Dealing With the Renegades - Revisited

[smokedout]

i thought you were smarter than that for sure

its obviously written to be a provocative piece, which is generally a good thing imo, but i dont think it is in this case. 11 pages in and we're still discussing the merits of the words used and things that dont really matter (like whether this is a new phenomena or not). there is a lot of agreement on this thread, but we're still nowhere close to discussing solutions, or even how to precisely identify the problems

 

[love detective]

your initial claim was that the piece was intentionally written in a poor manner in order to elicit an expected response, which would then allow the author to moan about it

do you honestly think that is the case?

 

[goldenecitrone]

not one of natures most brightest are you?

These lumpen really don't have a sense of humour, do they?

 

[Joe Reilly]

I was interested in Joe Reilly's assertion that one in four of the arrested rioters was a gang member. I assume that this figure was taken from the Evening Standards reporting this week? Whatever the validity of this police supplied "fact" it certainly made me interested in the numbers of people estimated to be part of gangs in London. I'm staggered by the (estimated) numbers.

One figure mentioned by David Davis on Question Time was about 240 criminal gangs in London, substantially up from the last count in 2006. What I'm 'staggered about' is not just the numbers but their banal visciousness. Another 14 year old stabbed to death today. As the article points out the sociopathic nihilism they display has no parallel in recent history. The studied insouciance of the so-called liberal left at the carnage (with some particularly choice comments on here) is about standard for another set of people without a compass, moral or otherwise. Imagine for a moment the brouhaha if the perpetrators were white? But becuase the perps, as well the victims are overhwhelmingly black, in the absence of any obvious political advantage they cynicaly choose to ignore it entirely. Can there be a better example of unconscious racism? At least the 'institutionally racist' police actually address the problem.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Well, what he said really. I think the language used has a big part of it IMO, I admit like other posters to feeling quite uncomfortable with the use of things like "detritus of a failed social experiment" etc.

If intention of the neo-liberal experiment was as oft stated, to make 'us all middle class', or at the least some pastiche of it, how else to describe that section of the population, who instead of climbing the social ladder, broke off from the working class alright - but in the opposite direction?

For what its worth it dosen't actually describe them as 'detritus' per se - though many would.

 

[Joe Reilly]

call me a cynic

There are other words that spring to mind.

 

[Pickman's model]

One figure mentioned by David Davis on Question Time was about 240 criminal gangs in London, substantially up from the last count in 2006. What I'm 'staggered about' is not just the numbers but their banal visciousness. Another 14 year old stabbed to death today. As the article points out the sociopathic nihilism they display has no parallel in recent history. The studied insouciance of the so-called liberal left at the carnage (with some particularly choice comments on here) is about standard for another set of people without a compass, moral or otherwise. Imagine for a moment the brouhaha if the perpetrators were white? But becuase the perps, as well the victims are overhwhelmingly black, in the absence of any obvious political advantage they cynicaly choose to ignore it entirely. Can there be a better example of unconscious racism? At least the 'institutionally racist' police actually address the problem.

re the last count in 2006: i'm sure there was something in the standard last year about this. i will have a look in the morning.

 

[The39thStep]

One figure mentioned by David Davis on Question Time was about 240 criminal gangs in London, substantially up from the last count in 2006. What I'm 'staggered about' is not just the numbers but their banal visciousness. Another 14 year old stabbed to death today. As the article points out the sociopathic nihilism they display has no parallel in recent history. The studied insouciance of the so-called liberal left at the carnage (with some particularly choice comments on here) is about standard for another set of people without a compass, moral or otherwise. Imagine for a moment the brouhaha if the perpetrators were white? But becuase the perps, as well the victims are overhwhelmingly black, in the absence of any obvious political advantage they cynicaly choose to ignore it entirely. Can there be a better example of unconscious racism? At least the 'institutionally racist' police actually address the problem.

Exactly and that laissez faire attitutude that says 'they'll grow out of it' is based on the notion of individual liberty overriding (working) class interest .

The unconcious racism bit made me think about how youth are percieved/portrayed say in Eltham and how they are percieved in Tottenham.

 

[Pickman's model]

Exactly and that laissez faire attitutude that says 'they'll grow out of it' is based on the notion of individual liberty overriding (working) class interest .

The unconcious racism bit made me think about how youth are percieved/portrayed say in Eltham and how they are percieved in Tottenham.

badly in both cases

 

[smokedout]

One figure mentioned by David Davis on Question Time was about 240 criminal gangs in London, substantially up from the last count in 2006. What I'm 'staggered about' is not just the numbers but their banal visciousness. Another 14 year old stabbed to death today. As the article points out the sociopathic nihilism they display has no parallel in recent history.

but you've failed to demonstrate this. anyone can point to one or a spate of horrific crimes and point to a moral decline. people have been doing that for hundreds of years.

The studied insouciance of the so-called liberal left at the carnage (with some particularly choice comments on here) is about standard for another set of people without a compass, moral or otherwise. Imagine for a moment the brouhaha if the perpetrators were white? But becuase the perps, as well the victims are overhwhelmingly black, in the absence of any obvious political advantage they cynicaly choose to ignore it entirely. Can there be a better example of unconscious racism? At least the 'institutionally racist' police actually address the problem.

lol, you have to think they're detritus or you're a RACIST!!!

 

[smokedout]

your initial claim was that the piece was intentionally written in a poor manner in order to elicit an expected response, which would then allow the author to moan about it

do you honestly think that is the case?

I was being a bit sarky, I do think the piece was written to provoke a reaction, but i won't second guess the motives of the author. it's being used that way though, on this thread - you have to accept not just the premise of the piece, but the assumptions and the tone of the piece or you're a liberal/racist

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Exactly and that laissez faire attitutude that says 'they'll grow out of it' is based on the notion of individual liberty overriding (working) class interest .

Is this a reference to what I wrote? If it is, it is bad misrepresentation of it.

 

[TopCat]

right so we are moving away from a criticism (and disagreement of) the substance & core & essential message of the article itself to the fact that some people don't like the specific language used to express that substance

so it's not the message, it's the way it's delivered?

It should be more polite?

Nah not so fast. I have afew things to say about the content. Let me get a bit of work done and i will come back to this.

 

[revlon]

right so we are moving away from a criticism (and disagreement of) the substance & core & essential message of the article itself to the fact that some people don't like the specific language used to express that substance

so it's not the message, it's the way it's delivered?

It should be more polite?

the problem is there is little substance to it, and the nuggets of clarity get lost by the social anthropology work out (which takes up over half the article). This diminishes any message in the meat and gristle of the latter part.

The article would work as a personal opinion on 'a comment is free' type platform, as a strategy forward it needs a lot more work (and maybe a stronger editiorial process)

 

[TopCat]

The argument that people who make choices that impinge on working class people and communities in an adverse manner shoud be identified and opposed is seemingly straightforward.

Yes I have always regarded balliffs, debt collectors and to a lesser extent police and screws as scum. I have never applied this same label to gang members for several reasons and perhaps I am wrong not to have done so.

Motivations for making the choices to become a bailiff or gang member are crucial here. It is often the unaligned who get attacked in gang related conflict and this fear of attack will be a motivating factor for people to join. Opportunities for young men are few and far between and for young black men non existent in many places.

Contrast this with say a certified bailiff or a police man. By the nature of the job they have been able to secure, they have many more opportunities open to them for example no criminal record, references, basic qualifications etc. So to make the step of becoming a copper or a bailiff is to exercise a choice knowing other choices that do not cause harm to working class people are available.

Add to this the rhetoric expressed in the article, this rhetoric is to many an observer uncomfortably close to the anti working class rhetoric expressed by the whole spectrum of politicians in the UK. This is the root of the criticisms made with regard to the words and phrases used.

Further there is a feeling that the article is trying to rail road the reader into agreeing with it's position with perhaps a sense of disquiet that the IWCA will then say "well if you agree with this analysis then this plan of action is logical and appropriate". When people of all parties have called for "something to be done" about gangs and youth initiated violence, the something or solution is usually unpleasant and generally racist in application. It's understandable for people to be wary on this even knowing the considerable history of the IWCA in progressive anti racist politics.

This proffered solution (by the mainstream parties) will also impact on more people that the target group (in this case gangs), for example all young working class people get the solution applied to them, increased stop and search, mandatory minimum sentences, general harassment by the police etc.

In order to gather support for actions against an identified grouping that undermine working class organisation and impact detrimentally on working class people, it will be necessary to be very careful with the choice of words used and efforts should be made to set out as much of the thinking behind the approach in order to contextualise it and set clear blue water between it and the attacks on the same grouping that are motivated by racism or class hatred.

 

[smokedout]

Motivations for making the choices to become a bailiff or gang member are crucial here. It is often the unaligned who get attacked in gang related conflict and this fear of attack will be a motivating factor for people to join. Opportunities for young men are few and far between and for young black men non existent in many places.

Contrast this with say a certified bailiff or a police man. By the nature of the job they have been able to secure, they have many more opportunities open to them for example no criminal record, references, basic qualifications etc. So to make the step of becoming a copper or a bailiff is to exercise a choice knowing other choices that do not cause harm to working class people are available.

this is important. if there is a moral divide in the working class then there is also an economic one, not in terms of relation to capital, but in terms of lived experience - a teacher in a council flat, or a skilled unionised worker has a very different time of it to someone dependent on benefits or minimum wage/casual work. now how many of those of the latter group represent what the piece would consider to be lumpen is open to debate, as is whether there is a correlation, and if so why.

 

[love detective]

The argument that people who make choices that impinge on working class people and communities in an adverse manner shoud be identified and opposed is seemingly straightforward.

Absolutely - and that is pretty much what the core of the piece is saying

Yes I have always regarded balliffs, debt collectors and to a lesser extent police and screws as scum. I have never applied this same label to gang members for several reasons and perhaps I am wrong not to have done so.

It does seem illogical & politically incoherent to regard some (working class) people whose choices impinge on other working class people & communties in an adverse manner as scum (or any other manner of dehumanised term) but not others. This is one of the things I can't get my head around in terms of opposition to the article. I can understand the argument that because of the more formalised structures that some scum operate through then they are easier to define & react against than other scum. But that doesn't detract from the basic premise that we both seem to agree with.

Motivations for making the choices to become a bailiff or gang member are crucial here. It is often the unaligned who get attacked in gang related conflict and this fear of attack will be a motivating factor for people to join. Opportunities for young men are few and far between and for young black men non existent in many places.

Contrast this with say a certified bailiff or a police man. By the nature of the job they have been able to secure, they have many more opportunities open to them for example no criminal record, references, basic qualifications etc. So to make the step of becoming a copper or a bailiff is to exercise a choice knowing other choices that do not cause harm to working class people are available.

It's a fair point to look at the motivations involved in the carrying out of acts that are a blight on working class communites. But at the end of the day, it's the act itself that does the damage - differing motivating factors behind the same particular act don't diminish the damage caused by that act. So while looking at the motivations behind such things (may) help to understand or explain why those things happen, it doesn't excuse them or diminsh the damage they cause. And the damage being caused needs to be taken seriously for anyone who is serious about the need for strong confident working class community organisation.

Also i'd say intiatives like the IWCA Athletics club in Oxford which has a strong focus on getting youngsters involved, shows that the IWCA approach does take seriously the need to engage with (rather than write off, as some here seem to be implying), and try and provide alternative kinds of communal & collective outlets/focus/attractions/ to working class kids who are at risk from making the kind of choices in life that leads to them becoming a blight upon the wider community. So it's not just outright condemning - but as the article says, we need to understand a little more and condem a little more

The other thing about focussing too much on motivations is that it detaches too much the impact of the act from the person committing it. Most capitalists for example genuinely don't believe they are exploiting those who work for them. Most capitalists think the riches they accumulate are a just reward for the efforts & risks that they have put in, and see themselves as providing jobs for those less fortunate than themselves. Most capitalists are not intentionally evil. Most capitalists believe their activity results in a win-win situation for capital & labour. But just because they don't deliberately set out to exploit the working class, doesn't detract from the fact that their activities do just that. And rightly so, regardless of these capitalists' subjective motivations & intentions, they are seen as the class enemy that they objectively are. I realise this is not a neat parallel with the point you were making, but I think the point about focussing on the actual act, just as much as the intentions behind the act are important. Otherwise the whole thing just collapses into crude determinism which strips us all of any kind of agency or free will or personal & collective responsibility.

In order to gather support for actions against an identified grouping that undermine working class organisation and impact detrimentally on working class people, it will be necessary to be very careful with the choice of words used and efforts should be made to set out as much of the thinking behind the approach in order to contextualise it and set clear blue water between it and the attacks on the same grouping that are motivated by racism or class hatred.

Yep agree completely with this - it was what I was getting at earlier when I made the comment about perhaps the article could have 'shown it's workings' a bit more to hammer home this point. There's always a danger of assuming too much on the part of the reader and leaving things implied but unstated that should be could perhaps be stated more explicitly.

 

[smokedout]

Also i'd say intiatives like the IWCA Athletics club in Oxford which has a strong focus on getting youngsters involved, shows that the IWCA approach does take seriously the need to engage with (rather than write off, as some here seem to be implying), and try and provide alternative kinds of communal & collective outlets/focus/attractions/ to working class kids who are at risk from making the kind of choices in life that leads to them becoming a blight upon the wider community. So it's not just outright condemning - but as the article says, we need to understand a little more and condem a little more

but what does 'condemn more' mean, how do we condemn more?

 

[BlackArab]

The three riots this year in my community have been led by the anarchists, at the last one they were encouraging the local youth to riot and even dishing out bottles to chuck. As a result those youths arrested will be convicted and have criminal records thus making them unemployable and forcing them to make a living any way they can, generally crime within their own communities. So todays rioters will become tomorrows gang members and drug dealers as a result of the anarchists.

How do we (the community) deal with these renegades (the anarchists). Oh and before anyone screams evidence I was there and have since spoken to youngsters who corroborated what I saw.

 

[elbows]

Apart from the ugly wedge stuff, my problem with these sorts of articles is that I'm not actually sure if they are giving us anything new to get our teeth into.

Its almost like a formula. Start with look back at the forces that screwed people in recent decades. Look at the gross failings of those movements that should be a shield against this stuff. Talk about the perceived threats in the future. Then find a worrying symptom of the present, and hype up quite what a threat this will be in future, and how it will blend with other threats and crush people hideously. Then hint that this situation offers opportunities, if only we can seize them.

Such a formula is understandable, and history does suggest that this is one of the ways that change comes about. I've probably used such a structure myself when pondering the future implications of economic & energy woes.

Problem is that all the wake up calls and grim warnings don't seem to lead to any action on a scale necessary to make a difference, whatever the flavour of warning. No change of direction that makes it possible to think we could avoid the day when opportunity knocks, with a bloody fist, reeking of ignorance.

What is the use of writing the left off as a failure, as one of the articles did, unless you are prepared to at least hint as to what could be done instead? Are you actually writing off left-wing economic & policy beliefs, or just the failings of many left-leaning organisations in recent decades?

The call to organise is utterly empty without more detail. It does not deal with the suffocating lack of ideas that people are strongly motivated to get behind. Perhaps it is a race against time to lay some sound groundwork ahead of major events that will cause mass desperation and motivate people to act, is there a way to prepare the ground to encourage maximum sanity and guard against the worst that reactionary tendencies have to offer, or are we doomed to remain unprepared until the woe time is upon us?

 

[The39thStep]

Is this a reference to what I wrote? If it is, it is bad misrepresentation of it.

If you wrote that then it is. if you didn't then either agree or disagree. To be honest i don't religiously read each post of yours.

 

[The39thStep]

this is important. if there is a moral divide in the working class then there is also an economic one, not in terms of relation to capital, but in terms of lived experience - a teacher in a council flat, or a skilled unionised worker has a very different time of it to someone dependent on benefits or minimum wage/casual work. now how many of those of the latter group represent what the piece would consider to be lumpen is open to debate, as is whether there is a correlation, and if so why.

How on earth does a moral divide depend on if you are on benefits/casual work or full time employment?

 

[smokedout]

where did i say it did. I asked the question, is there an economic factor to the nouveau lumpen, are they poorer?

 

[TopCat]

The three riots this year in my community have been led by the anarchists, at the last one they were encouraging the local youth to riot and even dishing out bottles to chuck. As a result those youths arrested will be convicted and have criminal records thus making them unemployable and forcing them to make a living any way they can, generally crime within their own communities. So todays rioters will become tomorrows gang members and drug dealers as a result of the anarchists.

How do we (the community) deal with these renegades (the anarchists). Oh and before anyone screams evidence I was there and have since spoken to youngsters who corroborated what I saw.

Why don't you start another thread posing exactly the question: How do we (the community) deal with these renegades (the anarchists). It deserves it's own thread.

 

[BlackArab]

Why don't you start another thread posing exactly the question: How do we (the community) deal with these renegades (the anarchists). It deserves it's own thread.

Because this one is about gangs causing a nuisance in wc communities which how I see them.

ps that stuff ain't strong enough if you can still make intelligent posts or maybe I'm a lightweight as I'd be dribbling by now

 

[The39thStep]

How communities might deal with the renegades or might prevent renegades should be discussed. The last paragraph in Keenan Maliks article on morality and the riots and a discussion that was on the IWCA yahoo group might be a good starting point.

There can be no possibility of a political or economic vision of a different society without a moral vision too. Moral arguments lie at the heart of our understanding of social solidarity, and of the distinction between notions of social solidarity and pious rightwing claims of ‘we’re all in it together’. And that is why it also has to be at the heart of our understanding of the riots. The questions about economic and social poverty, about unemployment and the cuts, are closely related to the questions about moral poverty, about the breakdown of social solidarity and the rise of a nihilistic culture. There can be no challenge to mass unemployment and imposition of austerity without restoration of bonds of social solidarity. We cannot, in other words, challenge economic poverty if do not also challenge moral poverty.
Ironically, perhaps, way forward shown by those who stood up to rioters. In many communities in Britain last week, local people patrolled the streets, protected buildings and confronted the rioters. They did so largely because the police were unable or unwilling to help. In one sense, such community action helps camouflage the government’s public expenditure cuts, help making up for the services the state should be providing. But, in another sense, such action is much more than an ersatz form of Cameron’s Big Society. In taking matters into own hands, and in accepting responsibility for own communities, those who stood up to the rioters were taking the first steps towards restoring the moral deficit by recreating the bonds of social solidarity.

A decade ago on Blackbird Leys we proved that working class activists can also set the agenda. By exposing and challenging the authorities policy of containment of crack and heroin dealing/yardie murders/gang rapes etc on our estate - and especially by putting into place (or often merely threatening to) our own, popular strategies to deal with the problem - we too had the political establishment/police/housing authories desperate to be seen to address a problem that they had hitherto been happy to pretend didn't exist.

It is significant that before the IWCA started the campaign against them, the yardies and their fellow travellers as good as controlled the area around their community centre base, which included the Blackbird pub and the main parade of shops. (Incidentally, this area was where the notorious scenes of joyriding - that gave groups such as Class War a collective hard on at the time - were captured by national news cameras a decade earlier). It seems inconcievable that without the efforts of IWCA activists from Oxford, London and beyond, that - monkey see, monkey do - the 'top shops' area would not have suffered the same fate as other such areas acoss the country.

 

[articul8]

One of those terribly ambitious articles that 60 years later is frankly embarrasing

You think that the SI analysis of Watts is "frankly embarrassing"?

 

[The39thStep]

You think that the SI analysis of Watts is "frankly embarrassing"?

sure do honey, take it you are a fan?

 

[articul8]

a rebellion against the commodity, against the world of the commodity in which worker-consumers are hierarchically subordinated to commodity standards. Like the young delinquents of all the advanced countries, but more radically because they are part of a class without a future, a sector of the proletariat unable to believe in any significant chance of integration or promotion, [they] take modern capitalist propaganda, its publicity of abundance, literally. They want to possess now all the objects shown and abstractly accessible, because they want to use them. In this way they are challenging their exchange-value, the commodity reality which molds them and marshals them to its own ends, and which has preselected everything. Through theft and gift they rediscover a use that immediately refutes the oppressive rationality of the commodity, revealing its relations and even its production to be arbitrary and unnecessary. The looting of the Watts district was the most direct realization of the distorted principle: “To each according to their false needs” — needs determined and produced by the economic system which the very act of looting rejects. But once the vaunted abundance is taken at face value and directly seized, instead of being eternally pursued in the rat-race of alienated labor and increasing unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festive celebration, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction. People who destroy commodities show their human superiority over commodities. They stop submitting to the arbitrary forms that distortedly reflect their real needs. The flames of Watts consummated the system of consumption. The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity, or with their electricity cut off, is the best image of the lie of affluence transformed into a truth in play. Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival.
Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence. What is a policeman? He is the active servant of the commodity, the man in complete submission to the commodity, whose job is to ensure that a given product of human labor remains a commodity, with the magical property of having to be paid for, instead of becoming a mere refrigerator or rifle — a passive, inanimate object, subject to anyone who comes along to make use of it. In rejecting the humiliation of being subject to police, they are at the same time rejecting the humiliation of being subject to commodities. The youth, having no future in market terms, grasped another quality of the present, and that quality was so incontestable and irresistible that it drew in the whole population — women, children, and even sociologists who happened to be on the scene. Bobbi Hollon, a young black sociologist of the neighborhood, had this to say to the Herald Tribune in October: “Before, people were ashamed to say they came from [....] They’d mumble it. Now they say it with pride. Boys who used to go around with their shirts open to the waist, and who’d have cut you to pieces in half a second, showed up here every morning at seven o’clock to organize the distribution of food. Of course, it’s no use pretending that food wasn’t looted. . . . All that Christian blah has been used too long against blacks. These people could loot for ten years and they wouldn’t get back half the money those stores have stolen from them over all these years. . . . Me, I’m only a little black girl.” Bobbi Hollon, who has sworn never to wash off the blood that splashed on her sandals during the rioting, adds: “Now the whole world is watching [...]”
How do people make history under conditions designed to dissuade them from intervening in it?

With a few tweaks it could be a description of the riots this month -

 

[love detective]

I'd say the bit below couldn't be further away in substance from a description of this month's riots to be honest - something that no amount of tweaks would bridge the gap on (edit: in fact i'd say it was the reverse of what happened this month)

needs determined and produced by the economic system which the very act of looting rejects. But once the vaunted abundance is taken at face value and directly seized, instead of being eternally pursued in the rat-race of alienated labor and increasing unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festive celebration, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction. People who destroy commodities show their human superiority over commodities. They stop submitting to the arbitrary forms that distortedly reflect their real needs. The flames of Watts consummated the system of consumption. The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity, or with their electricity cut off, is the best image of the lie of affluence transformed into a truth in play. Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival.