Many of you will have watched to rioting last not and some of you probably saw it at a range too close for comfort. Pa and I went off to bed last not armed to the teeth, we have quite an arsenal between us and a our next door neighbour is a champion archer we felt we had done all we could.
I was working for a theatre company in Birmingham during the riots of 1981 and experienced first hand the terror of mob rule, I watched people burning down the shops ., flats and offices in their own neighbourhood it was awful.
A man who stood beside me told me that the people who were burning down his shop were all customers who used it regularly. I was appalled.
Unfortunately it is far to easy to say that all the rioters are criminals although it is certain that many . Are. What we need to ask is why do things like this start and what will it take to stop it.
My own theory , for what it is worth is that out there are thousands of disenfranchised young people with no future. They have been stung in to action by a sense of injustice and they have nothing left to loose. Injustice, think about the word and what it means. People who are pushed to the limit, people h=who are condemned without good cause, people who are blamed for the wrongs of others and people who have been backed in to a corner, people with no futur4e will inevitably come our =t fighting and make no mistake, when a man feels that he has nothing to lose he will fight hard.
Our society is corrupt, this cannot be denied. All to often the people at the top are not worthy of the positions they hold, remember the parliamentary corruption scandal of last year. The police scandals of a few weeks ago. Every where we find inequality, and bully boy tactics and yet we call ourselves civilised. These are the ways of the morally barren, unimaginative and generally spineless and they are not all out on the streets throwing bricks though shop windows. They are hypocrites and deserve to be despised.
I am by no means defending the rioters I merely say that it is easy to understand, push a man too far at your peril, for there can only be one result.
While the mealy mouthed politicians lectured us about our spendthrift ways, they should have realised that they were pushing peoples patience beyond endurance. How does some one who has nothing “cut down” ? The danger is that once people realise that the police can not stop them they become more outrageous as time goes by. Obviously out leaders are a pack of self important fools because they did not see this coming.
Watching the Arab Spring uprising s should have been enough of a warning to anyone that such a thing could happen any where.
Some people have said that the army should be brought in that would mean civil war.., and besides there are not enough soldiers to quell such riots any more than there are enough police.
Last night London burned and its people realised at last that they are on there own, most of them are shocked to the core.
There was a good deal of looting and of course there is always a criminal element involved it these events but not every one who took advantage of the situation to enrich themselves was of the criminal class. The shops are full of goodies that you will never be able to afford you are taunted by those who are supposed to set and example, OK what they did was wrong but who can blame them, most are barley out of childhood and are already cast on to the scrap heaps through no fault of their own.
I hope with all my heart that this mess fizzles out but if it does we should never forget how close we came to total breakdown in society.
While those who really caused the depression still fill their pockets and while ordinary people are being ripped off at every turn we run the risk of more and worse than we have already seen.
Those who are really to blame must take the consequences of their action and this must be seen to be so. If our leaders wish to be listened to and perhaps obeyed in times such as these they must have our respect and that respect needs to be earned. They have by their own actions forfeited that respect and the result of that catastrophe is what really made London burn last night.
As I said when President Mubarak was deposed by the will of the people Tyrants Beware.!
No comments:
Post a Comment