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07 August 2011

Tottenham: "A riot is the language of the unheard."


- Karl Marx & Freidrich Engels
The Communist Manifesto
It's the day after the night before in Tottenham and the process of analysing and understanding recent events begins, even though the full extent of what happened is as yet unknown. But, if any analysis of the events in Tottenham loots what happened of its political, historical and economic context then there is no way to make sense of any of it.

The process of getting to the essence of what lies beneath has to be done in an environment of doublethink and doublespeak in which politicians and the media champion the apparent popular uprisings against oppressive regimes in the Middle East -- the 'Arab Spring' -- yet simultaneously condemn and seek to suppress similar protests and uprisings against the illegitimate institutions of authority that they themselves represent. Remember too that condemnations of the violence in Tottenham that emanate from the political class come from the same people, organisations and entities who are responsible for commissioning and unleashing a decade of untold violence and barbarism on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq and more recently Pakistan (by drone) and Libya, the latter of which it is claimed is in support of a popular uprising but which is in fact no more than a reactionary CIA and NATO supported resource-plundering coup attempt against Gaddafi.

As is usual with any protest that flares up in some way, much of the analysis proffered comes from a place outside of any sort of wider context. In fact, the context of the analysis doing the rounds on the Idiot Lantern and radio networks only ventures as far back as two days in the whole of human history. So, if the media is to be believed, the history of Tottenham is just three days old and commences at the point at which 29 year old Mark Duggan was executed by police.

The events in Tottenham last night did not occur in a vacuum, nor are they an isolated example of the dire state and straits of peoples the world over.

A 16 year old girl meets 'community policing' in Tottenham

The Murder of Mark Duggan

Discussion of the shooting at point-blank range of Mark Duggan on Thursday night is, like the 'riots', totally devoid of any wider context. As is usual with police executions of members of the public, irrespective of who the victims are or what the underlying truth might be, details about the manner in which Duggan was killed are notably thin on the ground.

Eye-witnesses report that Duggan was lying prostrate on the ground when he was shot, that any weapon which may or may not have been in the cab was inside a sock rather than cocked, loaded and ready to fire upon teams of armed police officers, and the actual truth of the matter will inevitably be far more convoluted and 'nuanced' than that. Oh, and the bullet lodged in a police officer's radio which was apparently evidence of a shoot-out? Well, "Initial ballistics tests on the bullet... show it was a police issue bullet." Quelle surprise!

Those few details that are available are either sketchy, unverified and, without access to any of the evidence, completely unverifiable. This means that information available about the killing of Mark Duggan has either to be discounted entirely, or be taken on trust from a police, State and media that is still glimmering in the glowing embers of the News of the World / News International / Trinity Mirror Group / Police / Cabinet Office scandal that exposed the entire chain of governance and propaganda as thoroughly corrupt and rotten to the core. Fear not though because the entirely trustworthy Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating.

Yet the context of recent events in Tottenham is still not wide enough to extract much in the way of meaning for we have yet to factor in the historical undercurrent of tensions between economically and opportunistically marginalised and excluded communities and the 'institutionally racist' police, or the specific history of police harassment and chastisement of Tottenham's ethnically diverse communities.

The history of police killings, and the extent of the lies propagated by the police as they collude to cover-up their crimes is long, detailed, bloody and shameful. Those days when anything announced by the police or the corrupt State in whose service the police operate is taken by anyone at face value are long gone, if indeed they ever existed among the working class and those members of society who have been all but written-off as the 'underclass'.

A Voice of Reason in the Chaos
"A riot is the language of the unheard."

- Dr. Martin Luther King

Haringey Youth Worker Symeon Brown interviewed by BBC News
Tottenham Youth Worker Symeon Brown, interviewed by BBC News, spoke of the "collective memory" of the people of Tottenham and how the events of 25 years ago on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham are ingrained in the DNA of the community, irrespective if they themselves were present at those events. The stories of police brutality and oppression, particuarly directed towards ethnic communities, have been passed down through the generations and serve as a cautionary tale of the nature of the oppression which they face by accident of birth and by dint of the same economic inequalities that see the State give handouts of over £1 trillion to banks that should by rights be bankrupt and confined to the graveyard of economic oppression, while seeing any forum of subsistence support for ordinary people and communities slashed and burned with equal speed in the name of faux austerity that does not apply if you happen to be an international banking corporation.

Brown continued, “There's a sense in the community that the police are 'not for us' and as we've seen with events this year like the student protest, there's a hostility between young people and police - and that has manifested even more so in 2011. The trigger for this was a young man being killed – this is the context that must not be forgotten."

Symeon Brown is correct in his analysis. The police are not for the people of Tottenham but rather against them in just the same way that the police are not for the majority of the people generally. That the police are against the majority of people has been repeatedly and amply demonstrated at various protests in recent years through the use of the illegal detention-without-charge tactics known as 'kettling', horse-mounted baton-charges and other violence meted out towards ordinary people peacefully protesting against a State entity that is equally acting and operating in a manner that is "not for us". The police are merely a sub-section of the bodies of armed men that form the barrier and buffer between the State, the ruling class of the 'haves' and the 'have-mores' and those who are ConDem'd to poverty, deprivation and squalor by the deliberate choices and actions of the State that clearly now only serves its own naked self-interest.

It is this collective memory of the people of Tottenham and people in the wider community that has resulted in what Symeon Brown termed the "removal of consent". The people of Tottenham, of all races, colours and creeds, and the students, workers and activists whose consciences and desire for greater social and economic equality inspires them to take to the streets in protest against the actions of the State have all collectively removed their consent, further adding to the illegitimacy of archaic and anachronistic institutions of authority that continue to believe it is their divine right to do whatever they like, whenever they like, without any equal and opposing reaction.

Whatever political capital any authority seeks to make from what happened in Tottenham on Saturday night, using emotive phrases such as "having the heart ripped out of the community", it is quite clear that far from there being any connection to that supposed heart of the community, what exists in actuality is an alienation from all that capitalism has lain before it and all that capitalism has subjected it to.

Opportunists, Provacateurs and Propaganda

The science of social deprivation

While the initial unrest and uprising may have occurred as a direct response to the murder of Mark Duggan and the lack of police response over the course of days to demands for answers from Duggan's family, friends and community, a degree of caution needs to be exercised with regard to what transpired when darkness fell. One needn't look too far nor listen too hard to discover information and accounts that suggest that at the very least the seemingly wanton destruction of property occurred as legions of police looked on without taking any action to prevent these events from occurring.

Worse yet, there are reports of 'outsiders' -- people otherwise unfamiliar to the Tottenham community -- appearing on the scene and exacerbating an already tense, precarious and highly-flammable situation.

For a State that is fully aware of its actions, the consequence of its actions, and the reactions likely to be provoked, in tandem with a State that is intent on seeking new methods and weaponry to add to its already wide arsenal to be used against the general public in the service of the unquestioning subservience it describes as 'public order', the escalation of events on Saturday night are a gift.

What happens next remains to be seen but we need only look as far as Northern Ireland to determine the State's preferred methods for suppressing popular opposition to its actions. And, as already outlined elsewhere on this blog, the prime movers in the establishment of the policing methodology and tactics used to suppress dissent in Northern Ireland are all now conveniently placed in the positions of authority to impose similar regimes on the people of the mainland.

If we are to learn anything from what has transpired it should perhaps be that the anger and energy that lay behind the unrest in Tottenham last night needs to be organised and directed into building the unity and solidarity of ordinary people to create that which the Ministry of Defence outlined as one of the greatest threats to the corrupt State; to build the very same thing that will help us all, collectively, find the way out of the mess to which we the people have been condemned by the ruling, property-owning and finance-capital classes:
The Middle Class Proletariat



Anonymous said...

-yawn- be quiet white boy.

Bridget said...

A riot is the language of the unheard:



The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."


World Blog - The sad truth behind London riot

There is a world of difference between the violence of the oppressor with the violence of the oppressed.

Thanks Antagonist for knowing the difference.

Anonymous said...

Oh fuck, those bloody rioters have made Theresa May come back!

The Antagonist said...

"We smashed the place up then Boris set fire to the toilets." - David Cameron (1986)

The Antagonist said...


"There is a world of difference between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed."

Ain't that the truth! Only there are some who seem incapable of figuring it out, including a British soldier who called a phone-in show to say, "This is England, we don't do stealing."

I'm guessing the British Army doesn't teach the history of the British (and American) Empire(s) as the method by which land and natural resources were stolen from indigenous peoples.

Anonymous said...

I is so oppressed I gonna help myself to a brand new hi-fi and widescreen TV, innit.


Anonymous said...

-yawn- be quiet middle-class white boy.

Bridget said...

A voice from the street and a voice that will remain unheard by the majority:


The Antagonist said...

Dan Hind concludes:


Full article: Nothing 'mindless' about rioters - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Anonymous said...

Craig Murray:

It is necessary to be plain about one thing. This is not, in any sense, a legitimate political protest. Nor is it a revolt of the deprived, homeless and starving. Few of those arrested are coming to the attention of the police for a first time. What is happening is that the burgeoning criminal underclass is realising that it is now large enough to defy society if it can concentrate its forces quickly in specific localities.

This is not a race issue. This is the social mileu from which Jade Goody, Amy Winehouse and Wayne Rooney (all of whom have had close associations with people imprisoned for violence) emerged just as much as it is gangs of Somalis and Nigerians – and it is indeed that too. It is a product of a contemptible urban sub-culture driven by a detestation of education and an avid materialism. That its devotees can argue that the corrupt bankers and politicians are morally no better is a perfectly valid point, but no justification.

They are not destroying the homes and livelihoods of politicians and bankers, but of ordinary decent people.

Full article: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Bridget said...

The ruling class accuse the poor of mindless violence whereas they perpetrate mindful violence in Iraq Afghanistan and Libya.

Bridget said...

‪Kate Tempest - Cannibal Kids‬‏ - YouTube

Bridget said...

^ We were suckled on the milk that they soured

Told the future was ours

And then disembowelled and disempowered

Weve been disgraced, deafened and deflowered

Our brains brutalised and our﻿ defiance devoured

Anonymous said...

Bridget, that's awful.

anony said...


Baron Lootalot said...

An Open Letter to David Cameron’s Parents

The Antagonist said...


Thanks for the Craig Murray quote.

You know what they say, "Scratch a liberal, find a fascist."

Which reminds me why I stopped reading his blog a long time ago.

gyg3s said...

"Which reminds me why I stopped reading his blog a long time ago."

I haven't managed to work out why Murray went to Julian Assange's 40th birthday party which he tells us about in his blog post, Celebrity Dissent.

Assange has very questionable credibility as does his host, Vaughan which doesn't say a lot for Murray's judgment.

The Antagonist said...


The likes of Murray, Assange and their fellow apparent dissenters are an interesting bunch.

Superficially they challenge many 'narratives', but certainly not all 'narratives', and definitely not nearly enough of the 'narratives' to carry them into the territory of radical analysis.

The 'narratives' they choose not to challenge are perhaps more informative guides to their positions than the ones they do challenge. So too are their reactions to anyone that broaches the subjects of their unchallenged 'narratives'.

This seems to define their roles as points of focus for corralling dissent around the things they do challenge into unquestioning acceptance of narratives that absolutely do need to be challenged, before leading everyone up the garden path of reformist solutions to issues that are unfixable under capitalism.

With regard to Murray, if you factor in his reaction to recent events then his position becomes much clearer. That, and the fact you probably don't get to be the State's ambassador to anywhere being by too radical.

When attempts are made to pass judgement on the last few days of insurrection and challenge to legacy authority in the UK, without reference to the fact that similar is going on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Syria, Egypt, etc., all in the midst of a bottomless global crisis of capitalism after a decade of imperial conquest in the middle-east, with word on the wire being that France and the U.S. are to follow, 'disingenuous' is the kindest term. At worst it's mendacious or ignorant or politically naive and entirely unforgiveable.

When you do factor in goings on in the rest of the world, in the geopolitical and economic climate that exists, then the UK's favoured solid 'narrative' of 'feral' 'criminal' youth with 'no respect', 'no morals' and 'bad parents' completely melts into thin air.

The Antagonist said...

Pah, the one time haste gets the better of me and I don't check sources...

The Cameron quote above is from a parody.

Still, it fairly accurately reflects the high-jinx of the Bullingdon buggers and the ruling class looters running the show.

The Antagonist said...

^ Speaking of which, this is fair game....

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg avoids questions about his conviction on two counts of arson.

Anonymous said...

How easy it would be to install fascism in this creaky little country! No need to torch the Reichstag – all you'd have to do would be to burn a few more sports shops.

Anonymous said...

WV: Copper

SEO New York said...



The Antagonist said...

^ "We don't do stealing" - and the British Museum full of 'borrowed' artifacts from around the world is absolute proof of that.

Meanwhile: New questions raised over Duggan shooting | The Guardian

Johnatton said...
