Contexts for Distraction

Abstract

This paper discusses the events of August 2011 through our reading of a series of reports and responses by academics and commentators. These are critically and collectively evaluated as lacking in so far as we see the deployment of gang-talk, the promotion of role models, narrow-cast notions of race and platitudes about the justice system as a distraction from wider issues. Providing context for “reading” the riots/uprisings, we suggest that, at stake in each case, we see the limits of a scholarly commentary that remains unprepared to address the conflict and turmoil of “Big Society” austerity thinking.

Notes

1. Not only in London of course, but tourism authority branding belies the spread to nearly every city in England in the days after the first night in Tottenham.

2. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope , armed storm troopers searching the planet Tatooine for “droids” (robots) are sent on their way by Obi Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), using his superior mental control of “the force”. It is our contention that a similar, but much diminished, mode of distraction operates in the search for “explanations” of the August riots in the UK in 2011. From David Cameron’s electorate-pandering declarations of a war on gangs, to the more nuanced insistence of organisations like the Centre for Social Justice that his policy “is not working” (Centre for Social Justice, 2012) and even in the respected Guardian/LSE research reports or the works of philosopher-pundits like Slavoj Zizek, the effort to explain away the uprising deserves a more critical eye.

3. Scott Lash, speaking at a student run Centre for Cultural Studies event at Goldsmiths College in October 2010 had already pointed out that the austerity cuts were unnecessary, that the deficit shortfall was comparatively small, that the cuts were politically motivated, and that something more than cant was needed (from memory, Hutnyk).

4. See the film Injustice, 2001 Dir Ken Fero and Tariq Mehmood, and the website of Family and Friends United. In 2011 UFF reported: “The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody report published in 2011 stated: in total, there were 5,998 deaths recorded for the 11 years from 2000 to 2010. This is an average of 545 deaths per year” See http://uffc-campaigncentral.net/2012/06/national-fathers-day-vigils-make-a-mark/ retrieved July 27 2012. The list of the Institute for Race Relations, maintained by Harmit Ahrwal, provides equally appalling reading: http://www.irr.org.uk/news/black-deaths-in-custody/ - retrieved July 27 2012.

5. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot multiple times in the head on a tube carriage in Stockwell after being trailed by surveillance police under the watch of Commander Cressida Dick. The only charge brought against this action – a daytime murder of a Londoner without cause – was one of a danger to public health and safety. Those charged were acquitted and Cressida Dick was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service – BBC News December 31, 2009 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8435507.stm – retrieved August 17 2012.

6. Elsewhere, one of us has written about this as a Pantomime Terror, see: Hutnyk 2011.

7. Our examination of self referential commentaries as merely promotional is not an anti intellectual position, so much as it is an attempt to question the ways in which intellectual positions, including claims for more and better analysis, are often left unexamined as regards the privilege of making, or at least publishing, any analysis at all. We have no illusions that our own work is also subject to a certain privilege.

8. The Wildcat group offer the observation that “Comment on subjective factors should be left exclusively to the subjects in question, although this right has already been usurped by countless social ventriloquists. The most it is possible to say here is that some members of a class subjected to intensive and invasive management refused at specific times and in various ways to be managed or manageable” in “Detest and Survive”, http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/actual/DETEST_AND_SURVIVE.html – retrieved August 17 2012

9. We note the provocative critique of an earlier uprising, in 1982, that was helpfully republished in 2008: “The riots at least should prove a lucrative source of income for that symposium of oily rags. The Sociology of Deviancy (Wolfie Smith, Speed, Tucker and June, 1982) http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/37-like-a-summer-with-a-thousand-julys – retrieved 16 August 2012

10. John King’s novels on football in England in the 1990s perhaps offer the best ethnography of contemporary Britain available today.

11. Is Britain in the grip of a knife crime epidemic? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1572908/Is-Britain-in-the-grip-of-a-knife-crime-epidemic.html retrieved 29th August 2012.

12. “Riots: Louise Casey – Blair’s respect tsar - to aid PM” BBC News September 7, 2011 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14819727 – retrieved August 4 2012.

13. “Louise Casey’s troubled families programme ignores the real problem; Patrick Butler, Guardian July 18, 2012, - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/18/louise-casey-troubled-families-problem – retrieved August 28 2012.

14. Many references here are possible here, one worth reading is the Khalid Qureshi Foundation and Chelsea Ives Youth Centre text “Riot Polit-Econ” in the Mute special issue “Well the first thing I want to say is, politics my arse” (Mute Volume 3 # 2, 2011–12).

15. That Louise Casey proposes an “intervention” programme for 12,000 anti-social families reminded us of the Australian Howard Government’s spurious “Intervention” in outback Australia, best examined through the dark glass of Angela Mitropoulos in “Notes on the Frontiers and Borders of the Postcolony” (Mitropoulos 2007).

16. If we must invoke the science fiction scenario of the sub-prime financial crisis, let it be through the work of Angela Mitropoulos (2012).

17. “Nick Clegg invites owner of burnt down Croydon furniture store to Games closing ceremony” ITV News August 10 2012 - http:/www.itv.com/news/2012-08-10/nick-clegg-invites-owner-of-burnt-down-croydon-furniture-store-to-games-closing-ceremony/ For Clegg’s photo with the Reeves, see: “House of Reeves chairman Nick Cleggs guest to closing ceremony” in the Croydon Guardian August 14, 2012, http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/9871819.Furniture_store_chairman_invited_to_Olympics_closing_ceremony/.

18. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/04/riot-defendants-court-sentencing – retrieved August 9, 2012.

19. “London Riots: They Stole Everything” Daily Mail August 10, 2011 – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024012/LONDON-RIOTS-2011-They-stole-EVERYTHING-Enfield-Clapham-shops-stripped-bare.html – retrieved August 10, 2011 [the “alleged” is ours, for forms sake].

20. “Gangster who joined millionaire’s daughter Laura Johnson on looting spree jailed for dealing crack cocaine” Telegraph April 5, 2012 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9188299/Gangster-who-joined-millionaires-daughter-Laura-Johnson-on-looting-spree-jailed-for-dealing-crack-cocaine.html – retrieved August 27 2012.

21. Many thanks to our colleague, and prisons expert, Sophie Fuggle for comments that have helped further this text.

22. In another text, we might render the Newspaper Baron of Wapping as a Harkonnen leader from the Planet Dune, perhaps a Dark Lord. His fall from grace before the Leveson Inquiry, with his Number One Son having to take the sword – he only Johnny Marbles’ well-aimed pie – brings the allegory neatly home.

23. See his text on the riots and black youth organisation at http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/black-power-perspective-on-2011-aug.html – retrieved August 29, 2012

24. Actually, the Guardian report on custodial sentences is an exemplar of horrific numeration. Cold graphs and pie-charts document the 3000 plus incarcerations, with an average custodial sentence of 16 months. This is a statistical bludgeoning that beggars belief. Admirable perhaps that readers are left to draw their own conclusions, but it is still the case that wider contextualisation is not broached – “Riots broken down: who was in court and what’s happened to them” Guardian July 4, 2012 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/04/riot-defendants-court-sentencing – retrieved August 29, 2012

25. Chandan, http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/black-power-perspective-on-2011-aug.html – retrieved August 29 2012.