Against The Day - Rebellious Subjects, The Politics Of England's 2011 Riots SAQ 2013

7/30/2019 Against The Day - Rebellious Subjects, The Politics Of England's 2011 Riots SAQ 2013

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Trott Introduction 539

atermathwith 2,905 ormally charged or summoned to court so ar and

1,103 o these receiving prison sentences.

The riots frst broke out ollowing a protest march to Tottenham PoliceStation organized by Mark Duggans riends, amily, and other supporters

demanding inormation about the shooting. The Duggan amily let around

nine in the evening as clashes with the police began. Two police cars and a

double-decker bus were set alight, and intense looting enguled much o the

surrounding area. These elementsviolent clashes with police, arson, and

widespread lootingcharacterized many, although not all, o the riots that

occurred over the next ew days.

As the events unoldedand in the days, weeks, months, and now

nearly two years that have passedcommentators, activists, politicians, andtheorists have all struggled to make sense o what happened and why. What

were the riots causes? Who had taken part, and why? Why did the riots erupt

and spread so ar this time, when other perceived injustices, abuses, or acts

o police violence have provoked no such response? And what sort o reac-

tions and reconfgurations did they generate, i any?

Most analyses have been heavily inormed by a single, albeit multi-

aceted problem: whether, how, and in which sense to ascribe the status o

political to the riots. Many o those on the right and center-right o the

ideological spectrum, and not a ew on the let, dismissed the riotsand

the looting in particularas primarily opportunistic, simply criminal,

and thus generally apolitical. By and large, those (more interesting, criti-

cal) approaches that resisted such dismissals have examined one or more

o the ollowing interconnected dimensions o the 2011 riots, and specif-

cally: of their politics. The frst involves recognizing the riots as political

simply by virtue o their having emerged rom, been ormed by, and given

urther shape to a political contexteven i not yet necessarily in a clearly

quantifable way. This is a context, o course, that is simultaneously eco-nomic, social, and cultural, as well as crosscut by racialized hierarchies.

To examine this context has meant exploring a reality plagued by a pre-

cariousness and insecurity that cannot but come rom sustained crises in

each o these felds.

The second, related dimension to the politics o the riots concerns the

ways they were, became, and have remained an object of politics. Exploring

this has meant addressing the technologies o power to which the rioters,

and those who surrounded them, were subjected: how they were tracked,

documented, disciplined, and punished, and with what eect. What trans-ormations in power, politics, and policy has all this entailed?


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540 The South Atlantic Quarterly Against the Day Summer 2013

The third and fnal dimension has been by ar the most contested.

It has sought to grasp the extent to which the rioters themselves consti-

tutedpolitical subjects. This question, o course, invites another, namely,what would be at stake in ascribing or denying this status to the riotersor

in identiying such a process o constitution? What degree, or example, o

rationality, o consciousness, o shared ethics, or even o morality is required

to become a political subject proper? And i these components are to be

ound in any (emergent) political subjectivityor subjectivitieswhat

orms do they take?

It is an exploration o these three crucial dimensions to the riots

political context, political subjection, and emergent political subjectivities

that orm some o the primary threads running through the essays thatollow.

Note

1 See Lewis et al. (2011: 27).

References

Lewis, Paul, et al. 2011. Reading the Riots: Investigating Englands Summer of Disorder. London:

The London School o Economics and Political Science and the Guardian.Metropolitan Police. n.d. Operation Withern. http://content.met.police.uk/Site/operation

withern (accessed December 1, 2012).


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understanding o the deadliest riots in modern US history and set a bench-

mark or rigorous, social scientic journalism. When we rst read about

the project, in the days ater the riots in England, we immediately won-dered i this was something the Guardian could in some way emulate. In

essence, the concept was to collaborate with a university, pool resources

and expertise, and nd out what had happened.

At that time, the England riots were unexplainedthe country was

fummoxed as to how upwards o teen thousand people could have come

onto the streets, seemingly without any obvious motivation, to loot, start

res, and clash with police. We had witnessed the worst civil unrest in a gen-

eration, which had let ve people dead and communities across the country

devastated, but no one could reliably answer that tricky question: why?I tracked down Proessor Phil Meyer, who co-led that study more

than orty years ago, and we had some lengthy discussions about what a

research collaboration o this kind would involve and some o the chal-

lenges. It was obvious rom speaking with Phil that two crucial require-

ments would be a world-class academic partner and sucient unding.

The rst step, then, involved convincing Proessor Tim Newburn,

who runs the Social Policy Department at the London School o Economics

and is one o the UKs leading criminologists, to get on board. Tim did not

take much persuadingno one at that time was conducting any research

into the riots, and the government was resisting calls to open a ull public

inquiry. So there was a very obvious gap that needed to be lled. Tim was

attracted to the notion o a piece o research that was unorthodoxa bridge

between journalism and academiaenabling a aster turnaround than is

typical or social research, and guaranteed impact, while maintaining aca-

demic rigor.

Tim and I then jointly approached the Open Society Foundation and

the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, both o which agreed to back theresearch. We launched the project and hired thirty-ve researchers across

England, less than a month ater the riots had nished.

The Detroit study was an inspiration, but in the end it was not a tem-

plate. It was sociology rom a dierent eraa huge accomplishment o its

time, but not something that we would want to replicate directly. Phil Mey-

ers team used quantitative techniquesormal, survey-style questions

addressed to people in the communities aected by the riots in Detroit, a

small portion o whom (less than ty, I think) had actually taken part in

them. Our ambition was to interview larger numbers o rioters and lootersduring the rst phase, and then secondly to interview others who would


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Trott Reading the 2011 Riots 543

have useul insights: victims, lawyers, vigilantes, police, etc. We also elt that

a predominantly qualitative approach would be more suited to the study.

Our interviews were mostly semistructured, allowing respondents tolead the discussion in an open, inormal way, although we also conducted

some survey-style questions and collected demographic data. These were

detailed, in-depth interviews, mostly carried out anonymously. In total, we

interviewed more than ve hundred people aected by the riots. Around

270 o them were looters or riotersthe people directly responsible or the

disorder. We also interviewed 130 police ocers.

The interviews were then transcribed, coded, and themed by a team

o analysts at the LSE. Separately, we also conducted statistical and senti-

ment analysis on a database o 2.6 million riot-related tweets.

Ater the 2005 uprisings in the French banlieues, the public were presented with

a airly clear profle o the participants, largely on the basis o those arrested or

appearing in court. The vast majority were young, male, and precariously

employedi at all. Many were second-generation migrants with French citi-

zenship. Could any clear social group or groups be identifed among the rioters

in England?

Not in the same way, I dont think. The England riots are notable becauseo the speed with which they spread, across London and then, o course, to

towns and cities around the country. It took just our nights or the disor-

der to spread across England. These separate riot locations oten had a very

dierent demographiccertainly ethnically, but in other ways too. Brix-

ton, in south London, which was the scene o rioting on the second night,

is known as a largely black area. Salord, in the north o England, which

saw some o the most intense rioting on the ourth night, is almost com-

pletely white. This was refected in the composition o the rioters in these

dierent locations.That said, we can speak o some very general similarities across the

country. Most rioters were men, although our research suggests that as

many as one in ve were women. They were predominantly youngabout

three-quarters, we estimate, were aged under twenty-our and statistically

more likely to have been convicted or criminal activity than the wider popu-

lation. All o the available data also indicates they were on the whole likely to

be poor or rom economically deprived areas. O the rioters interviewed who

were o working age and not in education, 59 percent were unemployed.In all o these generalizations, there were o course many exceptions.

Many o those taking part in the riots, as well as police on the ront line,


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victims, and lawyers, remarked how surprised they were at the diverse mix

o people who became involved. It would be unwise, on the basis o our

research or anything else I have seen, to suggest those taking part in theriots belonged to any obvious social group, but that in itsel I think is really

interesting.

The category o the gang is notoriously nebulous, and sociologists, criminolo-

gists, policy makers, and others have long struggled to produce a convincing

defnition. How did you defne the term or the purposes o your research? Also,

you seem to have ound two things. Firstly, that many police and politicians

overstated the role played by gangs in the riots. And secondly, those who were

involved in gangs behaved atypically, suspending euds and moving through ter-ritories they would not normally operate in. Did any o those you interviewed

oer insight into how and why the latter occurred?

We thoughtgangwas a problematic term, and more importantly so did the

rioters who were interviewed. Loosely speaking, I think politicians and

senior police use the term to reer to criminal groups o young people.

That denition brings with it a whole host o problems, but to some degree,

in some areas, there is a sense among young people o groups and associa-

tionssome with names, hierarchies, and territory, but the signicanceshould not be overstated. In major citiesLondon, Birmingham, Man-

chester, Liverpooland where these identities do exist, they tend to

coalesce around neighborhoods, sometimes known by postal codes. Police

and government ocials were quick to blame gangs, although they later

retracted some o their claims. The Metropolitan Police initially said as

many as 28 percent o those arrested in London were linked to gangs, a g-

ure they revised to 19 percent, and then 13 percent countrywide. Our

research would indicate even that may be an overestimate.

To the extent that these gang loyalties existand again, it was a con-tested categoryrespondents told us they indeed operated in a completely

counterintuitive way, putting aside their rivalries or the duration o the

unrest and even in places working together. It was a de acto truce, a suspen-

sion o hostilities, and it occurred pretty much wherever there were riots.

Exactly how and why this happened is dicult to athom. Certainly, a

great many people described the riots as a uniying experience, oten one

that saw them take on a common enemy, and or many, that was the police.

Some o the BlackBerry Messenger messages we obtained which were incit-ing riots and even advertising times and locations to meet made explicit re-

erences to this coming together o ordinarily hostile groups. There were


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major exceptions, but this was denitely the trend. For some o the younger

people we spoke to, or whom these gang loyalties are an everyday eature o

their lives, this coming together was a remarkable sight.

Your report shows many participants cited the police shooting o Mark Duggan

as a major spark or the events, even outside London. What other grievances did

they say ed into the riots? Given that the last time unrest on this scale broke out

in England was in the 1980s, just ater the Conservative Partythen led by

Margaret Thatcherhad been elected, as the state was being rolled back,

recession taking hold, and unemployment rising, these would all seem like ac-

tors that might have played a role in 2011.

The actors you mentionrecession, unemployment, the rolling back o the

statemay well have been at play in some capacity, but this is incredibly

hard to measure, and it would not be accurate, on the basis o our research,

to say that those grievances were oten articulated in overt or explicit terms.

Sometimes they were, and we had rioters and looters say they had partici-

pated in the unrest because o these political grievances, although it is

important, too, to consider how rioters might postjustiy criminal behavior

with political rationalizations which were not at the oreront o their minds

at the time.Where grievances were voiced, it tended to be in less specic terms.

The very substantial increase in student eesrom 3,000 to 9,000 per

yearwas mentioned by some respondents, as was the abolition o the

Educational Maintenance Allowance, a 30 a week grant or seventeen-,

eighteen-, and nineteen-year-old students rom poor backgrounds. While we

have to be cautious not to attribute the rioting to any single or specic policy

areas, I think we can accurately describe many o those who took part as eel-

ing in some way marginalized or disempowered. Eighty-ve percent o riot-

ers said poverty was an important or very important actor in causingthe disorder. And only 51 percent o rioters interviewed said they elt part o

British societycompared with 92 percent o the wider population.

Finally, you mention Mark Dugganand the perceived injustice o

his death. The evidence suggests it was a signicant actor, although it was

strongest by ar in his local neighborhood o Tottenham, where the riots

started. What came through the research very strongly, however, was that

many o those who took part in the riots saw the disorder as an opportunity

to get their own back at police. We discovered a deeply elt mutual distrustand even hostility between police and some sections o the communities,

which predated the riots and to a signicant degree drove people to come


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out onto the streets and take part. Much o that rustration with police was

born rom a sense among those who took part in the riots that the people

around them are regularly mistreated or discriminated against by police,and stop-and-search powers [the UKs version o stop-and-risk] was a

central grievance. O those we interviewed, 73 percent said they had been

stopped and searched in the previous year, with many complaints about

the discriminatory and disrespectul manner in which those searches

were perceived to have been conducted.

Several senior British politicians expressed concern at the role played by social

media like Twitter and Facebook in acilitating the riots. Your own research

ound that, in particular, the encrypted communication allowed by BlackBerryMessenger was widely used by participants. What precise unction did you fnd

these dierent media ulflled?

I am really interested in social media as a new communication platorm and

used it a lot when I was out reporting on the riots. So or me this was a asci-

nating question to unpick. What we ound surprised all o us. Much o the

talk ollowing the riots, as you rightly say, sought to blame technology, and

the viral nature o Facebook and Twitter in particular. This ed into broader

narrativeswhich are contestedabout the role o social media in politicalmovements elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Middle East. In testi-

mony to Parliament, senior police said they considered whether they could

somehow turn o Twitter, earing it was being widely used to share inor-

mation about the disorder and stay one step ahead o the authorities. I do

not think the leap to blame technology was new; I gather there was a lot o

emphasis, or example, placed on rolling TV news as a possible causative ac-

tor in the 1992 LA riots.

Contrary to what had been assumed, we ound no evidence that

either Twitter or Facebook were used in any signicant way to incite ororganize riots. There were some instances, and some o the harshest jail

sentences were given to those very ew people who were ound to have

posted Facebook messages inviting people to a riot location. But it just was

not happening on a signicant scale.

As rioters put it to us: why would they publicly advertise their crimi-

nal intentions? Instead, social media, and Twitter specically, was largely

used by regular citizensthat is to say, people who were not riotingto

nd out what was going on in their areas and, in the days ater the riots, toorchestrate a collective cleanup.


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But technology did play an intriguing role. BlackBerry smartphones

were the device o choice among young people at the timecheaper than

other smartphones, they also had cheap monthly plans. Due to a quirk derivedrom their original purposecondential messages between businessmen

they also come equipped with an instant messaging service known as BBM,

which is encrypted. This was used widely by rioters, in London particularly,

but elsewhere too. People were using BBM to advertise uture riot locations

and times to meet, share live updates in the midst o disorder, warn people

about where police were stationed, and sell looted goods.

What rioters were essentially able to do was covertly arrange fashmob

meetings, hence the appearance o large crowds in seemingly random parts

o the city. Some o these areas were not deprived at all but were consideredlled with lootable goods. And rioters were traveling substantial distances,

way outside o their own neighborhoods and sometimes even to dierent cit-

ies, ater receiving tip-os about where there would be trouble next.

Part o what distinguished the 2011 riotsand much o what I think was

responsible or them being cast as apoliticalwas the amount o this looting

that took place. Why do you think it was so pervasive, and do you have a sense

o why some shops and businesses were looted and not others?

I do not know why looting was so pervasive, but in some areas it certainly

was. I have heard it said that one o the riots distinguishing eatures was

the degree and intensity o looting, although I think the hypothesis would

need backing up by some more empirical work. In cities outside o Lon-

don, where rioting mainly occurred in the suburbs, there were repeated

attempts, some o them successul, to target city center shopping malls

and districts lled with stores.

Did you get any sense, rom the looters themselves, why they looted particularthings? Did any o them cite poverty or an inability, particularly in the crisis, to

meet basic needs? Or was it more about accessing luxuries they would not usu-

ally be able to? Also, your research seemed to fnd there was a discrepancy

between the sorts o things being looted by men and those by women. Could you

say something about that?

Around twenty-ve hundred stores and businesses are estimated to have

been looted during the disorder. Most o the evidence suggests looters were

targeting stores that they knew and stores that they believed containedhigh-value goods. The most likely stores to be looted were electrical shops.


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Pawnbrokers, loan companies, jewelry stores, betting outlets, and ATMs

were all requently attacked, as were ashion and clothing stores. However,

it is not trueas some have claimedthat only multinationals or big cor-porations were targeted. On the contrary it was not uncommon or inde-

pendent convenience stores and liquor shops to be broken into, and many

local businesses. Supermarkets were also requently targeted, and it was

not uncommon or people to be looting ood.

I do not think we can draw rm conclusions about gender dierences

rom our research. But there was some evidence that women targeted dier-

ent stores to men: clothing shops or womens ashion, or example, or hair-

dressers. More interesting perhaps is that there does appear to have been a

somewhat dierent moral code, as well as behavior, among the women whoparticipated. They were less likely to be at the ront o a crowd and more

likely to enter stores once the window had broken and others had gone in. In

interviews, they were also more willing to admit to eeling scared during the

riots, and they criticized aspects o the disordersuch as the widespread

arsonwhich they elt was unjustiable.

The riots ollowed the polices shooting o a black Briton. In the popular con-

sciousness, however, they have been cast as less explicitly about race than the

last time widespread rioting broke out in Tottenham, ater an Aro-Caribbean

woman died o heart ailure while police were searching her home in 1985. What

role did the rioters themselves see race as playing?

Race was a complex subject. The rioters we spoke to were mostly very resis-

tant to the suggestion the disorder had anything to do with race. They

rejected attempts to racialize the unrest and mostly wanted to stress the

multiethnic nature o the crowds who were taking part. These were in no

way at all race riots, in the sense o interethnic confict, and looking at the

disturbances as a whole, race does not go anywhere near to explaining whythe disorder spread across England as it did.

That said, among some who took part, the grievances they expressed

as possible explanations or their participation in the riots were sometimes

couched in terms o race. So those who complained about stop-and-search

would be likely to complain that they or their riends were targeted and

mistreated by police because o the color o their skin. Research has shown

black people are up to twenty-eight times more likely to be stopped and

searched than whites, or example.So race, as a grievance, was there in some orm, among some o the

people who were taking part in the riots, but it was rarely i ever an overt or


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prominent eature o the unrest, and most people strongly rejected the prop-

osition that the riots had anything to do with race in any overarching way.

The punishment handed down to a lot o those arrested during the riots has

been heavier than would normally be expected. The Guardian reported a higher

rate o imprisonment, as well as considerably longer sentences being issued, com-

pared to similar crimes committed the previous year. How was this rationalized

by the prosecutors, magistrates, and judges interviewed by the project? And is

this something participants in the riots remarked on?

On average, sentences handed down or oenses committed during the

riots were three times more severe than or the same crimesay, burglary,

or thet, or criminal damagecommitted outside o a riot.

The judiciary and politicians justied this approach, saying that the

riots should be considered an aggravating eature o the oense. On the

whole, rioters we spoke to thought the sentences handed down were too

heavy and not justied. Some regretted their behavior and thought the

riots should be considered a mitigatingactor, because they elt they had

been caught up in the excitement and thrill o rioting, carried along with

riends, and committed crimes they would never imagine doing in an ordi-

nary setting. That said, the severe punishments handed down to rioterswere popular with politicians, police, and the wider public, although, inter-

estingly, less so it seems in the communities most aected by the riots.

As would be expected, interviews with police on the one hand and

rioters on the other revealed oten starkly contrasting views on most sub-

jects related to the disorder: rom its possible causes right through to this

question o the appropriate punishment or those involved. The one area

where there was a broad level o agreement was the probability o a repeat

o the disorder. On the whole, most peopleboth police and rioterselt

the conditions that led to the disorder in the rst place, whatever theybelieved those might be, had deteriorated in the intervening months. Four

out o ve rioters told us they expected the riots would happen again, and

most anticipated that would be sooner rather than later.

Reference

Lewis, Paul, et al. 2011. Reading the Riots: Investigating Englands Summer o Disorder. London:

The London School o Economics and Political Science and the Guardian.


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Gilroy 1981 and 2011 551

The relevance o questions o political culture was dismissed out o

hand by Labourisms ascendant realist criminology (Lea and Young 1986).

Voices closer to the movement o disenchanted youth were either ignored asreductive or condemned as romantic or their approach to rebellion and

resistance. Although the challenge o reading the riots as political culture

reappeared with each new outburst, discussion was oten diverted into

debates about the maniold pleasures (or irrelevancy) o consumer capital-

ism, the contested impact o post-Fordism, the rise o Thatcher(ism), and the

complicated genealogies o authoritarian statism and neoliberalism.

Those debates sometimes yielded useul observations, but their

loty tone contributed an overly abstract approach which suggested that the

world could be reduced to an elegant set o theoretical categories. Additionalproblems appeared as too many dubious assumptions were made about the

importance o the national state to governmental power, about the character

and tempo o economic, technological, and cultural change, about the rela-

tionship o resistance to resignation, and about the boundaries and articula-

tions o class confict. In the meantime, the architects o the social market

economy and state went quietly about their business (Centre or Policy Stud-

ies 1975).

Back to the Future

The rioting o summer 2011 returned us to a host o questions that had been

let pending by the general ailure to come to terms either with 1981 or the

morbid, postcolonial politics o race, class, and nation that animated it. In

seeking answers to even the simplest questions such as how these dierent

phases o the rioting might be connected, we become obliged to reopen Brit-

ains disorderly history and the vexed issue o what might be called the ear-

lier riotings productive character. The 1980s disorders ed the militarizationo policing and the instrumentalization o law and order, but they had other,

less clear-cut i not exactly progressive consequences too.

The riots o 1981 were the culmination o more than a decade o bitter

confict between Britains coloured school leavers and the police charged

with controlling the problems black youth were said to represent i not

embody (Islington 18 Deence Committee 1977). Though they should not

now be reduced to a mass rejection o the orms o work that were then

available, the struggles o those desperate young people to escape the kind

o work their immigrant parents had undertaken as a super-exploited stra-tum and a reserve army o labour must be seen to encompass that


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important element. Youths battle to be ree rom shit work was buoyed

up by an ill-dened but nonetheless alternative conception o social lie,

armed in the unruly, dissident (sub)culture that they improvised romthe residues o insurgent Ethiopianism, Black Power, and democratic, anti-

racist sentiment.1

The example o Northern Irelands low-intensity war loomed large in

the minds o those in charge o the police and the army. They eared the pos-

sibility that a similar breakdown o law and order might appear in Britains

noisy pockets o minority settlement, which would then become no-go

areas. The race war that had been predicted by the racist Conservative politi-

cian Enoch Powell in 1968 appeared more plausible once the scale o antipo-

lice rioting had shited rom quotidian resentment to spectacular resistanceat the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976. In a sign o what would soon be a rou-

tine eature o acting locally and thinking globally, that riotous crowd, mind-

ul o what had been going on in the embattled schools o apartheid South

Arica, began to chant Soweto, Soweto at Londons bewildered and deeated

police orce. The same patterns continued as dusk ell on the west London

street celebrations a year later, and the bricks and bottles started to fy over-

head once again. The same righteous militancy echoed through the many

conrontations with white supremacist skinheads and organized neoascists

that led up to the 1979 election that brought Margaret Thatchers govern-

ment to power (NCCL 1979).

The rioting that continued sporadically between April and July o

1981 was rooted in the youngs particular experiences o inequality and

injustice. It was also congured by a dawning sense o chronic crisis and

the unholy orces unleashed by accelerating deindustrialization o urban

zones. Both were mirrored in a pervasive sense o hopelessness. The 1981

arrest data revealed that participation in the nationwide riots was ar rom

conned to the countrys ethnic minorities (Commissioner o Police othe Metropolis 1982). While the Economisttrumpeted that the events dem-

onstrated the ailure o Britains welare state settlement, the New York

Times oered a more thoughtul and considered interpretation than was

publishable in the UK press at the time:

Spreading urban violence erupted in more than a dozen cities and towns

across England yesterday and early today as policemen and remen ought to

control thousands o black, white and Asian youths on a spree o rioting,

burning and looting. A senior Government ocial said that the disturbances,which came as the epidemic o violence in the dilapidated inner cities entered


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Gilroy 1981 and 2011 553

its second week, were the most widespread to date. In some cities, he said, we

are acing anarchy. By 5 A.M., most o the violence had been brought under

control, but sirens and burglar alarms could still be heard through the streetso London, and palls o smoke rose rom hal a dozen districts. From Battersea

and Brixton in the south to Stoke Newington in the north, and rom Chiswick

in the west to Walthamstow in the east, rocks and shattered glass littered at

least 10 multiracial neighborhoods. (Apple 1981)

Burning and Looting

Thirty years ater that shocking, transormative eruption, the same streets

in Englands cities were again afame. This time, there was no rioting inScotland, Wales, or Ireland, and this time, no progressive reorms o dis-

criminatory policing or uneven, color coded law would ollow. No deepen-

ing o democracy would be considered as part o any postriot adjustments

to the countrys politics o inclusion. Democracys steady evacuation by the

governmental agents o corporate and managerial populism was too ar

advanced. The market state that had been dreamed about was now a rapa-

cious and destructive actor, privatizing and outsourcing government unc-

tions while managing to incorporate those who had the most to lose into

the destruction o the public institutions on which they relied.

Though the 2011 riots had been widely predicted by an extraordinary

range o discrepant political opinions, the initial cause o the rioting and loot-

ing had been anger at a single act o police violence. A young man, Mark

Duggan, was shot dead by police ocers in hotly disputed circumstances that

resounded with earlier instances o unaccountable and reckless use o deadly

orce. Less important than either the veracity or legitimacy o the police action

in taking the young mans lie was the subsequent behavior o the orce in

dealing with his amily and the broader community in which he lived.Tottenham, where the killing took place, is an area uniquely saturated

with histories o confict between the community and the police. Its ragile

equilibrium would be switly unsettled by yet another violent death perpe-

trated by the police. The local police commanders reusal to meet with am-

ily representatives and to share even the most basic inormation about Mark

Duggans end with them compounded the loss and suering involved.

Understandably, there was grave disenchantment and anger at this

perceived injustice. It was augmented by what seemed to be the institutional-

ization o the old double standards that were still operating inormally in linewith anachronistic racial hierarchies in spite o rened police management


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o news media, organizational modernization, and loud proessions o cor-

porate commitment to diversity.

More than that, the policing o the crowd that had gathered andwaited outside the police station as darkness ell was in line with the con-

tempt, disregard, and hostility common to decades o interaction between

the Metropolitan Police and Londons black communities. This point estab-

lishes the continuity o personnel across a twenty-ve-year period. In a

clear attempt to deuse and avoid the mistakes o the past, the 2011 demon-

strators had ensured that their protest was directed and represented by

local women, led by Mark Duggans relatives.

In 1981 and again in 1986, apocryphal, strongly gendered tales o racist

brutality meted out routinely by police ocers in habitual patterns less ideo-logical than merely thoughtless or stupid were ound at the core o the riot-

ers sense o their own legitimacy. Loudly amplied by the emphatically pre-

digital power o rumor, anger was channeled through the idea that contemp-

tuous police had struck or injured a woman. That undamental image

ormed a rampart o righteousness regardless o whether it could be proved.

What mattered more than any concrete evidence was the moral and legal cli-

mate in which the hateul possibility o reckless police violence became plau-

sible. That ecology was something that had been built up over many years

during which police nigger hunts and torture inside police stations became

unremarkable eatures o Londons policing.

Thirty years later still, the ability to imagine those scenarios is prob-

ably less potent than it was. However, by way o compensation, the precise

moment in which a young black woman demonstrating outside Totten-

ham Police Station was viciously and needlessly struck by an ocer appar-

ently less amiliar than he should have been with the history o the area

and apparently disinterested in the ways in which small actions can gener-

ate enormous unanticipated consequences could be captured with all theveracity o phone-shot ootage and then uploaded to YouTube (2011) or

sixty-nine thousand viewers to see.

In 1981, a raming narrative had emerged across government, state,

and media to explain but never to excuse the crimes o the rioters. It cen-

tered on the idea o the black communities amilial pathology and related

identity conficts. The mobs public crimes were the result o cultural di-

erence visible along generational lines: primarily between the Victorian

attitudes o immigrant parents and the more modern outlook o their dis-

obedient, locally born children whose vulnerability was compounded bytheir psychological and cultural disorientation.


19/49

Gilroy 1981 and 2011 555

Drawing heavily on US discourse o the Kerner/Moynihan variety, this

approach was given the ocial imprimatur in the report into the riots that

was written or the government by Lord Justice Scarman (1981).2

He identi-ed the pattern o emale-headed households and the intergenerational ten-

sions but held rmly to an explanation that strove to present the actions o

the rioters within a coherent sociological ramework. At that time, acceptable

political speech was not so narrowly ocused on ritual acts o denunciation

that serve as points o entry into the possibility o being taken seriously. In

other words, a gap was still audible between explanations o the riots and

sympathy with the rioters. In that sense, Scarmans approach did not deviate

ar rom the demotic attempt at contextualization presented at the time by

Jerry Dammers 2 Tone group, the Specials, whose classic commentaryGhost Town held the number one chart position while the fames scraped

skyward.

The summer 2011 riots had also been preceded and perhaps antici-

pated by the previous winters protests over the increasing o university

tuition ees and the termination o the educational maintenance allow-

ance, which provided nancial assistance or teenage students rom poorer

amilies. The depth o the neoliberal revolution that Britain had undergone

during the three intervening decades was conveyed above all by the way

that the new norms specied by generalized individuation and privatiza-

tion were able to rerame the disorders as a brisk sequence o criminal

events and transgressions that could be intelligible only when seen on the

scale o personal conduct. Similarly, repairing the damage accomplished

by the rioters was not primarily a social phenomenon but rather a matter

o individual responsibility. Society had been abolished long ago. It was no

surprise that the black communities, already being riven into the two great

neoliberal tribes o winners and losers, were internally divided. One regu-

larly repeated popular sentiment suggested that thirty years earlier therehad really been things to complain about, while nowadays, things were not

so bad as to justiy the rioters mindless violence.

The ocial statistics on unemployment, street stops and searches, and

school exclusions told a dierent story about the institutionalization o

racialized inequality, prejudice, and discrimination. Casual talk o black

youth had been replaced by supercially anodyne, technical disquisitions

on antisocial behavior and the quantiable perils o ungovernable gang

culture. The pampered young rioters and looters o 2011 were selsh, sensa-

tion seeking, and probably bored. They seized the things that only their eck-lessness prevented them rom being able to buy in the normal manner. The


20/49


neoliberal catechism repeated in inner city academies and mentorship pro-

grams insisted that the preconditions or personal success are now in place

regardless o growing inequality. That message is oten, though by no meansonly, sourced in myths o uplit drawn rom the lexicon o black Americas

vernacular conservatism. As I write, Cecil Martin, a ormer National Foot-

ball League player, is touring Londons schools spreading the message, Its

your time; seize it! His cruel urging anticipates the deault judgment that

these days ailure is a matter o ones own personal responsibility. In a post-

secular celebrity-obsessed culture that conceives o selshness as an innate

virtue, the rioters greed and gratication, though undesirable, misplaced,

and criminal, were also morally insucient to make them truly deviant. We

can see that their pursuit o gratication is in act a mainstream attitudecommon to corrupt bankers, expenses-ddling politicians, and others seek-

ing the addictive thrill o acquiring something or nothing.

Betting shops, solicitors oces, and job centers were among the

principal targets or destruction, but the lack o any legible pattern in the

destruction and a reckless disregard or the lives o those who shared their

communities made the perpetrators o these disorders into an inrahuman

or alien parasitic scum. Their wretched lives contrasted sharply with the

noble, armored Poujadism o more recent incomers: nonpostcolonial set-

tler-migrants determined to protect their shops, businesses, and uplit

strategies rom the eral mob by any means necessary.3

It was thought to be signicant that the 2011 riots had taken place

during the holy month o Ramadantiming that helped to explain the

limited scale o the eruption and the relatively small contribution o young

south Asian men to the events. The political geography o the 2011 riots

expressed the act that so many young Muslims exhausted by the long

summer days without ood were inclined to prioritize their nightly Itar

over the pleasures o money-ree shopping and pseudoinsurrection.This shit toward the salience o aith points to the way that Muslim

now serves as a quasiracial category shaped by a long antipathy to strangers,

settlers, and aliens and closely conditioned by the discriminatory operation

o UK immigration laws. Combined with instruments designed to manage

the state o exception in Ireland, that body o legal tools provided the basis

or new apparatuses o security that have been built up ater September 11,

2001, in the name o antiterrorist activity. The clash o civilizations provides

an overarching, metatheoretical construct that explains how British troops

ght in Aghanistan in order to keep domestic streets sae and secure. It isvery hard to tell how many people all or this patriotic, postcolonial roth.


21/49

Gilroy 1981 and 2011 557

Despite talk o withdrawal, war is now an apparently endless eature o our

diminished democracy, and the British armyalways already the best in

the worldis uniormly heroic now regardless o its occasional excesses(Ware 2012).

Olympic Redemption

In the summer o 2012, the Olympic Games came to London as the welcome

redemption o a riot-torn nation. Mohammed Farrar, the iconic Somali reu-

gee turned champion runner, reemerged as Mo, and swathed protectively in

a Union Jack like so many black British athletes beore him, he joined the

Sheeld-based mixed race heptathlete Jessica Ennis in a vivid demonstra-tion o what an alternative, less belligerent multicultural Britain might actu-

ally look like. They were not the kind o muscular liberalism that Prime

Minister David Cameron (2011) had in mind in his Munich denunciation o

ailed multiculturalism. Whatever else was being transacted in enthusiasm

or this odd couple, the popular pleasure that was generated by the epiphany

o these particular golden Brits expressed the submerged yearning or a

dierent country, less burdened by the past and less anxious in the ace o

alterity. Domesticated racial dierence bolstered by a palpably convivial mul-

ticulture supplied the means to demonstrate a break with the past. But that

precious glimpse o organic plurality displacing brittle unanimism was ar

rom secure. It would be easy to lapse back into the melancholic desire or

restored imperial greatness signaled slyly in the mayors address to the vic-

tory parade and the prime ministers insistence (BBC News 2012) that the

2012 Olympics would be like 1966 in the national psyche.

O course the prolieration o digital bread and virtual circuses heralds

the emergence o a dierent kind o societya market society. We are told

that it will be secure, more militarized, more unequal, and perhaps alsobeyond the reach o satire. The novel nomos required by that variety o control

makes us all suspect, all surveilled. Mass incarceration is a basic rule and

containment a ounding principle o the expedient governance that marks

the divorce o capitalism rom democracy. The parapolitical power o anti-

Islam sentiment is likely to increase and be brutally instrumentalized by dog-

whistling, ethnoracial populism. The very best we can hope or may be that

the old chestnuts o whiteness and blackness will ade away into generic, mar-

ket-based identities or lie styles. That may prove to be a hollow victory

amidst the maniold neocolonial, biopolitical, and environmental dangersthat await us on the perilous pathway o our countrys mismanaged decline.


22/49


Notes

1 Ethiopianismreers to a spiritual as well as political current, both predating and inter-

secting with Pan-Aricanism, emerging rom South and southeastern Arica inresponse to European colonialism and white settlement.

2 While the 1968 Kerner Report argued the series o ongoing urban uprisings in the

United States resulted rom the lack o opportunities available to Arican Americans,

the Moynihan Report, published three years earlier, had attributed this experience o

poverty to the supposed absence o positive male role models.

3 Poujadism was a conservative movement, established in France in the 1950s by Pierre

Poujade, that sought to protect the interests o particularly small businesses.

References

Apple, Raymond W. 1981. New Riots Sweep Englands Cities: Anarchy Feared. New York

Times, July 11. www.nytimes.com/1981/07/11/world/new-riots-sweep-england-s-cities

-anarchy-eared.html.

BBC News. 2012. Cameron: 2012 Brought A Golden Summer or Britain. September 10.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19544414.

Cameron, David. 2011. PMs Speech at Munich Security Conerence. British Prime Ministers

Oce, February 5. www.number10.gov.uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security

-conerence/.

Centre or Policy Studies. 1975. Why Britain Needs a Social Market Economy. London: CPS.

Commissioner o Police o the Metropolis. 1982. Report o the Commissioner o Police o the

Metropolis or the Year 19811982. Cmnd. 8569. London: HMSO.

Coulter, Jim, et al. 1984. State o Siege. London: Canary Press.

Islington 18 Deence Committee. 1977. Under Heavy Manners: Report o the Labour Movement

Enquiry into Police Brutality and the Position o Black Youth in Islington, Held on Satur-

day July 23, 1977. London: Islington 18 Deence Committee.

Lea, John, and Jock Young. 1986. Whats to Be Done about Law and Order?Harmondsworth,

UK: Penguin.

National Council or Civil Libert ies (NCCL). 1979. National Council or Civil Liberties Report

o the Unofcial Enquiry on the Police Riot in Southall, 23 April 1979. London: NCCL.

Scarman, Lord. 1981. The Brixton Disorders 1012 April 1981. Cmnd. 8427. London: Her Maj-

estys Stationery Oce.Ware, Vron. 2012. Military Migrants: Fighting or Your Country. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.

YouTube. 2011. 16 Year Old Girl Attacked by Tottenham Riot Police! August 7. www.you

tube.com/watch?v=YX9qZVsMQP8&ore=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com

%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dtottenham%2Briot%2Bpolice%2Battack%2Bgirl%

26oq%3Dtottenham%2Briot%2Bpolice%2Battack%2Bgirl%26gs_l%3Dyoutube.3. . .

1450.9739.0.10226.33.29.0.4.4.0.77.1670.29.29.0. . . 0.0. . . 1ac.1.vnm1kVNPqE

(accessed November 14, 2012).


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24/49


rioting and looting across English cities in August 2011this crisis has

become ar noisier.

We contend that these events generated more than white noise. Thatis, the noise o August 2011s rioting and looting conveys inormation,

and this inormation reveals a very dierent kind o moral economy than

that proposed by the Miliband brothers. We are inspired in this approach

by Thompsons remarkable 1971 essay, The Moral Economy o the English

Crowd in the Eighteenth Century (Thompson 1991a). Our proposition is

that, just as eighteenth-century bread rioters were acting in deense o cus-

tomary entitlements and demonstrating historical agency in a period o

social transition, so too were the rioters o August 2011.

Against the Spasmodic View

Applying Thompsons concept o a moral economy to contemporary society

means drawing parallels with the political problems o the eighteenth cen-

tury. There is, however, another historical comparison to draw. Thompson,

developing the concept in the 1960s and early 1970s, was responding to vari-

ous political and academic positions that characterized the crowd (or the

mob) in dierent ways. In the opening paragraphs o the essay Thompson

criticizes the spasmodic view o popular history according to which, at

least beore the French Revolution, the common people can scarcely be

taken as historical agents (1991a: 185). He is arguing against a reading o

history in which the poor only intrude occasionally and spasmodically upon

the historical canvas, in periods o [compulsive, rather than sel-conscious or

sel-activating] social disturbance (185). In this spasmodic view, the crowds

actions are nonpolitical because o their spontaneous, almost instinctive

nature; bread rioters, or example, are simply responding to the animal (or

feral) impulse o hunger.We can also contrast Thompsons analysis with that o some o his

comrades in the Communist Party Historians Group. Eric Hobsbawm, or

example, amously characterized certain orms o collective action, such as

those o the eighteenth century, as pre-political, . . . in many respects

blind and groping (Hobsbawm 1971: 2). Such orms are cast as either pre-

cursors to, or cul-de-sacs rom, the organized labor movementwhich is

held as the exemplar o a political movement.

Thompsons reutation o these characterizations o popular revolt

was an intervention into the understanding o struggle in the 1950s and1960s. But the 2011 riots have also been primarily portrayed as either non-


25/49

Harvie and Milburn Moral Economy of the English Crowd 561

political or prepolitical. Examples o the ormer abound, not least in the

riots immediate atermath when the widespread injunction to under-

stand a little less and condemn a little more produced what amounted to aprohibition on thought (Milburn 2012: 402). Prime Minister David Cam-

eron, or instance, insisted that there was nothing political about the riots;

they were criminality, pure and simple (Milne 2011).

Although the casting o the 2011 riots as nonpolitical was initially

ubiquitous, it is hard to maintain that position under scrutiny. To do so

requires the counterintuitive separation o the riots rom the context o the

early twenty-rst centurys great recession. Most commentators who rec-

ognized the riots as a response to a specic political and economic context,

however, have still characterized them as prepoliticalas an inarticulateoutburst, a howl o rage that contains little inormation. Implicit in this

position is the need to channel and interpret the anger through more

properly political orms, a view exemplied by Simon Winlow and Steve

Hall, who say o the looting: We would suggest that consumerism acted

as a perverse deault position that achieves its primacy only in the absence

o more appealing or progressive alternatives. . . . There was no attempt to

change those social processes and systemic abuses that contribute to the

subjective experience o rage. The rioters rustration and dissatisaction

could nd no articulate orm o expression (Winlow and Hall 2012: 162).

In contrast to both the spasmodic and prepolitical readings, Thomp-

son nds eighteenth-century crowd actions quite articulate: It is possible

to detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some legitimiz-

ing notion. . . . The crowd . . . were deending traditional rights or customs;

and, in general . . . they were supported by the wide consensus o the com-

munity. . . . The consensus was so strong that it overrode motives o ear or

deerence (Thompson 1991a: 188). Indeed, understanding this articulacy

is essential because the conceptions o rights and customary entitlementsthat underpin the moral economy o the poor are requently opaque,

disclos[ing] themselves most clearly only when one examines the crowd in

action (Thompson 1991a: 212).

Societies in Transition

Central to Thompsons argument are the ollowing insights. First, although

Englands momentous social and political-economic transition over the

course o the eighteenth century, rom a eudal society to a capitalist one, isobvious to us today, it was much more obscure to those living through it.


26/49


Second, this transition was contingent on struggle, and capitalisms eventual

triumph was by no means assured. During this century the value practices

associated with a nascent market economy repeatedly clashed with thoseassociated with a preexisting moral economy, sparking ood riots and other

orms o crowd activity. The crowd acted when it elt its cause was legitimate

and that legitimacy was grounded upon a consistent traditional view o

social norms and obligations, o the proper economic unctions o several

parties within the community, which taken together, can be said to consti-

tute the moral economy o the poor. An outrage to these moral assumptions,

quite as much as actual deprivation, was the usual occasion or direct action

(Thompson 1991a: 188).

This moral economy was based on certain customary expectations inwhich members o the community such as millers andto a greater

degreebakers were considered servants o the community, working not

or a prot but or an allowance (Thompson 1991a: 194). In these circum-

stances laissez-airethe political economy o Adam Smithentailed a

de-moralizing o the theory o trade and consumption (201); it also repre-

sented a mortal threat to the livelihoods o the poor. Faced with this threat,

the poor acted not only to seek sustenanceto satisy their immediate

bodily needsorcing merchants, millers, or wealthier armers to sell

grain (or bread) at what they considered the customary or moral price,

but also to punish those they considered proteers, or acting according

to market logic was seen as predatory and placed the perpetrators outside

the community. Thus Thompson recounts many examples o men and

women near starvation attacking mills and granaries not to steal the ood

and eat it but to destroy the goods to punish the proprietors (232). Such

action required a high level o consensus; indeed, such were the levels o

public support that oten little physical violence was involved. Thompson

explains: In truth, the ood riot did not require a high degree o organiza-tion. It required a consensus o support in the community, and an inher-

ited pattern o action with its own objectives and constraints (238).

There are o course innumerable dierences between the eighteenth

and the twenty-rst centuries. Yet our contemporary crisis-riven society is

also in transition, and, we argue, this common transitional status makes

Thompsons concept o moral economy worth pursuing.1 Today we seem

trapped in a state o limbo, unable to escape the most severe economic crisis

in almost a hundred years. We are living through this crisis and so, o course,

do not yet know its outcome. We are condent, however, that the economywill not return to the exact neoliberal shape o the last three decades.


27/49


Our condence in making this assertionand a key plank o our

argumenthinges on our notion o a neoliberal deal (Turbulence Collec-

tive 2009). We are accustomed to thinking o Keynesianism as containing adeal between capital and labor, based on rising wages and rising productiv-

ity. The neoliberal deal, in contrast, was more o a tacit arrangement. It relied

not on rising wages (which in the UK and the United States have stagnated

since the late 1970s) but on aspiration, plentiul cheap credit, and access to

cheap commodities. These three elements, we believe, became customary

expectations on which peoples social reproduction relied. Beyond mere

physical survival, these expectations included a sense o entitlement to a cer-

tain standard o livingaccess to a certain amount o social wealth, in par-

ticular to consumer goods such as fat-screen televisions and branded sports-wear. To the extent that these items were purchased by means o cheap and

plentiul creditand to a great extent they werepeople were getting some-

thing or nothing, at least in the short term. Since the credit crunch o

2007 and 2008, peoples ability to access such wealth has been curtailed,

but their sense o entitlement remains.

The Moral Economy in Evidence in August 2011

We have highlighted three o Thompsons main arguments concerning

the moral economy o the eighteenth-century English crowd: that members

o this crowd believed that they were deending traditional rights or cus-

toms; . . . [that] in general, they . . . were supported by the wider consensus o

the community (Thompson 1991a: 188); and that those considered preda-

tory on the community were punished. To examine to what extent we can

make similar arguments about a moral economy o the twenty-rst-century

English crowdor at least o those crowds that rioted and looted over ve

August days in 2011we draw on the extensive interview evidence and anal-ysis published in Reading the Riots (Roberts 2011).2

Looting was by ar the most common type o unlawul activity during

the August 2011 disturbances. In all, approximately 2,500 shops and busi-

nesses were looted. According to Reading the Riots, the electrical appliance

chain Currys was a common target, as were jewellery shops. . . . The same

businesses were named time and again: Foot Locker, PC World, mobile

phone outlets. JD Sports lost 700,000 worth o stock during the riots and

was a key target, according to interviewees. In the words o one witness:

We had Currys or almost an hour. Going in, coming out, pulling out TVboxes. Id say people let with like 80in TVs running straight across the road


28/49


into the estate. I just wanted to get anything thats worth money. We got

Canon lenses, we got PlayStations, we got Xboxes, we got small TVs.

Other shops that were named include the pharmacy chain Boots;clothing retailers H&M, TK Maxx, and Debenhams; electrical appliance

chain Comet; and auto-parts retailer Halords, along with pawnbrokers

shops and o-licences. Although one Reading the Riots interviewee reported

seeing a woman with a large box o soap powder, and other women appar-

ently took nappies, baby ood and bags o rice, such items were rarely

looted. Instead, looters appeared attracted to ashion retailers and stores

containing high-value goods.

But we think Reading the Riotss use o the term high-value is rather

misleading. The luxury brands and commodities stolen include iPhonesand BlackBerry smartphones; Gucci and Ralph Lauren clothing; and Nike

and Adidas trainers. Some looters attempted (unsuccessully) to break into

a retailer selling Rolex watches, but we ound no other evidence o looting

orealluxury itemsthat is, o goods that are customarily purchased by

rich people. For the most part, the goods looted were habitual luxuries,

consumer goods to which, precrisis at least, most people in England elt

entitledi they made themselves available or work or were willing to

indebt themselves. In this sense, we can say that the riots and looting were

acts in deense o certain customary entitlements.

The interview evidence also suggests a relatively high degree o com-

munity consensus in support o rioters and looters. Although many people

were horried by the riots, in the main, respondents were struck by the

breadth o people rom all parts o their community who joined together.

As one participant reported: I seen an old guy running out o Foot

Lockerliterally this guy was like 70. He took a hat and was running or

his lie. But more interesting than this is the extent to which older, pre-

sumably wiser, heads acilitated the participation o younger, less experi-enced members o the community. Thus,

At times, [ourteen-year-old] Joshua said he elt people were looking up at

him. We saw a black lady in the car. She was like: Go on son, dash the brick

at them, dash the brick at them.

Or consider the orty-six-year-old man in Salord, who saw some teenagers

being stupid and turned his attention to the CCTV. I was sort o like put-

ting cameras out o action, he said. Smashing themI just made sure

none o them could ocus on anywhere.


29/49


Finally, it seems that the majority o participants had a keen sense o

which businesses were predatory on the community. Although some two

hundred small, independent retailers were looted, large businesses weretargeted ar more requently, and there was little sympathy among loot-

ers. JD [Sports] is making like what50 o a shoe? said a 20-year-old

rom Clapham. Some oReading the Riotss interviewees also talked

about looting or vandalising shops to which they had earlier sent their CVs.

Ive given them a hundred CVsnot one job, you know what I mean? said

an unemployed man rom Lewisham who joined the looting. So I didnt

give a uck. Thats why I let my house.

Or, as another participant said: Were angry at banks, were angry at

high street shops that are making countless amounts o money out o us.And, on this theme, a third looter insisted he only took rom major con-

sumer brands, stu that was like industries, businesses, like big businesses,

like international businesses that are just raping the world anyway, that are

just taking advantage o other peoples labour. . . . So why cant we take

advantage o them or this one moment?

Against the New Normal

Lootinggetting something or nothing, deending customary entitle-

mentswas not the only motive or those involved in the August 2011 riots.

The riots were sparked by community anger at the policea common motive

up and down the country. More generally, according to Reading the Riots,

the one term that kept cropping up was justice. The targets o [partici-

pants] anger were varied, rom the prime minister to MPs expenses, the

cuts, bankers bonuses, university ees and the ending o the educational

maintenance allowance (EMA). . . . For many, the central issue was not hav-

ing a job or any prospect o a job. In a typical comment, a 22-year-old man

rom London said: All I can tell you is that me, mysel and the group I was

in, none o us have got jobs.

Justice, inequality, the rich, lack o prospects: we believe that many o

these motivations and grievances can be understood within a moral econ-

omy ramework. While the aspiration, which was central to the neoliberal

deal, relied on the idea o education as a potential route to (individual) pros-

perity, the economic crisis coupled with austerity policiesin particular

attacks on public educationhas undamentally undermined that hope.


30/49


We have argued that the riots revealed aspects o the previously

obscured moral economy o the urban poor. But they arent the only group

suering a crisis o social reproduction; others are also having their cus-tomary expectations undermined. When thinking o orms o collective

action to mobilize this wider groups moral economy, we can nd more

direct inspiration in Thompsons essay. He cites many examples o crowds

who, outraged at the market price, acted to enorce a moral or popular

price. Examples o such actions include the Honiton lace-workers, in

1766, who, having taken grain rom the armers and sold it at the popular

price in the market, brought back to the armers not only the money but

also the sacks (Thompson 1991a: 30).

As the market economy o the twenty-rst century increasingly ails toensure the populations social reproduction, we have seen social struggles

move in a amiliar direction. Most amously, in August 2012: Snchez Gor-

dillo, the mayor o a small town in rural Andalusia, led arm labourers into

supermarkets to expropriate basic living supplies: they lled trolleys with

pasta, sugar, chickpeas and milk, let without paying, and distributed the

loot to local ood banks (Hancox 2012).

Both in England and across the planet, elites are attempting to impose

austerity as the new normal. Such a project requires the construction o a

new moral economy in place o the customary entitlements o the neolib-

eral deal. As in eighteenth-century Englandanother period o transition

populations are contesting this imposition, deending what they believe they

are entitled to. The society that emerges rom this period o crisis will, to a

large extent, depend on the outcome o these struggles. The concept o a

moral economy can help us understand these struggles and why they are

occurring now; it can also inorm them, allowing the development o collec-

tive action that may begin with a deense o customary entitlements but

will not end there.

Notes

We are grateul to Ben Trott or suggesting we write the piece and or useul comments that

helped improve the nished version.

1 We might take at least a litt le license rom Thompson here when he suggests that

riot is unctional, and may be expected to show itsel at the same transitional moment

in many national histories (1991b: 295).

2 The Reading the Riots researchers interviewed a total o 270 people who participated in

the disturbances. The book is available only in Kindle ormat, the text o which is not

paginated; thus no page numbers are provided or quotations drawn rom this book.


31/49


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August 10. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisree/2011/aug/10/riots-refect-society

-run-greed-looting.

Roberts, Dan, ed. 2011. Reading the Riots: Investigating Englands Summer of Disorder. London:

Guardian Books.

Thompson, E. P. 1991a. The Moral Economy o the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Cen-

tury. In Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, 185258. New York:

New Press.

Thompson, E. P. 1991b. The Moral Economy Reviewed. In Customs in Common: Studies in

Traditional Popular Culture, 259351. New York: New Press.

Turbulence Collective. 2009. Lie in Limbo. Turbulence: Ideas for Movement, no. 5: 37.

Winlow, Simon, and Steve Hall. 2012. Gone Shopping. In The English Riots of 2011: A Sum-

mer of Discontent, edited by Daniel Briggs, 14968. London: Waterside.


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Nunes Building on Destruction 569

that serves to reinorce the eedback loop central to neoliberalism: in con-ceiving o individuals as utility-maximizing atoms, it creates the structural

mechanisms that produce exactly that kind o subjectivity. When the systemcrashes, rather than this indicating a faw in conception, it is taken as a signthat individuals ailed to play their part in what is otherwise unquestionable.

There was a certain resonance with this mainstream discourse rommore unexpected sources. Zygmunt Bauman (2011) described the urbanuprisings as riots o deective and disqualied consumers, or whom loot-ing and burning shops gratied the systemically enorced injunction to buymade impossible by an equally systemically enorced incapacity to do so. ForSlavoj iek (2011), the protests expressed impotent rage and despair

masked as a display o orce, envy masked as triumphant carnival. Theproblem with the riots was not the violence per se, but the act that such vio-lence was insuciently sel-assertive. As zero-degree protest[s], . . . violentaction[s] demanding nothing (iek 2011), they maniested the abstractnegativity o Hegels rabble (Pbel).1 Their lack o political programapproximating them to the Spanish indignad@s and the Occupy Wall Streetprotests that shortly ollowedwas itsel a symptom o our postpolitical age,which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative toenorced democratic consensus is a blind acting out (iek 2011). 2

Immediately ater these sorts o events, a strugglewhich is politicalthrough and throughtakes place around how they are to be dened inpublic discourse. One o the rst battles to be ought concerns how muchsubjectivity and rationality one is to ascribe to those who took to the streets.Suggestions that their actions are somehow a relapse into animality (they areeral, vermin, packs) or immature behavior (impotent acting out)are de rigueur. Furthermore, even while government and media preer toisolate these actions as the work oindividualsubjects, there is nevertheless

a connection between rioters being seen as alling short o a standard oaccepted rationality and their being seen as insufcientlysubjective. They arereducible to their objective social conditions or to the expression o a culturein which the paternal superego unction has gone missing, turning individ-uals into menacing walking ids. In its radical political version, this amountsto saying that the lack o a distinct subjective armation makes rioters di-cult to identiy as an instance o the emergence o the revolutionary sub-ject (iek 2011), an impure subject . . . neither political, nor even pre-polit-ical (Badiou 2011: 4243), whose subjectivity, dominated by negation and

destruction, does not allow us to clearly distinguish what arises rom a par-tially universalizable intention and what is mere nihilistic rage (41).3


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It is because o this struggle at the level o public discourse that onemust draw attention to the problems with this kind o ormulation when

coming rom the Let. First, exposing the situation to an all-or-nothinganalytical gridrevolutionary subject or bust!fattens the dierent dimen-sions o rational decision and subjectivation that are always present. Sec-ond, and as a consequence, it ails to heed the subjective outcome o theexperience itsel and the potentials that it leaves behind. The true problemis less one o asking whether it passes or ails some stringent criteria owhat counts as proper political action than whether any collective learn-inghas taken or can take placeand what is required or it to serve as thematerial or (urther) political subjectivation.

Were the Riots Political?

Intelligibility in history, writes Michel Foucault (2004: 244), resides notin the assignment o an always more or less metaphorized cause as source,but in something that could be called the constitution or composition oeects. How are global eects composed, how are mass eects composed?It is a undamental Machiavellian insight that it is because historical causal-ity is complex that there are cracks through which contingencyand ulti-mately also politics, will, and subjectivitycan seep in. A simple model osuch complexity can be ound in Francis Bacons (1851: 7677) analysis ouprisings, which presents them as multilayered systems omaterialandoccasionalcauses, the ormer being the infammable material that the lat-ters contingent intervention can act upon: I there be uel prepared, it ishard to tell, whence the spark shall come, that shall set it on re. . . . The cordbreaketh at the last by the weakest pull when something, anything, inoending people joineth and knitteth them in a common cause.

It is not dicult to apply this to the riots, in which the police shootingo a black man in Tottenham acted as the catalyst in a eld o causes, wheresome going back many years have more recently been added to and intensi-ed: habitual police abuse and humiliation; institutional racism; lack oopportunities; growing economic insecurity; the impacts o cuts in welareinrastructure; and the widespread eeling o living in a system in which thedice are hopelessly loaded. Obviously, however, it is only aterthe re is litthat something will be seen as having ignited itand that the whole thingcan be seen as having been a long time coming. There is no telling in

advance what will do it, which is exactly why Bacon insists that it is on thematerial causes that the sovereign must act, i seditions are to be pre-


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vented. What matters most, however, is what takes place between the occa-sional cause that will retrospectively appear as having been so and the dier-

ent layers o material causes. It is here that a series o individual and collec-tive choices are made according to inormation available (such as whether toght or loot, based on the police-to-rioter ratio on-site).4 As has been observedso many times, the surprising thing should be not that people revolt, butthat they do not do so more oten, and this sort o calculation no doubt goessome way toward resolving the conundrum. More important, it is here thatsubjectivation takes place, in the moment whenthrough the interplay omore or less intense aect and more or less distinct calculationone crossesthe threshold between not acting and acting, making onesel into the subject

o that decision.O course, there are important dierences between making onesel

into the subject o a riot and making onesel into a political subject, but onemust allow or shades between the two. It would be a mistake to discount allthe declarations made by rioters in which they enlisted political motivationsor their acts; one must judge a subjective assertion or what it is, rather thanwhat it supposedly ails to be. Even i we grant iek (2011) the hypothesis othe cynical protester who, caught looting and burning a store and pressedor his reasons, would answer in the language used by social workers andsociologistsa perverse machine or systematically disregarding whatagents have to say or themselves, i there ever was onethe very act thatindividuals have such a repertoire o explanations or their motives is rele-vant. I what is at stake is the political potential in the subjectivation thattakes place, is it not better that people can situate themselves within a biggersocial pictureeven i that does not necessarily lead them to more sustainedand ecient political actionthan that they do not? For the same reason,should we not nd something positive in the act that the riots have made

them experience the power they can have engaging in collective action, aswell as all the other things that become crystalline the moment one crossesthe threshold to actingas in the rioters reply to the journalist who askedwhether rioting was the right way to make a point: You wouldnt be talkingto me now i we didnt riot?5

In short, a bivalent logic according to which one can decide i a behav-ior is political or not political limits the one who uses it to the position o thespectator judging rom the sideline. I the problem is posed in terms o acontinuum, along which dierent elements implicated in the riots are di-

erently placed, the question becomes how a subjectivation that has alreadyhappenedin that moment the threshold to action was crossedcan serve


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as the basis rom which to build other modes o subjectivation and collectiveaction. The political question, once incidents like the 2011 riots subside, is not

whether they corresponded to our expectations or criteria, but what tracesthey leave in subjectivities, aects, and perceptions, and what is to be donewith them and how. These, then, become the material on which to workmaterial or processes o collective learning, politicization, organization.

What Have We Learned?

We can thus say that the riots, by dint o their (themselves eminently politi-cal) material and occasional causes, were political regardless o whether each

and every participant was consciously doing politics through them. Theywere political because they contained i not a subjective message, at least anobjective one: societies that accept growing inequality will be increasinglyprone to this sort o outburst, or worse. They were political because at leastsome o the subjectivations they produced among participants and enthusi-astic spectators are, i not immediately or globally political, at least a start-ing point or urther politicization. And they were political because theresponses to them inscribed them in competing political narratives.

There is no doubt that the victor in this competition was the story osocietal breakdown and the need, by symbolic hook or coercive crook, to rea-rm moral values and a sense o community. That was evident in the calls togive police greater powers, a rash o disproportionately severe sentences, andmost interestingly, social mediaorganized local clean-ups to sweep awaydebris and pick up broken glass in riot-aected areas. The clean-ups weresymptomatic both in that they took place in areas (like Hackney, Clapham,and Brixton, in London) where the rictions produced by gentrication arethe strongest and that their social composition tended distinctly toward the

young, white proessional and creative types usually at the vanguard o gen-trication. Perversely, what these more or less spontaneous reactions didwas to ashion those places sense o community out o the exclusion opre-cisely those people who a ew days earlier had vented their rustration at beingpresented but not represented (to put it in Alain Badious terms) in theirneighborhoods. Here a we are all in this together ethicto invoke Conser-vative Prime Minister David Camerons avorite phrase, which he has usedin appeals to acquiesce to austerity as a way out o the crisiswas explicitlybuilt on the segregation o a them.6

Remarkably, i one looks at these ront lines o gentrication, one ndsthat the oot soldiers o urban regeneration tend to be exactly the kind o


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people who took part in the student movement o winter 20102011.7 These,the indebted undergraduates in council estates rather than the up-and-com-

ing proessionals in the townhouses, are at the point where two separateworlds existing in the same area touch and oten chae. For them, the riotswill probably have been an extreme public display o a resentment that theywill at times have sensed in the courtyards and the stairwells. Yet while thisborder zone is where the tensions are at their highest and so where some-thing like the riots can generate reactions that rearm existing divisions (asseen in the clean-ups), it is also where there is the most potential or buildinga political project to which a downward-mobile middle class and an evermore superfuous underclass could both belong. It is regrettable, though cer-

tainly also telling, that the physical contiguity among individuals who tookpart in the two most important mass phenomena o recent times in theUKthe riots and the student protestshas produced so little communica-tion between them.

It is telling because it illustrates a point made by many about Occupy,the indignad@s, and other movements that erupted in 2011: so atomized andthreadbare is the social abric o contemporary capitalism that simply creat-ing a space or producing the relations that politics requires in order to existis a major achievement. It is obvious that the narratives about societal break-down mobilized by government and media are not alse in and o them-selves. What is problematic is their arbitrary apportioning o what can andcannot be causally explained; the individualizing, moralizing bent; and evi-dently, the remedies thence derived. This deliberate sel-blinkering is all themore striking when one compares dominant attitudes in Europe or theUnited States to what happens at home and what happens abroad: whilevague platitudes about social inequality and wealth disparity will be mut-tered when the subject is the global South, mainstream public discourse in

the global North seems incapable o calling rising poverty and exclusion bytheir name.That people can lead entirely parallel existences in the same space

has been evident in the global South or a long time. And it is a lessonborne by the riots even more powerully than by the more immediately polit-ical protests o Occupy and the indignad@sthat the global North ha

Against The Day - Rebellious Subjects, The Politics Of England's 2011 Riots SAQ 2013

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