Britain riots: my two cents (or rather a rant)

[alexandral]

I rarely rant about political matters, but I do so occasionally. This is the day for ranting because I have not seen anything as scary as current British riots in my life (and I lived through the fall-out from the collapse of USSR which at the time I thought to be the scariest time of my life). I do find it doubly-scary because I have always thought that the level of life and opportunities existing in Britain (even now), even in the poorest places, are much higher than in many many places in less developed countries. So I can not quite understand: why? When there is rioting in third-world countries, like China, it is often attributed to the countries' "regime". What are we to attribute the British riots to? Democracy?

I find the situation scary and I find it appalling. But the thing I do not understand personally is what is happening with the Police and other forces responsible for keeping the peace in the country. Where are they?

For example, there is an article explaining "What could the police do to stop the rioting?" on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14459127. What it says is that Britain is not comfortable with the use of Water Canons, Baton rounds or Army forces. This is a typical phrase: "British policing traditionally did not rely on such methods" and that "In other countries they'd be deployed in the blink of an eye" (meaning Army forces). But seriously, may be this is the time to reconsider?

Comments

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty shocked as well. Sure, we're used to having demonstrations and sometimes even small riots in Western Europe, but usually it's not that bad. As far as I remember the riots in Paris a while ago weren't quite this bad either. It's a clear sign, though, that a lot of sings are pretty fucked up not just in the UK, but probably also in other European countries in similar situations. There's a lot of discontent, and people feel generally helpless about it, and situations like that can easily escalate. But, yeah, it is pretty frightening. It's not like burning cars and houses is going to change anything or solve any problems.

I think in Western Europe many people just associate any kind of violent police action (let alone sending the army in) with the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships. The idea is that in those regimes people get oppressed, so the government uses the police/army to keep them in line. And democracies are hesitant to do the same, because they usually condemn the police taking strong, even violent action against people when it happens somewhere else. And whenever the police forces DO act like that, there's usually a public outcry about police violence etc. So I think the problem here is indeciveness: they feel like they should be doing something, but they don't want to appear as the bad guys who beat citizens. Especially since, if I heard it correctly, the first riots started because a man was shot by the police. Maybe they're afraid of what will happen if another person gets seriously injured by the police.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is definitely a sign of bad bad times.

I think you awesomely explained why they are reluctant to deploy the army forces. But really, something has to be done. I am anticipating this evening with a bit of a fear - things might just fizzle out, but what if they are not? The bigger this becomes, the harder it will be to make it stop.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

True. I mean, the longer they do nothing, the more incompetent they look, and the more daring those rioters get because they think they get away with it. It's really worrying, and I'm just very selfishly relieved I'm not actually there.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

It looks calmer today so far (and the Police seems to be more able to contain the outbreaks), so fingers crossed this is the end.