Insurrection or what?

For the last couple of days, the news of rioting in London, then Manchester and the West Midlands has captured my attention. I've spent a lot of time following the unfolding news and commentary on TV and via Twitter and the BBC and Sky news websites. It's reminded me of the riots during the time I was Rector of the Parish of St Paul's Bristol on April 2nd 1980, when 'ignored poor people spoke with fire' as one black activist put it to me days later. The first major civil disorder in England since 1820 broke out that day.  

What's happening now little resembles that time. The scale and spread of events, the use of technology which facilitated the uprisings in Arabic countries of the Middle East, employed to co-ordinate public disorder and looting. Those making mayhem now are more diverse in culture background and age than in St Paul's, 31 years ago. Yet now as then, people are out destroying amenities that serve places they belong to. It's a kind of communal self-harm expressing a profound social sickness and dysfunction nobody seems able to deal with effectively. Nothing much has changed. Socio-economic divisions are as deep as ever, set to disadvantage an even broader cross-section of the population.

All this has distracted me from full enjoyment of Kath and Rhiannon's visit, although we did get out to Saint Fagan's folk museum this afternoon and to Stefano's around the corner for supper tonight. But, all along I've been crossing my fingers that Cardiff wouldn't erupt. I rang my colleague Ashley very late this evening to seek some kind of assurance from someone on the ground in touch with security people in the centre that it was as calm as it was being reported by others. It's been quieter than usual - maybe people have stayed at home to watch news on TV rather than go out.

I picked up this evening on an interview with Darcus Howe, a Trinidadian black militant even when I was in theological college. A BBC presenter, poorly briefed, alleged he was no stranger to riots himself. She was upbraided by him for her impudence. He spoke of current events as 'an insurrection' of disavantaged people. Exactly the phrase he used, talking about the St Paul's riot in 1980. In a sense he was right about both, except that there's been a change in what I call the 'boundaries of transgression'. More violence, less respect for the vulnerable, the stranger in the midst, more self-centred attention grabbing behaviour - the dark side of that libertarian phrase which crops up so often on tee-shirts and advertisements: 'no limits'. There are real risks in promoting people's fantasies to them as if they were reality. Now we're reaping what we sow. 

Looking at news film footage I get the impression that huge numbers of people are swept away by the sheer excitement of defying law and order, intoxicated with the illusion that they are invulnerable, undetectable, like some primitive tribe on the warpath feeling that its magic spells protect it from an assailant's bullets. On times it seems as if the police are reluctant to intervene as people are setting fires and looting. They are outnumbered in some confrontations, it wouldn't worth the risk to respond without support. They're there to protect lives, and however important property is to everyone, people must always come first. 

What the perpetrators forget however is that above the thin blue line, the CCTV cameras are recording and zooming in on the action. I bet there are also police officers photographing events just behind the front line too. Reports come in of people taking pictures being beaten and having their cameras stolen. What would happen if hundreds of citizens came out in protest with their cameras, and photographed and every effort to break the law? Unity is strength. 

The appearance of hundreds protesting against the riots by getting out into the streets with bin bags and sweeping brushes is a great triumph for a 'big society' which already exists - people of good will responding spontaneously before any politician can claim the credit. Cameron has recalled Parliament. Will MPs be joining a clean-up started by the people?