The Other Country In England

I sit at my computer frantically searching for information on the Riots in London. I live on a small Island where the last riots took place in 1937. I can’t imagine what one is like except for the vivid picture of my dad, a boy, up inside a tree looking down on the rioters in the city of Bridgetown. When I see a picture of a blazing bus in London sent via Facebook, I know that something is desperately wrong. Again. 


I wonder why many English commentators are so shell-shocked.  I only spent a year in the country but I could tell something was not right in the communities where youth went "feral", where they Mend It Like Peckham. I walked through South Peckham in 2007 to open ducts and despair.  I saw broken windows and ugly flats in estates. I heard stories too numerous to tell about the plight of the underclasses and the subtle, contemporary invisibility of the urban beast. Riots are about the unheard, the voiceless, Martin Luther said. Riots are about economics and social deprivation. In 1937 the British Royal Commission investigated the Barbados riots. The overwhelming finding: the riots were a response to poor economic conditions. 

I  overheard a man in Tottenham give instructions to a young woman about how to place drugs on her body. I walked with my head straight and pretended I did not understand English. It was dark. They stood huddled under a bridge. I don’t know for the life of me what I was doing there at that hour except that I have this naive notion that if you are kind to people they will return kindness and, to get some Jamaican Jerk chicken. That’s another thing. I, a student intern, noticed very quickly that you could rarely get Jamaican Jerk or many other West Indian or “black creole” items or products anywhere in this city other than in the black  or non-white neighbourhoods. It was as if you had to travel to another country.

You were in another country. An underdeveloped one.  Children had been killing and were killed in areas such as Peckham prior to and when I was there. The news was splashed all over the papers and TV. Even the good ones, the ones who had risen like phoenix from the ashes. Men have disappeared without a trace at the hands, it is claimed , of police – at least once a year. People are seething and raging, not only at the growing criminality in their districts over which they have lost control, are disinterested or have given up. Adequate procedures to address these gaps are absent. Anthony Hamilton: "Ain't nobody worrying - the homeless have no where to turn when their stomachs start to burn cause they ain't got food to eat.”

I stood in a bus and received the butt of a woman’s anger. I clearly was being mistaken for yet another immigrant crowding her space. And what if I was? The person in question did not know if I had been born in England or had just come off the plane to visit or what I was doing there, but I was objectified and judged by some silent, hidden criteria. “These people, these people,” she said, stomping her way through and shoving me aside on the #38 bus at Victoria station as if I was a nasty vagrant. She wanted to pass to the back of the bus and did not know how to say so. I only remember the sad look of the woman (white) next to me in the aisle as we let her make her way through. When the bus stopped at St James’ Street and I got off there, with that same woman who had so unceremoniously and rudely pushed me aside, she looked as if she would have a heart attack. I was well-heeled, looked polished and by any account, I had disembarked in one of the ritzy parts of town.

If this happens to immigrants and citizens on a regular basis, then can you imagine the kind of resentment that builds up over time? Some commentators speak of a particular moral that exists in certain civilizations and another moral that seemingly exists in others – a moral relativism. In the inner cities there is a one kind  and elsewhere there is another. In one culture there is one moral and in others, there are others. This is treading on very dangerous ground. Wars have been started for less.

I agree with the view that a poor morality exists at all strata of society. It always has, whether it’s hedonism, crafty speculation that causes spurious money to fall quickly into the hands of a protected minority or the zealous guarding of obscene wealth – jewels, golden bowls and spoons in which one could swim, some of which are the rightful property of other nations or other notable examples of indiscretion at the highest levels. 


People without power carry images of such infractions in their memories and may erect alternative systems in which they reclaim it: gangs, anarchy, criminality. It's not unusual to see a select group of poets and writers emerge  who exorcise the demons of their childhood through art. (Lindon kwesi Johnson, ER Brathwaite, even Seal reports a dire childhood saved only by his singing...)  The equation is simple: the dispossessed wish to possess. Is England immune to what history has time and time again proven by burying its problems in legal apparatus that do not eliminate cultural sores nor the poverty seemingly endemic to its inner cities?

So I don’t know why people are so shocked. I sit in my corner of the woods, here on a peaceful island, with beaches and water at my feet and try to remember not what  history books said, but what my father told me. The poor in Barbados had nothing. The under-classes had been marginalized and they rebelled against anything they considered to be the establishment. Echoing the statement – “Today is a funny night,” they wreaked havoc all over Barbados. Man, woman and child ran feral, damaging not only the goods of the rich but of the poor. They were fighting against  English colonialists. My dad ran up a tree because he was genuinely scared and he had become tired of throwing stones. The riots caught on from parish to parish and there was no internet or Twitter. So don’t blame them on Twitter and mobiles and FB. That would be far too simplistic. 


Blame them on the classic symptoms of riots the world over: social discrimination and rejection,  lack of positive adult role models and proper discipline, economic deprivation, low self esteem and character building tools, the perpetuation of the material over the spiritual, lack of purpose and entrenched systems of endemic poverty and hopelessness.   Yes, someone lit a match under England again. No it is not right. But when in history has that match not been lit to alter  the circumstances of the poor. When in history were wars and uprisings not waged because people felt so miserable? When did opportunism, looting and vandalism not play a part? When did women not cry at loss, pillage and plunder?

The apparently smallest incident always seems to spark rife, open physical malcontent. In the case of these London riots, it just took one stone in the water to create the ripple that exposed the chronic decay. 

Mankind aspires to a higher morality. Unfortunately, the basest of human nature may present itself  when men and women feel their backs are against the wall, when they feel themselves at the edge. So if indeed there is that layer of society that considers itself more morally correct, I wait to discover if men will be men, or indeed mice. It’s up to the leaders - by that I mean police, community, parents, church, media, institutions, the private and public sector and generally all in authority - of England to decide which they are on behalf of the children and young people who rioted and on behalf of the reputation of the country and the innocent, people who have nothing to do with the urban terror that's been perpetuated from both sides. Leadership includes gangs. In the L.A gang Wars series, reformed gang leaders are important catalysts for change.  

Someone said: parents of these teenagers, young men and women are already a lost generation. Judging by the initial reactions of some leaders, they too are lost in the haze. Rephrasing earlier remarks will not erase the first blunders and impressions in people’s minds.  Mother always says, "Words have meaning and once said you cannot take them back." Granny always said, “Give the right men the wrong tools and see what happens.” It takes a supreme wisdom, desire and action  to quell dangerous passions. I also saw the greatness that good organisation can bring in a country with the wealth and standing of Britain.  That prosperity needs to be spread out in more meaningful ways in the inner cities.

Many see the 1937 riots in Barbados as one of the precursors to independence, which came to the island nearly 3 decades later. What does this new flare-up in England portend? One author claims that subcultures exist because problems are solved by a collective and that the individual survives through the respect and recognition they gain. There is only one real answer then to solving this puzzle: the collective conscience of Britain - not a self-prescribed moral majority - must return to the trenches and fight peacefully in this most important social war. Go on England. The world is watching and waiting.