London’s Burning! London’s Burning! All across the town, all across the night

The lines on the headline above, from the 1979 classic hit by The Clash, became a reality a week ago when the world awoke to scenes of the English capital afire.

Images of hooded looters darting in and out of shops were beamed ‘live’ on TV to the world, but, unlike the Great Fire of London that started in a baker’s oven on Pudding Lane in 1666, this raging flame was ignited by youthful rioters, who went on to take the English capital hostage for days on end.

And, like the people-driven revolution that swept through North Africa early this year, the London fires have been hugely stoked by social media.

Facebook and Twitter, both of which were heavily criticised by UK press ‘for fuelling the chaos’, have provided a platform for spectators and journalists to follow the proceedings.

But it’s the discreet BlackBerry BBM messaging network that is said to be the communication method of choice for the chaos organisers.

With features that almost match those of smartphones but costing far much less less, the BlackBerry is the darling of many young Britons because, as of now, it is the only gadget that runs the BBM network, which allows groups to exchange untraceable private messages.

According to a study done by Ofcom, the UK independent regulator and competition authority, two weeks ago, 37 per cent of those aged between 12 and 24 in Britain prefer the BlackBerry over iPhones squarely because of the free BBM messenger service, and it is this age group that forms the bulk of the rioters ob the streets.

A few hours after Mark Duggan, 29, was gunned down by police officers under mysterious circumstances in Tottenham, about 300 protesters, most of them black, gathered outside the local police station demanding answers.

But the police were unwilling to engage in dialogue.

As darkness steadily approached, the mob increasingly grew restless and, according to one witness, all hell broke loose when a young woman confronted the officers for answers.

“They beat her with a baton, and then the crowd started shouting ‘Run! Run!’ There was a hail of missiles,” says Anthony Johnson, 39, who was present at the time. “She had been saying ‘We need answers, come and address us’”.

A few hours after the confrontation at the police station, London was burning.

In one YouTube clip showing burning police cars and masked men in battle, a rioter is heard saying: “Didn’t you see the girl getting roughed up by the Feds, man? Come on!”

While his family and friends say Mark Duggan was innocent, The Daily Telegraph reports that the police viewed him as a “major player” in the Tottenham underworld.

One of his friends also suggested that Duggan founded the Star Gang — an offshoot of an infamous mob called Tottenham Mandem — which is believed to have engineered the first phase of the riots.

A Twitter follower wrote that Duggan had caused “grief” to certain people and had “lived by the gun”.

Kelvin Easton, Duggan’s cousin and fellow Star Gang member, was stabbed to death in a London nightclub in March.

A police source says the fact that Duggan was being hunted by an elite squad shows he ranked highly in the gangland hierarchy.

“You are not going to waste a surveillance team, Trident team and CO19 armed team on someone who is on the periphery. We do not have those kind of resources,” the officer says.

But while the police have blamed criminal elements for the current situation, the British media says the violence is testimony to the failure of the British government’s social and migration policies in recent years. This is the overdue explosion of a disillusioned youth, they say.

“The looting and rioting had nothing to do with the killing of Mark Duggan. That was the spark. The bonfire had been prepared by years of neglect, fuelled by the anger of young men with no stake in the system, angry at everybody and quick to exploit fury at the killing of a local man, even if he did allegedly fire at the police officer first,” analysed the NBC.

Tottenham is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Britain and suffers high levels of unemployment and crime.

Social activists say one out of two children here live in poverty and have no hope of upward economic mobility since access to good education is limited.

Most Tottenham residents, and 90 per cent of those who took part in last week’s riots, are black or dark-skinned immigrants or their descendants from former African British colonies.

There is a general feeling among the youth here, like in many other inner city neighbourhoods, that the state deliberately ignores their plight.

Asked by a television reporter after the fateful Saturday night whether rioting was the correct way of expressing discontent, a masked young man in the rowdy mob responded:

“You wouldn’t be talking to me if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all black, and it was peaceful and calm... and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night... a bit of rioting and... look around you...”

But the Conservative government believes that the chaos are as a result of cultural rather than economic differences.

While addressing the Munich Conference on Security in February, Prime Minister David Cameron said the “multiculturalism” policy in the UK had suffered because millions of migrants, mostly from Islamic countries, had failed to integrate into the British society.

“We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. So when a white person holds objectionable views — racism, for example — we rightly condemn them,” Mr Cameron said.

“But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been cautious; frankly, even fearful; to stand up to them.”

In its policy paper, the Conservative Party acknowledges that although “immigration has enriched our culture and strengthened our economy… we need to introduce a cap on immigration and reduce the number of non-European Union immigrants.”

The Prime Minister had to cut short his holiday in Tuscany, Italy, to return and chair the meeting of Cobra, an emergency response committee comprising high-ranking officials. He also reconvened parliament.

London mayor Boris Johnson also yielded to criticism and called off his vacation after previously saying doing so was like surrendering to the whims of troublemakers.

Boris’ popularity has taken a nose-dive since the chaos erupted, and he had to be rescued by his bodyguards in Clapham after a crowd threatened to attack him, accusing him of ignoring their plight.

When Cameron came to power, he promised impatient voters that he would make immigration laws more stringent and put in place measures to knock the five million able-bodied Britons of working age who depend on out-of-work benefits from their comfort zones.

This, combined with supposed police harassment through stop-and-search laws, added vitriol into the cauldron of anti-establishment hatred among urban youth.

“The riots should happen more often, all over London, because it’s the people in control that have lost the plot,” a visibly angry Randi Simons, a self-employed painter who has been sleeping in a tent in Parliament Square since being evicted from Tottenham High Road, said.

“Where’s our justice? We respond like we did yesterday. It was long overdue. Black people helped to rebuild this community after World War II. The police force needs to be integrated... Black, White, Chinese, Pakistani and Indian put in places of authority immediately... and then no more police paddy wagons driving up the street full of White men.”

Simons’ sentiments sum up the feelings of members of this community.

Teenage delinquency and thuggery have also played a key role in the chaos. Idle youths and gangsters with their faces covered in hoods, locally known as “hoodies”, have taken advantage of the situation to loot, mug and plunder.

There are unsubstantiated scenes on the Internet of victims allegedly being ransacked and stripped by gangs.

Citing these “sickening scenes”, Prime Minister Cameron sent 16,000 policemen to the streets of London last Tuesday and promised to take more robust action.

“This is criminality, pure and simple, and needs to be confronted,” he said. “Justice will be done and these people will see the consequences of their actions. If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishment.”

The troublemakers may have been buoyed by the fact that the British police have not deployed conventional crowd control methods like water cannons, tear gas or rubber bullets in decades.

The force has also been experiencing problems in the recent past, with its leader resigning after last month’s phone tapping scandal and the recession a few years ago forcing funding cuts, which will see a significant reduction of officers by 2015.

The violence has left 44 police officers and 14 members of the public injured; and the capital’s holding cells overflowing with the more than 500 people arrested.

The Western media, critics say, has been striving to downplay the events in London, with major networks like the BBC and CNN dwelling more on displaying the efficacy of the police quelling the mayhem than the actions of the riotous hoodlums.

This is in sharp contrast to their treatment of such incidents in Africa and other Third World regions, where they gloriously show scenes of violence and destruction for long hours.

With London hosting the Olympic Games next year, officials have moved fast to reassure the world that the current events will not in any way jeopardise the city’s preparations for the most popular sports gathering on earth. Olympic Park, which will welcome millions of visitors in less than a year, is only a few miles away from Tottenham.

A friendly football game that was to be played in London between England and the Netherlands was cancelled because of the chaos.

As we went to press, the Football Association was still discussing whether to suspend the four opening premier league games that were to be played in the English capital.

Authorities are concerned that the chaos might spread to other parts of the country. Indeed, minor disturbances have been reported in Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.

As Londoners emerge with brooms to clean the mess from the streets, one question is replaying in their minds: will the state address the social disease that fuelled this madness or will it, as has been the case in the past, just deal with the symptoms?