As Parliament is recalled for a second (unprecedented) time this summer, the investigation and soul searching into the extensive riots that broke out throughout the UK has begun. Things are much calmer, partly because of the presence of more police and the arrest of hundreds for looting and rioting. So it's time to ask - a question raised several times in both my previous diaries; to what extent is racism and aggressive policing a factor.
In my first diary - This is what Austerity Looks Like: Riots in North London - people justifiably complained I had played down the shooting of Mark Duggan by members of Operation Trident, which was followed by peaceful protests and eventually by the major social disturbance in Tottenham on Saturday night.
In mitigation, there were lots of rumours then flying: he had been executed with a shot to the head; he had been firing wildly at police officers. The Independent Police Complaints Authority have now issued their preliminary findings.
It was a preplanned armed arrest (police firearms need special orders to be issued with supervision at a senior level). Mark Duggan was hit by two bulllets. A fatal one to the chest and a second that hit his bicep. The police bullet lodged in the radio of one of the armed officers. Duggan was in possession of a loaded weapon, but it does not look like it was used.
The police have already apologised for poor liaison with Mark Duggan's family. There's no doubt this was a dramatic incident that caused great concern, especially in the black community in Tottenham. But - and I know someone who was also killed by an police armed response team - shootings like this are rare in the UK, but regular enough that one has to ask why did this shooting trigger such trouble in North London now?
ThoughOperation Trident is a specialised operation targeting gun crime in London, there are issues of racial profiling in the every day stop and search procedures in places like Tottenham. There is therefore an element of the institutional racism described in the MacPherson report after the murder of Stephen Lawrence 15 years ago.
However, while this may have been the trigger or spark for local protests, as should be clear to anyone following events, the conflagrations that followed, igniting wide scale looting and rioting throughout London's inner suburbs, including Ealing where my children live, go well beyond the normal dynamics of civil disorder we saw in the 1980s when the major riots in urban areas were those with large black populations.
Nobody doubts these days that those riots were caused by decades of brutal and racist policing. There's also little doubt that - though there have been 30 years of policies designed to mitigate that - those problems of white privilege still remain.
But as I said in my second diary, while I breathlessly tried to document the spread of these riots throughout the UK: the dynamic was different here. Race and heavy handed policing really can't quite explain the extent and spread of civil disorder over the last few days.
In my previous diaries, the only consistent thread I could find was age, and to a certain extent poverty as common factors among the rioters. To some this looked like I was making some academic or general conclusion that "class is more important than race". Let me state: I had no such agenda. I was merely empirically trying to report what had happened in my home city, the place I've called home for half a century.
A Brief Profile of the Riots
First it must be stressed: British cities are not like US cities. There is nothing like the geographical segregation you see in the US. Tottenham is 20 percent AfroCaribbean in ethnic make-up. In fact the most segregated communities in the UK - in physical terms - like Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, are around 50 percent Pakistani/Deobandi. And that is a very rare exception.
Even in those areas famed for civil unrest in the 1980s - places like Brixton in London, Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham or St Pauls in Bristol - the black community there represents a third of the population at most. On this occasion, the rioters seemed to represent the diverse ethnic demographic of their boroughs; white in predominantly white areas like Enfield, Asian (Pakistani or Bangladeshi) in places like Ilford.
Indeed the most destructive riots were in Ealing and Croydon, where the rioters were predominantly white.
The Guardian has done an initial report on the rioters, based on the first hand experience of their many reporters on the ground:
UK riots: 'Those who seek to racialise this problem are taking us backwards'
The degree to which tensions between different ethnic communities played a part in the riots is a complex issue
The uncomfortable question since the beginning of the disturbances on Saturday night, however, has been the degree to which tensions between different ethnic communities, and wider issues of race and cultural alienation, have played a part in some local areas. The answer, observers warn, is a complex and multifaceted one, in an area where simplistic judgments can be dangerous.
"Where communities are already divided along ethnic lines, there is of course a tendency to hunker down," says Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, which researches issues of race and equality. "But what I'm struggling with is that there is so much that we don't know. I don't know if what goes on in West Bromwich is anything to do with what happens in Birmingham, or if the Woolwich riots were organised but the Croydon ones were not.
"Race is clearly playing a part in the backdrop to these riots, and where relationships are already bad I suspect it has made it worse. But I fear that people will rush to judgment, to the suggestion that this is all to do with black youths, for instance. From one side we hear that it's about feral youth, and from the others its all about inequality. Until we hear the voices of the people involved – and at the moment we are not – it's very difficult to say."
SNIP
But while Saturday's disturbances in Tottenham may have begun after a protest march over the death of a young black man, the subsequent riots have not been caused by members of any one community.
Most of those on the streets in Enfield on Monday were white, while Turkish and Asian youths have also taken part.
"The fact is that although we need a full and comprehensive public inquiry into the causes of this, people of all different races have been involved," said Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham and shadow small business minister. "Those who seek to racialise this problem are seeking to take our communities back to a place where they are not.
"This isn't the 1980s, and those who are trying to paint it as such are making a grave mistake. I can say from the perspective of an MP of a constituency that covers part of Brixton that police and community relations are completely different to what they were then. They may not be perfect but we have made huge progress."
Now their were various inspiring moments of community collaboration across the country. Kurds and Turks work together in Dalston (where there is gang tension between them both) to protect their businesses. Likewise Sikhs turned out to protect both the Mosque and the Hindu Temple in Southall.
Let me reiterate. These groups weren't allying against black rioters, but looters of all ethnic backgrounds.
Of course, such vigilante action itself can have a racial component. Right wing groups such as the EDL formed vigilante squads in places like Eltham in South London, Enfield in the north and Bow in the East. Right wing groups are trying to hijack the riots, with Stormfront erroneously and disgustingly talking about a 'black mob'. In other cases the rioters are described Muslim! Fortunately the extra police nipped these mobs in the bud.
One of the most personally distressing potential developments was the drive by deaths of three Pakistani young men in Winson Green in Birmingham, allegedly mown down deliberately by escaping looters who were black. Beyond the brief worries about my daughter in Ealing, I found this the most worrying development of the last three nights: my radio series Bad Faith explored these communal tensions between Muslims (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) and the black community which erupted in the Lozells riots.
Fortunately, last night passed off peacefully, thanks to the amazing and moving call for peace from one of the victim's fathers Tariq Jahan about his son Jahan
There have been no revenge attacks. Let's pray this stops here
So the racial component here is very complicated, and it's not even certain that it's even the dominant factor. As Mary Riddell describes some of the rioters who have already appeared in court:
The first (and still persistent) idle stereotype states that the typical insurgent is a bling-crazed poor black gang member who addresses his friends as Bruv or Breh and regards Foot Locker as a looter’s paradise.
But wait. Yesterday it emerged that various professional types were up before the beak. Today a teaching assistant appeared in court. And so the suspicion took root that rioting, far from being the province of depraved black youths, is actually a middle class diversion, like canasta or allotmenteering.
Having spent several hours at my local magistrates’ court, I suggest that neither caricature approaches the truth. Even yesterday, when the majority of those before the court came chiefly from Tottenham – which has a very large black community – around one third of suspects were white. Today only one suspect in the court hearings I attended was black.
In the youth court, a group of four black teenagers admitted an attack described as “unwarranted and savage.” But others, including a defendant aged 11, were white. On the evidence before me, attempts to suggest that Britain is in the grip of race riots is utterly fallacious.
SNIP
Don’t believe the myth that the riots are about racial division and tension. On today’s showing, they aren’t. Don’t believe either that privileged cleanskins are orchestrating the riots. There is no Identikit rioter discernible in a mosaic of different races, different backgrounds and different ages.
Yet some preconceptions do not shift. I saw nothing, in the procession of suspects mostly bearing dismal back stories of previous offences to alter my first suspicion – that the typical troublemaker is an alienated, under-educated outcast whose empty greed mimics the unprincipled avarice of the richest in the land.
One thing is for sure. These were not exclusively race riots. However, I do apologise to my US readers if I seemed to be playing race down for economic issues in my previous two diaries. It was just the speed of events, the difference between the 80s, and the fear that - domestically - race would be used as a justification for a right wing vigilante action
Relevance to the US
I still stand by my contention that the main connection between now and the 80s is recession, youth unemployment, aggravated by impending cuts. I make no general conclusions about this when it comes to class or race, especially in the US, and I will be guided empirically by what emerges, not by any agenda to prove any a priori thesis.
However, we are both suffering from the effects of recession, growing inequality and unemployment, and right wing calls for even smaller government. A my neighbours in my apartment block, Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen, have just written in the New York Times.
The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.
America is in many ways different from Britain, but the two countries today are alike in their extremes of inequality, and in the desire of many politicians to solve economic and social ills by reducing the power of the state.
Britain’s current crisis should cause us to reflect on the fact that a smaller government can actually increase communal fear and diminish our quality of life. Is that a fate America wishes upon itself?
I don't know. Do you? In this spirit of our dearly departed Meteor Blades, who I hope one day will return from his leave of absence, I welcome dissent, different arguments, and any other perspectives - short of flaming of course.