FOR LACK OF A WHIFF OF GRAPE:

London riots: 'Bleeding, I called 999. A tired man told me to go home': Andrew Gilligan reports on his own experiences of the lawlessness that swept across much of London and elsewhere. (Andrew Gilligan, 10 Aug 2011, The Telegraph)

Even on Monday, the victims of Tottenham, black and white, were already tired of outsiders blaming racism, police brutality, or cuts. (What were they rioting about in prosperous, suburban Enfield - rising season-ticket prices?) The real reason for the rioters' behaviour is much simpler: because they can.

Forget BlackBerry Messenger. After seeing -- on television -- how much leeway the looters of Tottenham were allowed, every criminal and every excitement-seeking child in London took note.

By the next day, critical mass had been achieved. Disorder had erupted on a scale much more difficult to suppress than the original outbreak.

There are, and always have been, plenty of people keen to break the law. On my taxi ride, I saw many other youngsters in twos and threes, hoods up, looking for the next crowd to join.

These are sights, with variations, that I have seen in foreign conflict zones: the loss of state authority and the loss of individual inhibition from being in a big group. But in London, the geography of fear is particularly potent.

Unlike Los Angeles or Paris, the riots are not happening in ghettos where nobody goes. They are happening amid the organic gastropubs and latte bars. Alongside poverty, inner London is full of the sort of middle-class progressives who agree with Ken Livingstone that the rioters "feel no one at the top of society, in government or City Hall, cares about them or speaks for them".

I predict a lot of those people, as they cower behind their sash windows, are revising their views tonight. The hardening of liberal opinion in London is palpable, and is taking even the likes of Boris Johnson by surprise.

One thing about rioters who aren't actually desperate, they're easily cowed. The question is does Sam Tyler's police force any longer have the capacity to be Gene Hunt when it needs to be.

Posted by oj at August 10, 2011 5:00 PM
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