed in Wood Green to protect local businesses. This riot is indicative not of any ‘oppression’ of the so-called local ‘community’, or of its ‘deprivation’, or a sign of ‘discrimination’, ‘racism’ or any of those other smokescreens behind which black criminals hide themselves, but of a deep-rooted inherent criminality in part of the black population that revels in violence and gangsterism.

Guns, knives, drugs, prostitution and the veneration of a crass materialistic illiterate world of machismo posturing characterise this ‘urban’ subculture. Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old violent criminal who made his living from generating misery, will not be missed other than by members of his family and the criminals with whom he was on good terms.  The Observer quotes a woman named Nikki as saying that the protesters who originally marched on Tottenham Police Station were “making their presence known because people are not happy". "This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things, but he was not an aggressive person."

She says that Duggan was “not violent”? A man carrying a gun who exchanged shots with the police was “not violent”? If he was “not violent”, I dread to think what the violent members of the Tottenham criminal underworld must be like. Nikki’s statement is very revealing, for it shows that life has become so debased and devalued in Tottenham that it is seen as acceptable and normal to carry a firearm, and to use it.

Mark Duggan: "not an aggressive person"?

 

The 200-300 criminals who attacked the police, looted and destroyed property and attacked a bystander for speaking to the fire brigade, should be dealt with harshly. There is no justification for such actions. In what way does throwing Molotov cocktails constitute legitimate ‘protest’? Decent residents of Tottenham need to distance themselves from the criminal thugs in their midst, and come clean about the real problems relating to the anti-social ‘urban’ subculture to which a significant swathe of their younger members subscribe. They should not fall into the trap of playing the victim card or crying ‘racism’, and admit instead that they have a problem and deal with it accordingly. 

I have already seen one local community worker talking to a BBC reporter about a sense of "grievance" amongst "the youth", with the reporter masochistically egging him on to lay the blame not upon the criminals who perpetrated this outrage, but upon the wider (and by implication) white society. The BBC thus treats the rioters as animalistic automata with no sense of self-restraint or morality, who can only 'react' to their external environment in a brute fashion; they are infantilised and treated as 'victims' who should be placated with more facilities, projects and regeneration funds. Interestingly, the BBC television news report I watched nowhere mentioned that Duggan was carrying a gun when shot, and thus portrayed the case as if it had involved an 'innocent' black man being summarily executed by members of the casually racist Metropolitan Police. Such distorted and tendentious reporting renders the BBC an extremely unreliable news agency, and the faults displayed in its reporting of the Duggan case and subsequent rioting are very much in line with the editorial line of its mainstream output. Bear this in mind over the coming months as the BBC seeks to create another black martyr to juxtapose with a set of white devils.