Though Cowards Flinch

Jay-Z’s clothing company Rocawear have launched a T-shirt which reads “Occupy All Streets” blazoned on the front. A press statement on the shirt from the company goes:

The ‘Occupy All Streets’ T shirt was created in support of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Rocawear strongly encourages all forms of constructive expression, whether it be artistic, political or social.

One leading occupier in the states, a chap called Grim, responded:

Jay-Z, as talented as he is, has the political sensibility of a hood rat and is a scrotum.

The thinking, perhaps, is that someone out there is attempting to squeeze a surplus on a real movement, with real aims, which aren’t to further a publicity campaign.

But to be sure, it is accepted that there is more to the protest than pure political expression.

I happened to be walking past St Paul’s one night last week when a guy at the microphone was announcing to the camp the intention of being recognised as a “work of art”.

Like with so many political statements, I always find myself wondering what Brendan O’Neill would think – and not because I respect him, you’ll understand, but quite the opposite.

He wrote a dreadful blogpost for the Telegraph regarding the occupation saying that “If Occupy London is such a radical revolt, why is it making the ruling classes smile rather than tremble?” The crux of the asserts that if this was a real protest, challenging the status quo, it wouldn’t be supported by, among others, Giles Fraser, Conservative Christian Democrat finance ministers in Germany and some leader writers of the Financial Times.

He, perhaps conveniently, forgets the avant-gardeist kookiness of the rich today. As Slavoj Zizek writes in every book he has written since 2008, even the Hollywood Aristocracy are anti-capitalist today, versed in Michael Moore documentaries and alternative, ethical consumerist lifestyles.

Indeed nobody wants competition less in their sector than the capitalists themselves.

The patronising smiles protesters receive in their consciousness-raising by the rich and well-off should be no reflection on the message and efforts of those camped out in St Paul’s. O’Neill is perhaps, once again, trying too hard to upset as many people as he can without submitting precisely what it is he thinks himself.

His point, however, about the very polite nature of the protest I did find interesting. This had especial resonance with me that night as I had just come back from a panel debate at the Frontline Club, discussing the riots, and in particular the Reading the Riots project – which my blogging colleague Paul Cotterill is involved with in Liverpool (scroll down here for his lovely picture).

I wondered if this was an example of a protest that would tick all the boxes for O’Neill; not polite, unceasing and bent on destruction.

As the conversation at the Frontline Club went, after devoted study, it looks as though there was something more to the riots than what David Cameron called “sheer criminality”. Something that, though not avowedly political in expression, was an expression of what Kenan Malik called “the atomization and “moral poverty” of the society” – something that is profoundly political.

The problem seems to me that, though the efforts of protesters are sympathised with, the establishment are able to ignore them and carry on as usual. The establishment, in fact, are often able to sympathise with it themselves – Vince Cable being one case in point – but safe in the knowledge that those issues will be largely avoided.

It is harder to ignore such actions as the riots – but should we really have to wait until this happens again? We might say that the “artistic” expression of protest is the peaceful and polite reminder before the violent storm. For reasons such as the riots, at a time when the measures of austerity are only just being felt, it would be most unwise for our politicians to ignore societal atomisation, or excuse its expressions as sheer criminality – something which I’m sure the Reading the riots project will provide a challenge to.

In an almost mirror image message of the one I blogged about recently, Aditya Chakrabortty recently put it like this: “the political classes see what they want to see.”

While the causes of the recent spate of riots will undoubtedly have mixed reasons, some overtly political, some purely loutish, others opportunistic and a symptom of poverty and neglect – members of the right wing chatterati have seen fit to diagnose the problem thus: liberal/left society.

All the buzzwords have been floated in their column inches, relevant or not – and while social exclusion and poverty have been floated as possible causes, one can tell that these moaning so-called conservative pundits, with their kneejerk why-oh-why’s, will be the ones to dominate the political message for weeks to come.

Melanie “Mad Mel” Phillips, in her inimitable frothing, today had these words of tepid wisdom to say:

The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.

She continues:

What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse.

Remember that she knows this, by the way. It’s worth repeating that there are 54 applicants for every job in Tottenham, while 10,000 are benefit claimants. Job Seekers Allowance for a single person, under the age of 25, is £67.50 per week, and Britain is less equal in wages, wealth and life chances than any time since the 1920s. But in spite of this, Phillips can tell you for sure that what fuelled the riots was a wilful lack of morals.

She may well be right, to a certain degree, but she doesn’t know that – it just suits her narrative.

But she has it otherwise. As she points out:

The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family. (My emphasis)

Max Hastings was equally appalled, but just as happy to assert where he felt the blame was. In a slightly crass comparison he noted:

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

[...]

So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

When reading this stuff one should stop to remind themselves that none of this is proven, or based on any fact, it is sheer speculation, using the images on the telly as an ink blot test for which tabloid hacks apply their own historiography of the decline of Britain.

Richard Littlejohn’s theory was even more tenuous:

The roots of the burning and looting in North London at the weekend can be traced back not to Broadwater Farm 1985 but to the Great Ikea Riot of 2005.
…

Edmonton is a couple of miles north of Tottenham as the Molotov Cocktail flies, so it was no surprise when the looting spread there on Sunday.

He only narrowly avoids dubbing the events as an homage to lost riots. But my favourite piece of constructed reasoning, in lieu of any chance in knowing exactly what the causes are, past the fact that this is not the product of a happy, fulfilled society, came from Desmond Morris, the Zoologist, after being asked by the Daily Mail to comment:

Mankind is programmed to live in villages, not in sprawling, noisy cities, where the noise and lack of space create a permanent tension. Did you ever hear of a riot in a village?

Quite. The only reason why the Cotswolds didn’t kick off was because of our genetic disposition towards fox-hunting, tweed and inbreeding.

I guess if the last point were true, then steps towards mending “broken Britain” are pointless, and the big community clean up a myth, helped along the way by BBC special effects. But indeed I don’t think it true, and find it as pointless and ideologically motivated as most of the kneejerk moralism that I’ve heard from the epistemically closed press.

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.