Source: IRNA
London – The explosion of unrest and looting by young people that began in London and spread to other English cities is a particular case of a global pattern with shared roots, according to a leading security analyst.
The government's response to the worst rioting in Britain in living memory was to define the events in terms solely of absolute criminality and mindless violence, putting the entire responsibility for what happened on the perpetrators.
But according to Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University in northern England, such reaction “leaves out entirely the motivations of the initial protesters and the environment from which many of them, and indeed of the flash-looters, have emerged.”
“It also omits a much broader global context of protest, which in 2011 alone includes the violent protests in Athens in opposition to the government’s austerity program, and the sustained and largely non-violent protests in Madrid and other Spanish cities,” Rogers said.
“Many of those involved belong to a generation of 16-30 year-olds who are experiencing or facing unemployment, and life-prospects that are far more limited than their elders,” he said.
In his latest weekly column for OpenDemocracy entitled 'A time of riot: England and the world,' he said that their frustrations are “further exacerbated by real anger at the ostentatious wealth of elites, especially bankers.”
Others have also spoken of the anger being against the examples set by the endemic corruption in British society, set by MPs embroiled in the expenses scandal, multi-national companies involved in tax avoidance and police chiefs resigning over phone hacking.
The professor of peace studies believed that the global connections of the UK riots go wider, saying that transnational economic divisions reflect the “persistent failure of the neo-liberal market-economy model to deliver socio-economic justice.”
Citing such cases as unrest in India and China, he said that equivalents in Britain of the marginalised may not be in comparable poverty, but “hundreds of thousands have far diminished prospects than would have been the case even a generation ago.”
“There too, and increasingly since the financial crisis of 2008, the state's response has been dominated by spending cuts whose greatest impact falls on the poorer sectors of society,” Rogers said.
“Both unemployment and under-employment have grown, while even many young graduates have limited opportunities and life-chances,” he said, although such groups have not hit the streets.
The outbreak of rioting was unexpected with some academics and think-tanks suggesting that Britain would experience major urban unrest but perhaps next year or later when the current cuts in public spending had really started to bite.
The risk now is that the British and Greek patterns of dissent will spread, the authorities will crack down, the prisons will grow, and control will be maintained,” Rogers said.
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