Seems to be an annual posting I know (see 2010‘s and 2009‘s!) but I’m really passionate about reclaiming Guy Fawkes night. Why? Partly because it’s very very English. This is not imported, it’s not some pagan festival that the Christians co-opted, and it’s not something that can be easily marketed and commodified by Supermarkets – unlike the nonsense of Halloween.

If you haven’t seen or read V for Vendetta, I highly recommend it. Every time I look at it it seems to be more prescient and more appropriate for the extraordinary times we find ourselves in. It’s legacy is, of course, the fabulous mask – a terrifically stirring and potent image of protest.

That was set in a time of fascist control in Britain, and one man’s attempt to stir up revolution. As we light fires and set off fireworks over this weekend, we need to consider our revolutionary intent.

What is wonderful about the 5th of November is that it is a story with so many layers. Originally, bonfires were lit in celebration of the fact that the Catholic assassination plot against James 1 had been foiled, and parliament had been spared. However, it’s pretty clear that Fawkes was stitched up, and that the whole thing was a double plot to stir up anti-catholic sentiment.

The Occupy London movement has been cleverly deflected by the powerful and hidden regime of the Corporation of London into a story about St Paul’s Cathedral… But thankfully it looks like that is over, and it seems appropriate as we come to 5th of November that St Paul’s is looking steady and supportive, and that the firestorm is hitting where it always should have been.

Latterly, the fires and fireworks came to signify protests at class inequality – especially in places such as Lewes, and I hope that something of that can be imbued into the celebrations we have now: a night of burning and bombing, a reminder to those who abuse power that they will not get away with it. That’s why I think this image of St Paul’s surviving the blitz is so right for now…

I think it’s time to get round the City on Saturday night, get some masks and occupy Parliament Square…Let’s put some rockets up some asses!

I’ve been away for a couple of days, so haven’t posted again on the aftermath of the night of looting that gripped various locations in London, and then spread to other cities in the UK. But in the mean time I’ve faced some criticism for my previous post for a) appearing to back away from the piracy ideas I’ve been explaining that I’m working on and b) for not being prepared to admit that these ‘riots’ are a genuine political act on the part of London’s poor.

I want to deal with the second part first. Some observers have wanted to put forward a thesis that these riots represent a rising up of a British underclass against a dominant culture that has grown in them material desires, while refusing to give them fair access to wealth to fulfil these desires. Actually, I do believe that a riot of this sort is possible in London, it’s just that I don’t accept that this was it. Why? Because a careful examination of the people involved in the disturbances and the places in which they occurred just doesn’t stack up to allow that. Yes, I’d love it to be really simple and to follow some historical precedent, or some careful theory about class violence, and yes, it is possible that there were pockets of this occurring, but the vast majority of people involved in these disturbances were not there to engage in political violence. As I’ve said before, they were there for the spectacle.

Now, it may be that the spectacle is itself something we need to analyse and think about, and that a society which has a large number of potentially bored and uninspired young people may be a tinderbox for this kind of looting, but if so we have to reject the idea that this is the poor of London rising up. It isn’t.

The Guardian have posted a map of London, coloured by degree of deprivation, and over-layed the areas of disturbance – asking the question if there is correlation between the two. It would be tempting to say that there is a strong correlation, but this is highly problematic, because we know that over 70% of those arrested were arrested in a different postcode from where they lived. People travelled to these places. The map also gives a false impression because it doesn’t grade the severity of incident in each place. Remember: some of the major centres of disturbance were Clapham Junction, Ealing Broadway, Croydon – none of which could be described as deprived areas.

Yes, poverty and alienation was and is a factor, but, as I said in the last post, it’s facile to suggest that this was a riotous uprising of the poor. It doesn’t add up.

Secondly, and connectedly, none of this has made me reconsider the work on piracy that I have been doing. If this were a riot with the poor rising up against a system that was blocking their access to the economic freedoms that others enjoy, I’d stand up and say that this could be interpreted as an act of orthodox piracy and understood in that context. But this isn’t that riot.  Of course, I am working with what we might call the ‘ideal pirate’ and constructing things around that – and no act will probably be seen as this ‘ideal’ act of piracy, except what we see in the crucifixion, but that’s for another day!

I’m currently reading Marcus Rediker’s excellent book Villains of all Nations – Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, in which he looks closely at why pirates emerged at that particular time. Much of his socio-economic analysis is highly relevant for today, but none of it suggests that what we saw in London could be raised from the level of common theft to a true act of piracy.

One (flawed) piece that may be worth reading is David Goodhart’s in Prospect:

A rapper called JaJa, interviewed by Sky TV, said if he was younger he would have been out with the kids. He then admitted that most of them were doing it for fun, to feel powerful, “for 15 minutes of fame.” The actual rioters I saw interviewed on television did complain about the Duggan case, but the real complaint seemed to be the police’s power to stop them committing crime.

I dislike Goodhart’s lazy assumption about the racial make-up of the rioters, but some of his analysis is correct. It’s too easy to label this as ‘the poor rioting against the rich.’ I don’t believe it will serve London well to pursue this idea as a way of getting to the root of what is a far more complex problem.

It’s perhaps too soon to work out what the hell really happened in London last night, or why. I stayed up til 2am following the news and the Twitter feeds, and I have to say it was one of the saddest nights I’ve ever spent in the capital.

There has already been some debate about the reasons for all of this, but I wanted to put a bit of a marker down on a couple of things that those on the outside may not have realised. I’ve lived in London for nearly 20 years, taught teenage Londoners for nearly 15 of those, and teenagers who I could well imagine getting involved in these ‘riots’ for nearly 10. I don’t claim some special knowledge, but I do feel I can tell the difference between one kind of fight and another.

1. This was not about race

Already people have been talking about ‘reclaiming London from the foreigners.’ Total nonsense. The looting and violence that took place was committed by blacks, whites and asians, and we mustn’t let idiots from the far right take advantage.

2. This was not about the shooting of Mark Duggen

The violence that sparked off in Tottenham at the end of last week was about the understandable anger that that community felt over the police’s handling of the Duggen case. The Metropolitan Police screwed up. They should have been open with the family, they should have listened to them and not left them outside for hours with empty promises of meetings with high level officers. And they certainly need to start telling the truth about what happened that night, and whether Duggen did fire his weapon, which is now doubted.

But the violence that kicked off in different areas of London last night was not about that. The people who were out looting were not out there expressing anger at their treatment by the police.

3. This is partly, but not wholly, about disenfranchisement

Mary Riddell has written a powerful piece in The Telegraph examining some of the reasons behind the violence, in which she says this:

The real causes are more insidious. It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance.

I do agree with this, but only in part. What I think Riddell has failed to factor in is the viral nature of the looting. I mean viral in every sense: this spread through social networks, but it also spread – as I’ve seen violent action spread in classrooms and playgrounds countless times – through the spirit of the mob.

In playground violence you do get those at the centre who will spark something, but the vast majority who get caught up in things would never, never do so without the mob. They get caught up and excited and act not from some anger or frustration of their own, but by proxy. Yes, they will use the excuses that they’ve heard and quote things about police attitudes and Mark Duggen and the rest, but the hard truth is that most of the people out on the streets were there for a bit of a laugh. They were there because other people were there, who were there because other people…

Without doubt we have to deal with inequality, with the bastards at the banks who have got away with a different kind of violent theft. But we must understand that much of this was far away from these triggers. People set fires because they saw that other people in other boroughs had. People turned over cars because they saw others had. There’s been lots of talk of these people being on benefits and having no jobs and all the rest. But I am absolutely certain that the demographic, if you really analysed it, would be kids from pretty decent homes, kids still in education, kids with parents in good trades. Yes, there will be those who see their futures as bleak, but I honestly don’t think that this is all about that.

The video above has rightly provoked complete disgust, but I think it’s significant because it goes some way to showing the complete lack of cause among people involved. There’s no sense of camaraderie, of a spirit of protest or some aims in mind. This was excitable people caught up in collective madness – in the sociological sense.

What do we do?

I think it may be too early to tell, but I feel that needs to be a careful response from parents, a thoughtful response from the media about how best to calm the situation and not further enflame it, and a community response (which I’ve already seen) to get out, clear up and stand up and be counted and show just how much the majority care for their community and one another. The political response – deep reflection on the nature of our inequitable capitalist system and our obsession with the banks – also needs to start right now.

Certainly, this should give the Labour party food for thought. Stop running to the middle, and let’s have decent policies to improve the lot of the poorest:

The failure of the markets goes hand in hand with human blight. Meanwhile, the view is gaining ground that social democracy, with its safety nets, its costly education and health care for all, is unsustainable in the bleak times ahead. The reality is that it is the only solution.

That, would you believe, is from Riddell in the Telegraph too. And if the Telegraph is saying that we need to divert more money into expensive public sector services, it’s time to sit up and listen, and lobby Cameron and Osbourne to think again on these deep cuts.

Update:
I’ve just been listening to the news, where teenagers who were involved in disturbances last night have been justifying their actions. ‘We just want to show these rich people who own these businesses that we can do what we like.’ ‘Yeah, we just want to show the police that we can do what we like.’ The response when asked if it will happen again tonight? ‘I hope so!’ I think this gets to the heart of the matter. There has been much talk of alienation from communities and how we’re in ‘Broken Britain’ – and I think there is a very serious political responsibility that Cameron has to take for talking this up into a self-fulfilling prophesy. Children will do what is of expected of them – good or bad. But I think the key alienation here is not from person to person, but from the self itself. The lack of self-knowledge and understanding shown by these responses is so very sad, and the core question must be how we can help our young people to discover who they are, and what their place is.

This, I think does boil back down to a capitalist problem. People are so busy having to work to make the money to buy the house to get the nice things because everyone says that this is where value lies… so there is no time to spend being with children, who are sat in front of TVs and games where they are told again and again that the way to be valued is a) to have loads of stuff and b) in GameWorld™, you just smash shit up without thought for the consequences to get what you want. And that, I’m afraid, is exactly what they did when they finally turned off the TV and did something.

Although the official records will say that bookmakers paid out on a ‘white Christmas’ in London in 1999 and 1996 (the technical definition being a snowflake falling on the London Weather Centre on that day) the last proper blanketing of snow on Christmas Day was apparently in 1895, which is right back in the picture-postcard days of gas-lamps and horse-drawn carriages.

So, given that we are heading to have some pretty decent snow-cover on Christmas Day this year…

White Christmas, London, 2010

So, this, then, after all these years
is a White Christmas in London:
the reek of burning clutches
sliding buses and late parcels
snaking queues at abandoned airports
while angry trains, delayed and sniping,
lose power and freeze on lines
alongside motorways stuffed
with abandoned cars,
the empty shells of thwarted plans.

And this, then, after all these years
is where we’ve digressed from
the nostalgic postcards with
breasted robins and holly
in its Dickensian element:
where we once entered the stillness
of silent nights and
were moved only
by the nativity journey,
we now fetishise movement,
and, determined to travel
head out on naive journeys
refusing the silence and stillness
of here and now,
running after elsewhere,
grinding to brown slush
that which would, left alone
retain its clear beauty.

Stop moving, people. Localise. And enjoy.

As the snow continues to fall, a continuation of the extract from ‘Other‘:

Christmas had long passed when the snow fell, but those few February days were picture-postcard scenes of winter and as we trudged through snowy woods near the house I was reminded of the carol:

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath’ring winter fuel.

The song is odd because it is only a part tale. We don’t end up finding out what finally happened to the Good King, his tiring page or the peasant they pursued with flesh, wine and pine logs. The carol doesn’t even go on long enough to say whether Wenceslas reached the peasant’s home. We don’t know whether he revealed his identity or simply left the gifts outside, nor if this mythic Good King did more for peasantry than this one generous act.

The carol is hagiography: originally a reminder of the good life of Svatý Václav, Saint Wenceslaus 1, Duke of Bohemia, who gave generously to the poor, it urges us to follow not just in his footsteps but in the warming steps of Christ who goes ahead of us when we help the needy.

I knocked on the door of a nearby family as we went out to play in the snow, wondering if their son wanted to come and play with my own. He didn’t. He’d been out for a minute earlier and decided it was too cold, and was now inside playing a computer game.

Like the carol, we don’t know ultimately where these journeys into the snow, outside the comforts of our warm castles, may take us and, given that this was the first proper snow anyone under the age of 20 would have known in London, I don’t blame the boy for staying in the warm. But I wanted my son to realise this, at whatever level he could: to remain inside while it snows means missing out on something, being cut off from the generous little street-level exchanges that sustain life in the city. A shared snowboard, a helping hand from a stranger, familiar places covered in a new light…

Yes, you really should buy the book! It’s ‘a work of rare beauty’ according to Peter Rollins. You can read what some other kind people have said about it here.

With the current snowy and icy conditions in the UK I thought I’d post an extract from ‘Other’ which links the huge snowfalls we’ve had in the past couple of winters to the idea of TAZ which is one of the central themes of ‘Other‘ – a welcome addition to anyone’s Christmas present pile, heartily endorsed by Brian Maclaren, Pete Rollins, Maggi Dawn and Phyllis Tickle, who called it ‘a brilliant work.’ Who could possibly disgree?!

In early February in 2009, the mid-afternoon sky darkened over London and a palpable sense of excitement rushed through the city: would it, wouldn’t it?

It did, more than it had done for nearly twenty years. The clouds began to empty the cargo of snow that they had faithfully carried from the plains of Russia, and by the time Monday morning had broken it was clear: nobody was going to work or school. It was going to be a struggle to even leave the street. We listened in awe. A blessed silence had fallen with the snow: no cars, buses or aeroplanes to be heard.

Naturally, there was only one thing to be done. After a hot breakfast we all togged up in our warmest clothes, grabbed whatever slippery objects we could and kicked our way through the fresh drifts to the park. What we found there was a community at play. Angular teenagers, who would normally be skulking at bus stops and hiding under hoodies on street corners, were screaming with childish glee. Two skinheads were puffing their way up the hill pushing, inch by inch, the most enormous snowball, which soon became a five foot snowman. A young Spanish guy, living in London for a year and surviving on menial work, was generously calling for anyone to have a go with his snowboard – a thing he had bought on a whim and had little idea how to use himself. None of us had boarded before, but with numerous falls and shouts and lifts back onto our feet we worked it out together.

Snow in London is not particularly uncommon, but falls of this weight are very rare. Normally it is only a few hours before things turn to black slush, but this was here to stay. For two days the city was virtually at a standstill, with the news full of images of communities like mine doing what they so rarely do now: playing together. Of course, there were those who became grumpy about the whole thing, and spoke of the money that this would be costing the economy – one put it at £1.2 billion, an extraordinary figure that put a price of £200 per man, woman and infant on the head of each Londoner. Others moaned about the difficulties they had had struggling in to work, only to find that others hadn’t bothered.

Seeing the snow fall so heavily I had had similar humbug thoughts myself: with the kids not at school on my day off I was going to lose my precious weekly writing time. Resisting the temptation to sulk, I ventured outside and began to see that I had been given a precious gift. Rather than sitting around theorising about the other, I got a chance to meet with and, most importantly, play with people from my local area whom I would simply never have normally had the chance to speak to.

This snow, these ‘thin flakes like frost’ from heaven, this icy manna, crystallised so much of what I want to say about engaging with and loving the other. It is simply this: our interactions with the stranger are so much better if played out on a different set of axes. Snow brings a strangeness to our landscape, and helps us to see its contours in a different light. Like the stranger that Simmel writes about, snow brings a renewed sense of the unknown to the known, and it is because we are thrown together as a community by it into this less familiar place that we find it so much easier to talk to those we would normally shy away from. The hard grid of economics, of work and profit and commuting, works against the possibility of meaningful engagement. This free gift of snow, unexpected and unsponsored, was the perfect bursting of the heavens into the everyday, and it is within these ruptured spaces that we so often find ourselves able to cross boundaries that we had thought insurmountable.

What I am also now convinced of is the centrality of impermanence to the efficacy of these ruptures. Deep snow for a couple of days was wonderful. To have to deal with constant snow-drifts, sliding cars and icy pavements would soon create conditions in which I am sure that we would see a retreat further into our bounded comforts, and situations where friction within the community would rise…

Do go out and buy it. It’s a book I’m really proud of, with ideas that I am convinced are highly relevant to our situation today.

London is continually fascinating. As humans we are always quick to project personalities onto our creations; London the person is complex, darkly funny, steeped in history, welcoming all but criticising many, intelligent, crafty… a heavy drinker who enjoys the night.

‘London Nights‘ looks like a brilliant series of 10 radio programmes, looking at the city after dark, following police helicopters, newspaper sellers and inner-city farmers. It begins tonight, so tune in or grab the podcast.

I’ll be using iPlayer to listen to it later as tonight I’m off to hear Slajov Zizek at the Queen Elizabeth Hall:

Headlining the 2010 London Literature Festival, he brings his unique perspective to the biggest subject – the end of capitalism. ‘There should no longer be any doubt – global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis’ and Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse. But how can we face up to living in the end times? Zizek discusses his vision.

I’m very much looking forward to this as my next book seems to be heading towards a synthesis of Marx and Christ’s views of alienation and the need for radical change.

Then on Wednesday it’s the final Apple before the summer, which beautifully brings these themes together. Speaking on ‘Is The City a Machine for the Making of Gods?’ Anthony Paul Smith will be examining whether the city is actually going to be the path to salvation from ecological and apocalypse.

Seriously – you have to try to come along. It’s free. The beer is wonderful. It’s at 7:30. At the Betsey Trotwood.

There is a live stream of what is going on at any one time here. Here (19:15 on 15th July) we see a woman dressed up as a lollipop lady waving at people:

The concept is to give a platform to Britain. And, in a way, Gormley has succeeded, though perhaps – in my perception – not in the way he might have imagined. The Britain that is showcased is one obsessed by health and safety (safety nets: check, emergency lighting: check); one obsessed with security (permanent bored guard: check):

And finally, it is a country with fine ideas, which end up as people talking loudly into the wind and saying precisely nothing. Lollipop ladies waving at the meagre crowds. People throwing oranges up to a man who sat in a folding chair.

Yes, I found this a boring and rather sad piece. All style, and so little substance. A great idea, spoilt by the over-safe execution. All streamed live on Sky Arts. How depressing. If you have a couple of hours in London, far better to see the quite wonderful Richard Long exhibition at Tate Britain.