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In the Summer of 2011 the streets of Britain’s cities were gripped by riots. They originated from a very legitimate demonstration following a police shooting in London, but quickly spread as many people seemed to jump at the opportunity to take to the streets. In the resulting mayhem many shops were looted and fires were started which spread to other buildings and put innocent lives at risk.
In the aftermath of the riots, the government and police clamped down in an extreme and authoritarian way on anyone found to have been involved in any way. Punitive sentencing, clearly intended to send a blunt message and “teach people a lesson”, produced results which were arbitrary and unjust. It is absolutely clear that many of the sentences handed down were totally over-the-top, and that some people whose involvement was negligible were made scapegoats for the actions of others.
But what is also obvious, to me at least, is that the actions of many people involved were simply criminal opportunism. Sympathisers of the riots as a whole claim that they were entirely politically motivated, or purely the result of social and economic inequality. I just can’t see that. Whilst the demonstration that sparked the riots was the result of a legitimate grievance, the further away the action got from that and the more people got involved, the more those who simply wanted to use the cover of disorder to steal consumer goods joined in.
Does the desire to steal such things stem from ingrained economic inequality and social oppression? Possibly, but surely that isn’t always, or even usually, the case. Envy that someone else has something you don’t is merely a symptom of the greedy world we live in. It’s what drives the greedy in society to become even greedier, to the point where they no longer consider the effect their own pursuit of self-gratification will have on others.
When the looting of shops spread from the multinational chains right down to the corner shops run by ordinary people; when the arson attacks set fire to flats so that terrified occupants had to leap from windows to save their lives; when the violence became targeted at passers-by who were attacked and robbed (and in the case of one man, who tried to put out a fire in a litter-bin, beaten to death) - then it becomes clear that the people involved in those particular instances can’t possibly claim any sort of political justification for what they were doing. They’re just a part of a diseased culture which is oblivious to the misery for others that will result from its selfish demands.
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Some claim that there’s a revolution taking place on the streets, and that there’s an uprising on run-down housing estates, because bored young kids are nicking turbo-charged cars and joy-riding around to show off to their mates. Some claim that there’s a revolution taking place on the streets, and that the proletarian masses are demanding a say by driving cars through shop windows to nick hi-fis and videos. Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it that way. You think you can justify it, but no matter how hard you try - consumerism’s the same, whether you steal or you buy. If you’ve been fooled by the advertising gloss then your rants against capitalism are not worth a toss. The seeds of international corporate greed come from ordinary people who want far more than they need. “Every man for himself” is the corporations’ rallying call - if we reject that idea then their empires will fall.
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