Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

On the Insurrection

anon@indymedia.org (urbano) | 10.08.2011 22:55 | August Riots | London

Thoughts on the ongoing insurrection in the UK

 

The ongoing riots in England are profoundly political. They erupted at a time when representative democracy and the system of the market economy have reached an all-time low level of credibility among the people. The consecutive years that New Labour has spent in power has proved that no left-wing alternative exists within the political system, because the system itself has succumbed to an inescapable general shift to the extreme right and towards notions and concepts of dictatorial government for the sole benefit of the economic elites. Voters tried to punish Labour by reinstating the Torries in government, mitigating their innate antisocial proclivities by forcing them to enter into a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. Soon they realized the magnitude of their blunder when the new "coalition" announced plans to curtail public spending, to dismantle much needed state welfare services and to increase tuition fees in universities. Given the uneven distribution of wealth and the monstrous inequality that prevails in contemporary UK society, reduction of public spending in the form of imposing cuts in unemployment benefits, downgrading the national health-care system, withdrawing public funds from education, etc, effectively means a virtual freeze on the process of social mobility, the ever-greater concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a privileged minority and the growing inability of the disenfranchised majority of the population even to meet its basic material needs. The violence that erupted during the massive student demonstrations a few months ago was only a warning of greater disturbances to come, since no institutional mechanisms exist within the political system allowing the disenfranchised sections of the population, not only to express their opposition to antisocial measures, but more importantly to resist and avert their implementation by the elites. The general strike of public sector workers was another clear sign of alienation and the growing rift between the political and economic elites on the one side, and the bulk of British society on the other. An even more disturbing sign was the complete indifference with which the coalition government treated the industrial action of the civil servants, the smearing campaign it launched against them and the violent repression and brutalization of demonstrators (remember Jody McIntyre) exercised without any remorse or moral reserve by a police force which has come increasingly to resemble a band of thugs. The English political and economic elite knows that having lost its legitimacy and being unable to rule by means of ideological coercion, it has to rely increasingly on brute force and ruthless police measures in order to impose its will on the deprived underclass of British society. The killing of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests, the shameful maltreatment of Jody McIntyre by police thugs were only the sad precursors of the shooting of Mark Duggan. And this is the reason why an impartial investigation of Mark Duggan's murder by the authorities is out of the question. The system needs its apparatus of organized repression intact and has to keep the morale of the security forces high, for the police and the security services are the cornerstone institutions for the consolidation of the emerging British police state. The underclass has grasped this new reality since they are at the receiving end of the policies of victimization against underprivileged social groups implemented by the systemic elites. They attacked police stations and petrol-bombed police cars, because they reject the dominance of a ruling class which attempts to impose social conformity and subjugate them by brute force. The forced expropriation of goods and products by the rebellious masses (what the systemic media calls «looting») points to the class-nature of the insurrection, since the looters can be said to be acting on the impulse of amassing (in these conditions of a complete breakdown of authority) all those goods and products they will never be able to obtain in the course of their everyday lives. Under this light, the violence and plight of department stores and businesses is hardly an irrational action. Also, we should not be surprised that mass violence is the chosen method of political intervention selected by the insurrectionists of marginalized working-class areas in every major English city. Most of them are unemployed. They do not belong to the general organized workforce and consequently they do not possess the institutional means to embark on collective action, for example, by means of a strike movement. Uprisings, sabotage and violent insurrection are the political tools utilized by the marginalized sectors of society and the unemployed so as to resist the onslaught of plutocracy and globalization. In that sense, it is effectively an action of self-defence, a counter-violence aimed against the structural violence which is embedded in a hierarchical social system, which functions through the unequal distribution of all forms of power (political, economic, cultural) among those at the top of the social pyramid and those at the bottom. The total absence of race as a determining factor in the riots and the spontaneous elimination of ethnic divisions in the process of forming a singular insurrectionary social subject engaged in common action, albeit decentralized and dispersed, is an encouraging sign that the ethnic elements falsely dominating the self-perception of the British underclass are fast disappearing opening the way to the notion that there is only one class enemy: capitalism and the system of internationalized market economy.      


anon@indymedia.org (urbano)
- Original article on IMC London: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/9900

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech