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When Is a “Riot” a Revolt?
by Carl Finamore on 24 Aug 2011 0 Comment

Several days of unprecedented revolt by the most impoverished minority populated neighborhoods of London has shaken the normally staid and reserved British aristocracy. Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his Italian vacation in sunny Tuscany to return to the red-orange glare of a burning city. The prime minister was not the only one inconvenienced.

 

In an effort to mobilize 16,000 police officers concentrated in London alone, England’s soccer-addicted fans saw their August 10 match against the Netherlands in Wembley stadium canceled.
 

 

So it appears, this week at least [Aug 12], after years of ignoring glaring inequality and injustice, it is safe to say that all of England took notice of the crowded south London neighborhood of Tottenham and to similar minority communities in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol where an explosive, fiery social consciousness has been rekindled.
 

 

Tottenham itself, where events first ignited over the police killing of an unarmed black youth, is a genuinely multi-cultural mix of mostly British-born African-Caribbean along with Turkish, Portuguese, Albanian, Kurdish and Somali peoples reportedly speaking 300 different languages. It claims to be the most diverse community in all of Europe, but there is no doubt that most share in common the intense poverty and the abuse and neglect by the rich and powerful that is all too familiar.
 

 

During this past week, these different languages came together to speak with one voice: look at us; we deserve to be treated fairly. London’s current revolt is quite different than the massive protests in other European capitals and even distinguished from those in the Middle East. The poor of Tottenham, however, do share much with their brethren in the black and minority communities of North America. Neither have powerful advocates that are independent of the political establishment.

 
 
London’s Revolt Forecasts America’s Future?
 

 

Traditional community and labor organizations in both Britain and the United States purporting to represent the working class have utterly failed these communities and allowed both Downing Street and Wall Street to impose their most austere policies on those least represented among us.

 

“Most of all, it once again exposes the trickery and deceit of those who aspire to be our leaders. Not a single black ‘leader’ has spoken out in defence of the youths. Not one,” Hal Austin writes in the August 9 CounterPunch. Austin is a Barbadian, living in London and a leading journalist and social commentator from the black community.

 
Cannot the same be said in America where, for example, prominent national voices mobilizing the oppressed communities to demand jobs are noticeably absent? Of course, the British government peddles a different story about events in Tottenham. Most are echoed by the establishment press.
 

 

A typical response came from GlobalPost’s London correspondent, Michael Goldfarb, who was quoted on the PBS “NewsHour” web site as derisively dismissing the social problems of Tottenham by commenting that “the tension around [the police killing of the black youth] got out of hand very quickly, but it was clear almost from the beginning that this was plain old looting” by mainly unemployed youth with nothing to do on hot summer nights, he said.
 

 

To the extent that this crude and vulgar opinion is shared by many in Britain, it only serves to confirm the truth: Tottenham residents are isolated politically and socially from the rest of British society and particularly from the rest of the working class.
 

 

Fundamentally, their isolated existence explains the different form the rebellion took; more akin to a chaotic riot in many people’s eyes as opposed to the far-better organized massive upheavals in Madrid, Athens and Cairo that united majority sections of their population and that, thereby, more easily won sympathy and admiration throughout the world.
 

 

It is important to recall that these same massive actions ultimately achieved major support from significant and massive social organizations that helped define the powerful and effective character of their protests.
 

 

Culpability for the desperate acts in Tottenham is shared by organizations of the working class that have so profoundly failed to embrace these communities and offer them the same shared benefits of organization and same shared status as brothers and sisters. Their organizational and political inclusion early on, I believe, would have significantly altered and strengthened how Tottenham residents reacted these last few days.

 
 
Divided and Disorganized
 

 

Attempts during the era of the triumphant civil rights movement to politically and socially unite the black community in the United States were met with government-inspired assassinations and police terrorism, as documented by revelations contained in the US government’s COINTELPRO papers.

 

As a result, beginning in the 1970s, criminal gangs began replacing FBI-targeted militant organizations like Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Leadership Conference, Black Panthers, Young Lords, Brown Berets, and numerous other effective social and political organizations in the communities of the oppressed.

 

This had a debilitating effect after several decades, and results today in reactions to police brutality and poverty being often marked by scattered individual acts of frustration and anger. Protests are sometimes laced with anti-social behavior previously adopted as survival techniques. For example, while ostensible political targets such as police cars and offices were burned in both Tottenham and Cairo, there was also, in the former case, the indiscriminate burning of buildings and some personal accounts of victimizations that come from pent-up rage.

 
There were other examples of criminal activity and even conflicts between gangs in the oppressed community of Tottenham that were also reported. Again, these are a result of decades of disorganization in the oppressed communities.
 

 

These are not excuses, neither are they defenses. It is an explanation that contains the answer for its resolution: new organizations must be forged that unite the community around common social goals and aspirations.

 
The proliferation of criminal gangs and the utter lack of a coherent, credible and socially class-conscious leadership is but another reflection of political and social separation from the majority of working people.
 

 

But this reality and the impact it has on distorting the communities’ response should not in any way diminish the powerful and profound social nature of the Tottenham revolt, one deserving of our full support.

 
The 1965 Watt’s rebellion in Los Angeles was similarly attacked in its day as a criminal enterprise, but history has now properly recorded it as a true revolt against poverty and discrimination. History will also record Tottenham on this honor roll.
 

 

The rich and powerful benefit from divisions and rivalries in the oppressed communities, both in Britain and in the United States. Arguably, these same forces promote criminalization as a way of preventing the kind of social unity that could become a powerful political force.
 

 

A politically cohesive and united Tottenham is the frightening specter that certainly haunts the wealthy elite in Britain, even more than the current very dramatic random acts of outrage. As for their richer cousins in the United States, the wealthy elite here are only too well aware of the smoldering embers of discontent that have been stoked by the same draconian reductions in jobs and social services that have been adopted in Britain.
 

 

These issues affect the majority of Americans and, hopefully, we learn from Tottenham that a united response is the best response with no community or section of working people left alone to fend for themselves.

 

 

Carl Finamore is Machinist Local 1781 delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He can be reached here.

Courtesy Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/when-riot-revolt/1313008260
User Comments Post a Comment
A very interesting analysis
Vijay
August 01, 2017
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Many lies were imported in the 60s from Oxford & Washington, DC, on "subsistence farming" and caloric poverty and malnourishment, female and infant mortality, morbidity, etc., which made for great expert careers on agriculture, "development" etc., in places like NY, Geneva or Bangkok. The greatest invention of course, in India at least, was the "poverty line", which sustained great ideologies in subsequent decades, and the buzz was all about the coming Revolution, esp as preached by a little red book imported via Oxford. Later, of course, revolution arrived in rainbow stripes of green, pink, and even white! Not to forget important blue and the much-maligned saffron hues. And now, what these experts publish, is not worth the trash that goes to making printing paper.
Fatima Fonseca
August 01, 2017
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Agriculture is truly in a crisis. Warm regards

Ajai
August 01, 2017
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The fragmentation that you have written about is the programme of
specialisation which has overtaken agriculture. A small plot can comfortably feed a family and a few of their neighbours - provided the crop 'scientists', planners and administrators are kept far away (see Fatima Fonseca's comment). This is the only agricultural economics we should need. If you appeal to planners and policy makers to help fix the problem - they are the ones who created it to keep themselves employed!
Rahul Goswami
August 01, 2017
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@Rahul Goswami
You have hit the nail on the head. The whole CRISIS of Indian agriculture is that the Small farmer fed himself and his family and local community, and did not come to the Market for anything - was not a consumer.

This reality was first broken in the west by pushing farm communities into cities as factory workers and urban slum dwellers, with health issues that triggered the growth of Big Pharma.

Now the attempt is to drive farmers out of the villages so that the land can be grabbed by Corporates in the name of improving efficiency.

This is a vicious cycle that must be broken. The cities have nothing to give the farmers. Their health is the first casualty.
Sandhya Jain
August 01, 2017
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Fragmentation of University studies and research in the name of specialization on top of fragmentation of arable land surely will lead to unsustainable production from land. Independent India missed the bus in avoiding mindless urban conglomeration by not building small towns and cities for decentralized habitation and enterprise for the rapidly growing population. This Article is timely warning to public policy makers not to miss the bus in land utilization in a sustainable manner. Education and research must be re-designed with this purpose.
R.Venkatanarayanan
R.Venkatanarayanan
August 01, 2017
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I fully agree and endorse the views expressed by Sri vijay Garg on the subject. No doubt it is indeed a vast ocean but is totally integrated.Some joker may ask for bifurcation of Sericulture to morrow to take away a slice of the cake available.
We have a very receptive P.M whose only object is to restore Our motherland to her Pristine glory.If he could listen to a child on corruption at Rajghat and take remedial steps including installation of CCTV cameras, i am sure he will also listen to educated people from across the spectrum to make agriculture,animal science,horticulture and allied sciences an integrated unit to help our motherland prosper.
I am a mechanical engineer nearing my eighth decade of life but still am prepared to help in any capacity,without any obligation.
doraiswmyganesh
August 01, 2017
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Very good article.. i request you to cover the land fragmentation also, as one of the main factors affecting agriculture.

Irrigated agriculture done only in river belts. Rest of india dependant on monsoon rains.

Till colonial rule, village as a whole is a well designed entity. A typical bharathiya Grama was designed based on terrain, and waterflow. The borders of the village was fixed in such a way that the rain water in that village will flow to inner regions of village where the lake or pond is built for collecting such water.

At larger level, there are water ways that interconnect these villages and finally end up in river.

There was a design pattern of settlements in all villages. The traditional village panchayat looked after these local resources.

These villages as a whole unit is administered by the village head. "Pattam" is given to these village head to look after this village enterprise (called village republics).

The first son of the family of village head will take over administrative role and will get the "Pattam". The other sons will get a part of the land within this village setup, as allocated by the panchayat.

So essentially, the village setup is a collective commune setup ..

But during Colonial rule, this commune setup was dis-regarded, and land was considered as private property and the property holder can do anything in their land. The inheritance was twisted to suit this private land holding, where the village property was divided equally among all sons, and each was given "patta" over the land they inherited.

Thus the original meaningful "Pattam" system given only to village head, was corrupted in to individual patta.given indiscriminately to any one.

So how does this affected agriculture?

the disregard of traditional village republic system has stripped the right of local people over the resources of their village. They were denied the right to protect their waterways, local ponds, and self-organise. Any alien industrialists from urban setup can buy any piece of land in the village, and indian govt promptly gave patta to that industrialists, even if the land he bought was a lake or waterway.

When the farmers could not maintain the water resources, how can they do agriculture in their area? For those in river banks, water is not a problem. But for those numerous villages, which depends on monsoon for water, face the worst situation.

This is exactly the reason why there was so many farmer deaths in vidharba, the inland area of maharashtra which depends on monsoon alone.


The entire indian setup, including its constitution, beurocracy are all alien, and hostile to our native system. They are designed to destroy every native setup and enforce a anarchist, capitalistic system on us.

The colonial india has to be dismantled, and has to be re-organised in to bharath which encompasses and recognises all these native systems.

But If i mention this, the Hindu intellectuals respond by saying "We have to change according to time". The destruction of our native institutions, destruction of living hood, destruction of our water bodies, and destructon of communities and their life style are just seen as Mere Change..
senthil
August 02, 2017
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@senthil
Yes land fragmentation is worrisome problem in agriculture. Yes, earlier land was village or public property like in many tribes exiting till now. Colonial govts made the land pvt properties and broke the earlier sustainable concept.

senthil, this article was written to show how the administration of agriculture academia, policy making and R&D is done in compartments without much inter-operability. When every sector of economy and institutions are consolidating or colluding, why to divide agriculture into sub-occupations? .
vipesh
August 02, 2017
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