I'd be exaggerating if I said there was a suppressed air of tension on the London streets at the moment. If I didn't look at the news I'd have no idea that anything untoward had happened here at all. My local streets are the same as ever: people going to work, shopping, sitting in cafes. This morning I cycled through Hackney to Clapton and down the Lea Bridge Road, to my favourite blackberry-picking spot - ah yes, the good old days when a blackberry was just that - and spotted absolutely no smashed up shop windows, gangs of youths, or burnt-out cars. Of course if I'd wanted to I could have headed over to Mare Street or up to Tottenham High Road to take a few snaps, but that would have been a bit too much like rubber-necking.
Which is not to say that these riots aren't serious: they certainly are - especially for those directly affected who've had their shops looted or their houses burnt out. But amidst all the analysis and rhetoric, with everyone using the occasion to strengthen their own particular prejudices, what strikes me is how much this is about nothing so much as teenage bravado.
I'll use the example of cycling. There's a certain kind of young cyclist around the London streets who'll be pedalling along without touching the handlebars - who'll make a big deal about not touching the handlebars. They'll often be chatting on their mobile, or even texting. They'll ignore any traffic signs. It's a style, a pose. They're feeling good; they're above the law. It's so absurdly self-conscious only a teen could be bothered with it.
Most of them will be black kids. Not always, but nearly always. It's a black thing. Not that this is about race, but nowadays all the iconography of urban rebellion seems to come from black youth: originally from the US, but now with its own British slant. In the Fifties if you were young and full of testosterone you'd grease your hair and shock everyone by standing around on street corners looking mean in an old Edwardian-style suit. Later you could choose: mod or rocker. Then came those nasty skinheads, and the punks. Now black culture seems to have co-opted all the young rebellious looks and, with rap music, all the young rebellious sounds: hoodies, trousers down below the arse, and the rest of it. White kids do it, but black kids do it better. Not that the black-white thing reflects the ethnic reality of modern London, but it's a distinction we're stuck with for the moment, and it's not without some explanatory use.
A lot of the kids hurling stuff at the police, smashing windows: it's that same bravado. It's a pose, a ritual. Not that everyone out on the streets is like that. There are some, perhaps, who think it's some kind of revolution. There are more who are just opportunists, out for some excitement and some free goodies when the shop window gets smashed in. What's changed is that now, with their Blackberries, they can get a flash mob together pretty damn quick, and they can stay ahead of the police. And that, frankly, the police response to date has been so poor.
The old '68 slogan - "Sous les pavés la plage" - "Under the pavement, the beach" - captured that liberatory feeling when civilisation is shown to be just a thin veneer. These rioters are getting the same thrill. Except now it's not middle-class students but lower-class youth. To break into a shop and, against all codes of our society, just...help yourself! Wow!
Some things don't change though: it's always the police who form the hated other half of the ritual dance, from the "pigs" of Mayor Daley's Chicago to the "feds" or the "filth" or whatever they get called nowadays.
This isn't, of course, intended as an overall explanation of what's been happening. Or an excuse. It's just, maybe, a side of things which hasn't been getting that much attention what with all the shouting going on..."the cry of a disenfranchised minority" vs. "just a bunch of thugs". How justified the original violence in Tottenham was in terms of the shooting of Mark Duggan I'm really in no position to say - and nor, frankly, is anyone else at the moment. Since then it's been mostly kids taking the chance to make trouble. Nasty kids, of course; but then part of the whole deal is that they relish being seen as nasty, just as the teddy-boys and the skinheads did. I would suggest, however, that the fabric of London society, though frayed, isn't irredeemably broken.
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