Dealing With the Renegades - Revisited

[littlebabyjesus]

was that the guy who was on the bbc youth question time last night. he came across really well until he starting going on about teenagers being given contraception and teenage mothers being the root of all the problems the working class faces

Yes, I saw that. It seemed a particular obsession with him. He identified the problem - high rates of teenage pregnancy - but couldn't see that the solution to that problem isn't more moralising, which he seemed to be advocating.

The tory bloke on that was insufferably smug. 'In my house I'm the law', he proclaimed, as if that settled the argument.

That programme exemplified how pointless it is to talk about any of the issues they were talking about without talking about money and its distribution.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

London is different in that regard. There are hundreds of mainly black gangs in London. They are a criminal network. Often drug-based. For much of the time they target each other. Knifings and shootings, tit for tat, are fairly common. The riots in Hackney and Tottenham were very different in terms of intensity, to what happened outside of London, and to what happened in other parts of London.

Do you think the riots in those areas were essentially gang-based, then. That wasn't my impression.

 

[Joe Reilly]

was that the guy who was on the bbc youth question time last night. he came across really well until he starting going on about teenagers being given contraception and teenage mothers being the root of all the problems the working class faces

No, it was guy called Sheldon Thomas on Sky. Interestingly he insisted there was an actual 'underclass' while Peter Hitchins a traditional right-wing pundit dismissed the notion as 'unhelpful' most likely because he considers the entire working class to be the problem.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No, it was guy called Sheldon Thomas on Sky. Interestingly he insisted there was an actual 'underclass' while Peter Hitchins a traditional right-wing pundit dismissed the notion as 'unhelpful' most likely because he considers the entire working class to be the problem.

Yep. Same bloke.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Do you think the riots in those areas were essentially gang-based, then. That wasn't my impression.

Hackney definitely was. Not only that, but there was more than one gang involved. A 'united front' if you like.

 

[smokedout]

London is different in that regard. There are hundreds of mainly black gangs in London. They are a criminal network. Often drug-based. For much of the time they target each other. Knifings and shootings, tit for tat, are fairly common. The riots in Hackney and Tottenham were very different in terms of intensity, to what happened outside of London, and to what happened in other parts of London.

i wondered about that. ive walked all round south east london the last few days, and was up in camden the other day. the scale of it is immense, even toysrus, in a (pretty remote part of the old kent road) has its windows staved in - but it does seem to have been confined by and large to chain stores, not local businesses and pawn shops/banks/bookys (theres an argument to be made about that as well, whats so fucking great about the petit bourgeois)

id dispute that there are hundreds of gangs btw, there are a few very fierce and nasty gangs (much as there always was), there are lots of lairy teenagers bigging themselves up who'd shit themselves if they ever got involved in anything serious

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hackney definitely was. Not only that, but there was more than one gang involved. A 'united front' if you like.

Not doubting you, but how do you know that? It's the first time I've heard that suggested definitively.

 

[smokedout]

Hackney definitely was. Not only that, but there was more than one gang involved. A 'united front' if you like.

real gangsters dont expose themselves by smashing up shops, if we're going to have an honest discussion about this we need to talk about the people and families at the top of the chain - many of whom still have inordinate power over and sometimes live in working class areas, do you want to go first?

 

[free spirit]

London is different in that regard. There are hundreds of mainly black gangs in London. They are a criminal network. Often drug-based. For much of the time they target each other. Knifings and shootings, tit for tat, are fairly common. The riots in Hackney and Tottenham were very different in terms of intensity, to what happened outside of London, and to what happened in other parts of London.

I acknowledge there seems to be a major difference in the intensity of the gang violence in London, and probably the numbers involved etc. but I still doubt that this statement would be true given a more level playing field / other options being more available.

Put simply most are ‘in the life’ because they want to be.

sure this will apply to some, same as it always has to some degree, but most?

 

[revlon]

in what context did marx describe the lumpen as the most dangerous class of all? In fact did he ever say they were that? Thorough and prescient article but not sure what it is driving at. This new social formation, by virtue of its behavioural traits, is not longer of the working class and shouldn't be seen as such? An expanded lumpen undermining working class cohesion from the other side?

 

[LLETSA]

ffs, give it a rest keyboard warrior - riots / unrest / rebellion taking place all over this country on an unprecedented scale, with all sorts of dynamics ,participants, focus, responses involved - and you're sat behind your keyboard days later declaring with the kind of bullshit authority only LLetsa can summon up , what would/wouldn't happen if 'the left' (anarchists included)' 'approached the rioters' ? you'll be getting the tea leaves out next you daft old sod.

Calm down, you old fool.

What's happening is far from being on an unprecedented scale, as you would remember if you'd only let your hard on go down, and is largely apolitical, with the range of people involved actually quite narrow. And at the forefront of the riots are criminal elements, who always alienate the mainstream working class, who are, of course, best at identifying them for what they are. 'The left' is neither capable of approaching them nor their hangers-on, as we will see, because, just as in the 1980s, 'the left' will profit nothing whatsoever, from these events-and that's whether you consider 'the left' to be the tired remnants of the Trot and anarchists groups, the left of the mainstream labour movement (if it can be said to still exist), or the advancement of traditional radical left ideas or goals through whatever form of organisation.

 

[LLETSA]

grim as that is, in a city of 7 million people it is hardly endemic - id imagine that levels of rape is comparable amongst all the social classes and has more to do with patriarchy than the lumpen proletariat.

to use it to condemn the tens if not hundreds of thousands of kids who came out on the streets the other night, or the unemployed (whether through choice or circumstances) is sensationalist bullshit

Amazing the lengths some people will go to to defend such phenomena just beacuse of their misplaced and actually quite laughable attempts to identify with the social milieu in which it mostly takes place.

I take it the likes of cantsin, brainaddict and smokedout have been busy trying to win the leading elements of last week's riots over to their chosen brands of (cough) progressive politics over the last few days?

(By the way, it was far from hundreds or even tens of thousands who rioted. As I said, to cantsin the hard on, calm down.)

 

[Treacle Toes]

Hackney definitely was. Not only that, but there was more than one gang involved. A 'united front' if you like.

Where is your evidence for this? Having watched a lot of footage myself and recognised people and places I say that you are skewing what happened.

 

[yield]

in what context did marx describe the lumpen as the most dangerous class of all? In fact did he ever say they were that? Thorough and prescient article but not sure what it is driving at. This new social formation, by virtue of its behavioural traits, is not longer of the working class and shouldn't be seen as such? An expanded lumpen undermining working class cohesion from the other side?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

1848 so not new.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Fuck me, Marx sounds just like David Icke.

its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue

 

[LLETSA]

id dispute that there are hundreds of gangs btw, there are a few very fierce and nasty gangs (much as there always was), there are lots of lairy teenagers bigging themselves up who'd shit themselves if they ever got involved in anything serious

Even if this is true, it's a major part of the problem. The attitude is enough and means that these kids are lost to any form of pro-working class politics.

 

[LLETSA]

real gangsters dont expose themselves by smashing up shops, if we're going to have an honest discussion about this we need to talk about the people and families at the top of the chain - many of whom still have inordinate power over and sometimes live in working class areas, do you want to go first?

Again, it doesn't matter if they're 'real gangsters' or not. The attitude is enough.

 

[butchersapron]

I think the couple of rather brief and unsubstantial criticisms made of the OP last night have totally missed the point - which is rather surprising given that it essentially restates views I’ve seen them agree with before, albeit the OP is put in a sharper form and with a slightly different focus : there is a section of the traditional w/c that via the neo-liberal measures of the last 30 years (which actually only intensified pre-existing alienation) that today feels that it has no part of or interest in society, that can’t see what society means to them, beyond showing that it’s dog-eat-dog and fuck you jack - and that they react accordingly. I think that’s pretty unarguable.

Where I disagree with the article is in that it uses the language of exclusion rather than priorities. It’s one of those clichés that on-the-ground politics is a matter of priorities but it’s true. A social movement won’t, can’t be based on those who engage in the worst sort of selfish anti-social behaviour under current conditions - the best you’ll get right now will be the worst aspects of the riots, the mirror image of capitalist looting and so on.

So where and who do we look to construct this movement? Quite obviously the rest of the w/c who are victims of both of those types of looting and ASB. What’s stopping them? Right now one of the largest obstacles is the lack of feelings of social solidarity and the sort of rooted networks that were constructed in the past. And the disintegration of (or failure to build) these essential sort of ties is being helped along by anti-social behaviour and crime within w/c communities (let me use that term just for ease of argument right now).

These people are doing the neo-liberals work on the social level - reinforcing the individualism and the atomisation of the neo-liberal economic model, closing up opportunities for collective responses through fear of sticking our head above parapet and fostering the perception that we’re each of us on out own, except maybe for our competing gang. That’s where the question of priorities comes in. In line with the summary in the first para, if we can foster those (old and new) forms of social solidarity and w/c confidence then there is something for those carrying out that sort of destructive behaviour to be part of. One follows the other.

(And just to be clear, by the above I don’t mean a fully functioning capitalist democracy, I mean a society in which people have a real say in how it functions, what collective needs are and how they’re met, not a two-job, credit card based moneyed grind)

 

[butchersapron]

in what context did marx describe the lumpen as the most dangerous class of all? In fact did he ever say they were that? Thorough and prescient article but not sure what it is driving at. This new social formation, by virtue of its behavioural traits, is not longer of the working class and shouldn't be seen as such? An expanded lumpen undermining working class cohesion from the other side?

In the context of them being employed by the authorities to undermine the 1848 revolution - and most recently used when he Egytpian state did the same early this year - remember the camel attack?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Even if this is true, it's a major part of the problem. The attitude is enough and means that these kids are lost to any form of pro-working class politics.

I think you miss the point if you think what is needed is to win these kids over to a particular political ideology. I don't think that's what is important at all, at least as a first step. What's needed is to show them other choices and give them reasons to want to take those other choices. Branding kids 'lumpenproletariat' and writing them off as scum helps nobody. And it's just plain wrong, I think.

 

[Brainaddict]

Amazing the lengths some people will go to to defend such phenomena just beacuse of their misplaced and actually quite laughable attempts to identify with the social milieu in which it mostly takes place.

I take it the likes of cantsin, brainaddict and smokedout have been busy trying to win the leading elements of last week's riots over to their chosen brands (cough) progressive politics. over the last few days?

You might take it that way. But I don't have a brand of politics, and this week I have not even felt like talking about my politics. I have been too depressed about the mainstreaming of fascist-leaning rhetoric into politics and the media. Historically one of the elements of fascism was a squeezed middle class being given a demonic other to blame for their falling standard of living - and the creation of the illusion that community can be formed once this alien presence is expunged. You want to help that along a bit by uniting the working class with the moralising middle class you go right fucking ahead but don't count yourself on my side.

I didn't defend violent rioting and I did not condemn it. There are several reasons for that but one of them is because I am aware that my opinion means fuck all to most of the people I saw on the streets this week. I would think about that fact alone for some time before bothering to venture an opinion on the rioting.

 

[LLETSA]

I think you miss the point if you think what is needed is to win these kids over to a particular political ideology. I don't think that's what is important at all, at least as a first step. What's needed is to show them other choices and give them reasons to want to take those other choices. Branding kids 'lumpenproletariat' and writing them off as scum helps nobody. And it's just plain wrong, I think.

Whether it's winning them to a particular ideology or 'showing them other choices' the point remains that those of a radical left persuasion are mostly incapable of approaching these kids and would be given short shrift by most of them if they did due to the distorted consumerist/'gangsta' attitude to which they subscribe.

And like it or not, you can't divorce politics from the 'showing of other choices.' As we will see the only attempts to do this will come from mainsream political/ business elements, just as happened after the last round of mass riots, reinforcing the very outlook and ideology that has presented us with an underclass in the first place.

 

[_angel_]

don't you think most of the people arrested for whatever over the last few days.. not all of them are "kids" and mostly just were caught up in the moment, rather than being serious criminals.

 

[LLETSA]

You might take it that way. But I don't have a brand of politics, and this week I have not even felt like talking about my politics. I have been too depressed about the mainstreaming of fascist-leaning rhetoric into politics and the media. Historically one of the elements of fascism was a squeezed middle class being given a demonic other to blame for their falling standard of living - and the creation of the illusion that community can be formed once this alien presence is expunged. You want to help that along a bit by uniting the working class with the moralising middle class you go right fucking ahead but don't count yourself on my side.

I.

Nobody has suggested 'uniting a moralising middle class' with the working class', though, have they? And whether you like it or not, the bitterest condemnation of what's happened has come not from the middle class but from the working class people whose communities were ransacked.

'I didn't defend violent rioting and I did not condemn it. There are several reasons for that but one of them is because I am aware that my opinion means fuck all to most of the people I saw on the streets this week. I would think about that fact alone for some time before bothering to venture an opinion on the rioting'

If you're not offering an opinion on the rioting right now, what exactly are you doing?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think it'd be very interesting to see a detailed breakdown (if such a thing were available) of the composition of the mobs doing the rioting and looting, over the several different stages from it kicking off at a family-led protest to the widespread unrest.

 

[LLETSA]

don't you think most of the people arrested for whatever over the last few days.. not all of them are "kids" and mostly just were caught up in the moment, rather than being serious criminals.

Yes. Rather than being serious criminals many of them are the type who burgle their next-door neighbours.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I can summon up very little moral outrage at let's say; a single mum on benefits taking a chance to score some free trainers for her kids ...

What I don't know, because I didn't participate, is how representative that example is of what was going on vs the "lumpen ratboy scum victimising their own communities" stuff.

My sense is that both stereotypes were present to some degree along with a lot of other phenomena. Which is why I think some analysis of the composition of the mobs might be useful ..

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It is true that it is possible to live literally next door to kids like this and barely interact with them at all. I did when I lived in Brockley. Then I got a job in the local video shop and I had no choice but to interact - to stop them from nicking stuff partly, but also just because there were kids who liked hanging around in the shop - pushing the boundaries by lighting up spliffs and seeing what you'd do. But you can overstate the case for them being like this out of choice. A bunch of kids who can think of nothing better to do than to hang out in a video shop and see if they can get a rise out of the people working there are clearly just bored and unmotivated. Talking to them about politics would be kind of ridiculous.

You win the political argument elsewhere. The political argument is what you win with those in control of money to get some money to spend on giving these kids something to do.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yes. Rather than being serious criminals many of them are the type who burgle their next-door neighbours.

What do you base that judgement on?

 

[frogwoman]

In the context of them being employed by the authorities to undermine the 1848 revolution - and most recently used when he Egytpian state did the same early this year - remember the camel attack?

What was this again Butchers? (I did hear vaguely something about it happening - ie criminals being employed by the authorities, but what was the camel attack?)