Though Cowards Flinch

Just when you think you have Dan Hodges all figured out he goes and writes a piece in the latest edition of Progress Magazine, stating (though not necessarily advocating) the anti-establishment reasons why we shouldn’t vote Ken Livingstone.

After saying Ken leads Boris by many standard criteria (‘sticks to what he believes in’, ‘in touch with ordinary people’) notes that what Ken lacks is charisma – where Boris leads 50 per cent to Ken’s 18.

Regrettably, this matters today. Additionally, he questions whether Ken is scrappy enough. Certainly he has political scheming down to a fine art form, exemplified during his time as Mayor of London; but Hodges wonders whether he could win the war with Boris?

One is tempted to scoff at Hodges’ opinion here. After all, Ken really means it – he is the real London candidate – and Boris is a buffoon. But an important detail reminds us why London might be attracted to the floppy haired idiot over the man who once said Britain should have fought alongside the Vietcong in the Vietnam War.

Johnson, since becoming Mayor, has all but cut ties with his leader and party, whereas Ken has poured much praise over Ed Miliband – becoming something of a party loyalist after all this time on the vocal exterior of the Labour party.

Perhaps, overall, what Londoners are attracted to is the solitary renegade. This is what made Ken the man of the moment for so long, before he showed himself to have a dodgy cabal of deviants.

Boris is more like the acceptable face of Berlusconi-esque political Dionysianism, characterised by an idiocy that makes you laugh all the way to the polling booth, in spite of the clear and present collusion with rich and unpalatable lobbyists.

After the earthquake in L’Aquilain, Berlusconi told depressed survivors “treat it like weekend camping”. Days after the riots in London Boris made it quite clear that he was on holiday.

In all its arrogance, what London wants from a Mayor is a radical differentiation from the national leadership. London is so obsessed with being different that it will vote as its political figurehead a moron who fashions his hair to make him appear even more dim-witted than he actually is.

But perhaps Hodges has raised a fair point about Ken. For the candidate who is supposed to know what Londoners really want, perhaps he has neglected to work out the final key ingredient.

The violence on the streets of London, Birmingham and elsewhere appears to the over-active imagination as a Rorschach test; as the machinations of whatever prejudice we have at the time, be that the failures of capitalism or the implosion of the European project of multiculturalism.

On one extreme, this destruction is the last ditch attempt by a forgotten section of society, whose only bargaining chip is achieved through removing the last layer of skin that holds their communities to the mainstream, while for another extreme these actions represent the suture promoted by cultural Marxism in single-parent families and what Richard Littlejohn has called “I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now consumerist society“.

Though the statistics look grim, are they directly responsible for recent events? In Tottenham, as Mary Riddell noted in her widely read Telegraph article, there are 54 applicants for every job, while 10,000 are benefit claimants. Britain is less equal in wages, wealth and life chances than any time since the 1920s – that the majority of people were expected to just sit on their hands is unreasonable, but this bout of street violence hardly appeared like a political protest of the sort these figures might evoke.

However appearance is precisely the problem. When the students took to the streets last year for the cut to EMA and the rise in tuition fees, placards and banners, planning and spokespeople were the images that distinguished “mindless violence” from political action. Even when fire extinguishers were being lobbed from great heights, and windows smashed, nobody doubted the political message, even if the ethics of proper protest were being debated, both in the press and by activists themselves.

Not every set of actions, no matter how unpalatable, or unclear their causes, will have such easily identifiable symbols and signs to recognise. Likewise, not every action that has in some way been perpetuated by the political landscape will be accompanied by a series of Situationist inspired political banners.

As Tony Parsons said last night: “You can never tell who is fighting for justice and who is just fighting for a wide-screen, hi-def plasma telly”.

Undoubtedly looting, the destruction of communities, and the ruining of people’s small businesses and livelihoods is wrong, and should be punished rather strongly, but it is as naive to suggest there is no politicisation here, as to suggest that these events are the thoughtless culmination of greed and moral decay.

As sure as I am that crowds scattered across the streets of London, and further afield, are mixed in their motives, I am sure that a lot of the reaction towards these events are imparted without experience of protest (unlike with the students) lacking in any notion of bourgeois parody.

***

Businesses go under every day, possessions are lost on a regular basis – this, as some will agree, is business as usual. And it is wrong, but it is under-reported. What happened over previous nights are destructive – no doubt about it – and it is right for us to be outraged, but it will also help to restore some perspective. If we directed as much energy towards condemning these seemingly random attacks as we did business as usual, then we’d see less communities go under at the hands of social and geographical exclusion.

As Richard Murphy said, on the riots and the erratic behaviour of the stock market, “I [do not] condone violence … [b]ut then I don’t condone the behaviour of markets”. This is interesting, because thugs on the street smashing windows is just one type of violence – another type is the ill-considered changes to the way in which business rates are distributed to areas, which will see already poor communities get poorer.

One, more physical example of violence, can often obfuscate the extent to which the latter example can be considered violent, unjust and the culmination of greed. While rioters were condemned last night for their greed, it must not be forgotten what greed is, and other examples of it (for naysayers answer this – why should we not raise the issue of banker greed, fraud and tax evasion here, just why not?) for perspective. One example, displayed last night, is rare, while the other example is business as usual.