English Riots of 2011

Daniel Briggs

Description

From Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry and gossip to hard facts, research and empirical investigation, this outstanding collection looks at the nature and causes of the English Riots of 2011 one year after they occurred.

Sujets

• Droit et juridique

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781908162205
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The English Riots of 2011
A Summer of Discontent
Edited by Daniel Briggs
Copyright and Publication Details
The English Riots of 2011
A Summer of Discontent
Edited by Daniel Briggs
ISBN 978-1-904380-88-7 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-908162-20-5 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-908162-21-2 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2012 This work is the copyright of Daniel Briggs. Individual chapters are the copyright of the respective contributors. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by them in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2012 Waterside Press. Design by www.gibgob.com . Photograph of looters: © Tim Hales/AP/Press Association Images.
UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distributor Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. [phone], [e-mail] , ipage.ingrambook.com
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn.
e-book The English Riots of 2011 is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Myilibrary and Dawsonera (for ISBNs see above).
Published 2012 by
Waterside Press Ltd
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
Email [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
Copyright and Publication Details
Acknowledgements
About the Editor Introduction
Daniel Briggs Frustrations, Urban Relations and Temptations:
Contextualising the English Riots
Daniel Briggs Part I: Rioting in Context Everything Changes, Nothing Moves:
The Longue Durée of Social Anxieties about Youth Crime
Geoffrey Pearson Riots in Retrospective:
Immigration and the Crisis of the ‘Other’
Steven Hirschler With the Benefit of Hindsight:
The Disturbances of August 2011 in Historical Context
Tim Bateman Revisiting Brixton:
The War on Babylon 1981
Sheldon Thomas More Police, Less Safety?
Policing as a Causal Factor in the Outbreak of Riots and Public Disturbances
Axel Klein Part II: Who, How and Why? Gone Shopping:
Inarticulate Politics in the English Riots of 2011
Simon Winlow and Steve Hall Policing the Riots:
New Social Media as Recruitment, Resistance, and Surveillance
Stephanie Alice Baker Street Government:
The Role of the Urban Street Gang in the London Riots
Simon Harding Reading the Riots Through Gender:
A Feminist Reflection on England’s 2011 Riots
Liz Kelly and Aisha K. Gill Part III: The Aftermath ‘There Are None Sicker Than the EDL’:
Narratives of Racialisation and Resentment from Whitehall and Eltham, London
Joel Busher From Words of Action to the Action of Words:
Politics, Post-riot Rhetoric and Contractual Governance
Vicky Heap and Hannah Smithson Profiling the ‘Rioters’:
Findings from Manchester
Rebecca Clarke Rurality and the Riots:
From the Panel to the Village Pub
Steve Briggs Part IV: The Wider Picture: Social Change and Global Discontent State-Sponsored Riot:
Tales of Revolt and Crime in Egypt 2011
John Strawson ‘If You Won’t Let Us Dream, Then We Won’t Let You Sleep’:
Demarcation of Spaces and the Rise of the Spanish 15 M
Lorenzo Navarréte-Moreno, Celia Díaz-Catalán and Ricardo Zúñiga Post-Modern Greek Tragedy:
Walking in the Steps of Thucydides in Athens
Daniel Briggs Concluding Thoughts
Daniel Briggs
Index
Waterside Press: Putting justice into words
Acknowledgements
My first thanks go to David Cameron whose speech branding the rioters’ actions ‘ criminality, pure and simple’ was the moment at which I decided to pursue this area as a form of social inquiry. I then have to thank the rioters who braved potential arrest to speak to me. Nadia Whitney and Jessica Lartey helped me with access to these people and Joyann Bannon assisted with interview transcriptions. Dan Hales of Barking and Dagenham Youth Offending Service assisted with discussions as well as numerous other court, probation and youth offending workers across London with whom I had informal discussions. A paper based on this data was published for a special issue of Safer Communities early in 2012 (see Vol 11(1)).
I was supported by Jo Sharrocks at Emerald Publishers and Professor Chris Fox and Dr Tim Bateman. The book evolved from the special issue and for that reason I extend immense gratitude to all the contributors for working hard within the publishing timeframe to assemble this collection within four months. Bryan Gibson, the Director of Waterside Press, was immensely enthusiastic about this project and has provided immeasurable support. Thanks to Dr. Joel Busher, Professor Simon Winlow and Dr. Stephanie Alice Baker for reading and commenting on several chapters and also to my father for reviewing my work.
I am grateful for the collegial companionship of John Strawson, Barry Heard, Dr. James Windle, Dr. John Morrison and Jennifer Schmidt-Petersen.
As always, appreciation and love go to those closest to me: they know who they are and they know what they did.
Daniel Briggs
August 2012
About the Editor
Dr Daniel Briggs is a Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London. He works with a range of social groups — from the most vulnerable to the most dangerous to the most misunderstood. His work takes him inside prisons, crack houses, mental health institutions, asylum-seeker institutions, hostels, care homes and hospices, and homeless services. His research interests include social exclusion, culture and deviance, and postmodern identities but more broadly he tends to research any social issues which are stigmatised, misunderstood and/or misrepresented. He has recently undertaken work in Spain on gypsies, youth risk behaviours while on holiday and the English riots of 2011. He is the author of Crack Cocaine Users: High Society and Low Life in South London (Routledge, 2011).
Descriptions of the other contributors to this work appear at the start of their individual chapters.
1
Introduction
Daniel Briggs
A glass smashes outside the train station and everyone turns around. There is caution and a collective nervousness. ‘Is a riot breaking out?’ people seem to be asking themselves. Numerous burly police officers guard each exit of the station, arms folded as if they mean business. No sign of the smaller, friendlier community support officers now. The hefty policemen talk about the violence which has brought London to its knees, looking around periodically, making image-driven evaluations of potential trouble-makers. They express particular interest in young people in groups of three or more. On the trains, the commuters frantically turn the newspaper pages, tut to themselves and shake their head every few seconds. ‘What’s wrong with these people?’ one says to his friend who replies ‘If it was me, I would just shoot the cunts’.
Field notes
This was the atmosphere at London Bridge overland station at the height of the violence and unrest during the English riots of August 2011. It was one of edgy anticipation. To the everyday person, such as the two people on the train in this exchange, the sequence of violence appeared to have evolved from nothing in a matter of days. Over the early August period in south and central London, I overheard similar conversations about the social unrest on trains, buses, in takeaways, gyms, parks and shopping malls. While some seemed a little understanding about protesting in the name of Mark Duggan’s death, many others shrugged their shoulders and negatively moralised the behaviour. These people frowned on the defective people and their actions, and agreed that the state should punish them as harshly as possible. Indeed, such views were reflected in public opinion surveys conducted shortly after the riots. From 2,019 adults aged 18+, 88 per cent believed that the sentences on the ‘ rioters’ and ‘ looters’ were not tough enough, two thirds (69 per cent) felt that organized ‘gangs’ were the cause of the unrest, with significant numbers of the sample favouring water cannons (69 per cent), rubber bullets (54 per cent) and curfews (54 per cent) as future potential riots tactics. The survey also indicated significant sympathy with the police (75 per cent) (Optimum Research, 2011).
Perhaps they were entitled to feel outraged? It was estimated that 13,000 to 15,000 people ‘rioted/looted’ across English cities from 6 th to 10 th August 2011. Numerous people lost their businesses, family homes, had property damaged and, sadly, five people died. There were also financial costs. The disorder cost £50 million to police and £43.5 million to clean up. There was £300 million worth of damage to property and £80 million lost in business and sales. Insurance claims were estimated to reach £300 million and the figure thought to be lost in tourism revenue stood at £250 million. This amounts to around half a billion pounds ( Guardian and LSE, 2011; Riots Communities and Victims Panel, 2012). However, many people didn’t seem to know where to start when considering ‘why’ this all happened and the ‘ insanity’ of the events raised complex causal questions that most of the media, the police and prominent politicians failed to address.

Figure 1 — Prime Minister David Cameron’s Profile of the ‘Rioters’ and ‘Looters’
According to David Cameron, the English ‘rioter’ and ‘looter’ are of the same breed; namely of the feral underclass type. These people, as Cameron would have it, are foreign to the hard-working,