The UK burned for the third night in a row, as Tottenham’s riots spread to other cities – Nottingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham.
The footage was shocking. Houses were torched with people still inside them, youths rampaged through streets and setting fire to anything that took their fancy. Youths, many barely into their teens, broke into shops and stole merchandise and display items. London burned and its people huddled in their homes, too frightened to leave.
UK Premier David Cameron cut short his holidays to personally spearhead a campaign to restore law and order. It will be a tough job. These are not race riots. They are not the same riots of the 1980s and to have any comprehension of why it has happened, one must have lived in England and experienced the life and culture of the ‘welfare class’.
Some have argued that these are disadvantaged and frustrated youths – they do exist, but the rioters were not those types of people at all. What this is, is a reflection of the overly-generous welfare state which tried to solve social problems by throwing money at them. It did not work. There are many cities in England which are veritable tinder-boxes. But it is not because these people are downtrodden. The true downtrodden live in ghost cities where the steel and coal industries collapsed. These are the people of Liverpool, Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Newcastle. These thugs are not like them. These are people who have been used to receiving their dole Giro every month. They are those people who are used to getting a free house when a single mother starts a brood of 5, 8, 11 children. They are those people who prefer to sit around and drink beer out of cans from morning till night, rather than getting off their behinds and finding a job. They are the ‘take’ society, who bleed the system dry and then have the gall to say they are underprivileged. They are Tony Blair’s legacy. They are the ones who are to blame for real social inequality.
These people are thugs. These people feigned to help an injured man, then robbed him. These people set fire to houses while people were inside. These people are society’s rubbish, nothing more and nothing less. Did they march on Whitehall? Did they march on Parliament Square? No, they attacked fellow Londoners, their own communities and the very people that protect them. How low can you go? They even attacked fire crews who were working to put out blazes.
David Cameron has said that he will personally “get to work” on the issue. He said that London’s 6,000 officers would be bolstered by an additional 10,000 from around Britain. This shows clout, but it could also backfire if anarchy continues to foment in other cities. The PM also said that 400-odd youngsters had been arrested and added a very telling comment: “If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to be tried for them.” Cameron did, however, stop short of saying that the army would be sent in. One is sure that he will not exclude it, and that if things continue to degenerate, martial law could be imposed.
This riot was not sparked by the financial crisis. But it certainly does show, as this newspaper commented in other leading articles, that Europe is not immune to civil disorder. One hopes that the riots can be contained. Just as ‘copy cats’ began to rampage around other parts of England, the same can happen to the whole continent. What a crying shame.