‘London’s burning’ was the cry that went out when what became known as the ‘Great Fire of 1666’ raged and destroyed huge areas of the city in September of that year!  It began in the early hours of Sunday, 2 September and was not brought under control until Thursday, 6 September, ‘having destroyed 373 acres of the City - from the Tower in the East to Fleet Street and Fetter Lane in the West - and burning around 13,200 houses, 84 churches and 44 company halls’, on account of ‘the capital’s largely timber construction’. While officially ‘only four people died’, according to one contemporary account, the true toll was probably much higher. Samuel Pepy`s Diaries also contain an entry dated 2 September, 1666 in which he wrote of

[e]verybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another.

That historical memory of a vast metropolis on the point of near annihilation had already become part of the nation’s folklore over the next three centuries, to resonate again, with a heightened degree of apprehension, when London was subjected to sustained aerial bombing by the Germans during World War II. This is how ‘London’s burning’ had morphed into a ready metaphor for anything that posed an existential threat to the city in any number of ways. The eponymous catch phrase even became the title of a TV movie, first broadcast in 1986 and followed by a regular fictional drama series from 1988 to 2002, focusing on the lives of members of the London Fire Brigade.

Against this chequered background, it was inevitable that the words ‘London’s burning’ would appear in banner headlines this August, albeit in a different context, when large parts of London experienced a wave of sustained violence and destruction of property on an unprecedented scale, in a matter of just three to four days. It was as if some alien force had invaded the capital and ravaged it. The newsreel pictures, videos and other live coverage, together with first hand witness accounts of the orgy, instantly relayed over the airwaves, shocked the world as much as they did people over here. The national soul searching for the causes and impact of these events that began immediately has gone on since, in public and private, at varying levels of informed opinion and intuitive reaction.

So what happened? The evidence was plain to see: crowds of people, mostly teenagers (some even younger) and many in their twenties or slightly older, men and women, black and white, went on a rampage of looting and worse, individually or in gangs. Moving about like crazed feral beasts, they ransacked shops, stores, cafes and other retail establishments, intent on removing everything and anything of value or utility. Things quickly got out of control and escalated into physical damage and destruction of property.  Buildings and motor vehicles were set ablaze. There were spectacular scenes of their gutted ruins. The shocking part of it was that the rioters then turned their ire on the forces of law and order. Fire-fighters and even ambulance crew were prevented from doing their duty and the police were kept at bay by the menacing crowds of looters and arsonists. There were many incidents of unprovoked assaults on innocent bystanders and injury to others caught up in the madness. Of all these lingering images that have been well documented, one of the most shocking was that of a young mother carrying off her loot piled up in her baby’s pushchair while clutching the baby in her arms!

For Kenyans, the nearest parallel must surely be the 1982 attempted coup against the Moi Presidency, reinforced perhaps by the post-election violence of 2007-8, though that was of a different character. Then also shopkeepers and other property owners had to watch their possessions being ‘liberated’ by opportunist thieves who cared not what was destroyed or whether anyone was hurt in the process.

But why, and how, you may ask, was this possible in a country like Britain? It is not as if there have not been riots in London, or Britain, before. But the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780; or those during the height of the Chartist movement for electoral reform between 1838 and 1852; or in more recent times those associated with the poll tax, or the miners’ strike; or student fees - for example - were driven by political or other principled causes. These, in 2011, were different; they were, in effect, ‘zero-degree protests’! There was no ideology or goal or movement involved.  It was what you would expect in a society at breaking point.

But then the old notion of Britain as a living embodiment of a superior species of humanity, that was fed to, and swallowed by, its subject peoples across the globe at the height of Empire, has long been outdated. Even in those days, there was always present in the domestic make-up of its population, a nihilistic element that remained largely latent under the weight of a hierarchical authoritarianism but found expression from time to time in riotous behaviour.

Even so, the societal transformation following the end of Empire was truly remarkable.  A relentless tide of democratisation swept away old inhibitions and handicaps, and gave way to ordinary folk rubbing shoulders with their better-off counterparts on an apparent basis of equality. This has continued since to such an extent that it is the voices and values of the old working class that have come to dominate the fields of sports, entertainment, popular media and public discourse across the board. What the colonials were taught and learned to be the rules of social etiquette have simply disappeared. For that you have to go to places like Canada, New England, South Africa or New Zealand. The Brits treat everyone, including themselves, like dirt! Old-fashioned courtesy is a thing of the past. Respect for the elderly or infirm is absent. Nowadays it is the new breed of migrants from Europe, Asia and Africa who will stand up and give up their seats on trains or buses to them while the locals avert their eyes.  As of now, it is ‘Rude Britannia’ that seems to rule the day!

But I digress. From the ‘you have never had it so good’ days of the Macmillan era, what evolved over the next four to five decades (through the ‘swinging sixties’, industrial strife ridden seventies, Thatcherite eighties and scandal-torn naughty nineties) was a progressively amoral and couldn’t care less popular mind-set, fed on a diet of wanton materialism and narcissistic licence. Teenage pregnancies, drug addiction and all manner of petty crime flourished. Whereas rising living standards in the 1950s were attributable to full employment and a traditional work ethic, the present-day social welfare system has given rise to a culture of entitlement, so that the work-shy actually take pride in ‘living on benefits’(!), while at the same time disdaining and resenting the poorly paid jobs taken up by immigrants. That does not however stop them from engaging in activities producing undeclared income, within a low level cash economy such as is to be found in most developing countries.

Again and again, however, we ask ourselves: who were these rioters? Although the spark for the chain of violence that spread across London was apparently a demonstration outside the Tottenham police station by the friends and family of a mixed race man who were seeking to know why he had been shot dead by the police; the consensus is that the demonstration was mishandled, and soon deteriorated or was hijacked by criminal elements into a series of riots, but not ‘race riots’ - the varied mix of the rioters spoke for itself.  So who were they?

They were, are, the product of a sick society that has bred successive generations of people - lacking in literacy, let alone basic education, and in parenting and social skills, quite apart from an ability to earn a proper living - who continue the cycle of deprivation and disadvantage by reproducing more of their kind. The largest groups represented among them are the indigenous white, and those of black Caribbean (as distinct from African) origin or of mixed race of the same ethnicities, consisting of teenage single mothers, youngsters on welfare and unemployed layabouts, many of whom thrive on gang warfare involving use of guns and knives. As one academic observed, these rioters, ‘though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren’t living on the edge of starvation’, because ‘[p]eople in much worse material straits, let alone conditions of physical and ideological oppression, have been able to organise themselves into political forces with clear agendas’. They were mindless thugs, who seized an opportunity to grab what they could not afford, ie. the material goodies (TVs, ipads, mobile phones, digital cameras, computers, music centres and other electronic gadgets) flaunted at them through concerted consumerist corporate advertising. They do not have the means to acquire these modern desirables and yet are subjected to constant pressures to buy them. Unsurprisingly therefore, once the first stone was struck, mob mentality took over and the rest just followed in a frenzied onslaught against the established order.

Much of this was predictable. Historians and social scientists, as well as media commentators and other writers, have been warning of such explosions. This is what Chris Mullin, who was a Labour MP for some 23 years until 2010 and a former minister and journalist, wrote in his much acclaimed Diaries for 1994-1999 (‘A Walk-On Part’),

the principal threat to the social fabric comes from young, unskilled males who ... are useless either as fathers or providers .... they wander the streets causing mayhem ....

The theme of despair and alienation among this growing and dehumanised underclass is also the main thrust of the aptly named ‘Made in Britain’, a stark novel by Gavin James Bower, set in the ubiquitous ‘Every Street’ in ‘Every Town’ where a group of schoolboys on the threshhold of adulthood, from roughly the same kind of dysfunctional families, try to beat the system and their destinies against all odds. (‘there’s fuck all to do round ‘ere any day of the week’, and ‘I just want to escape’). 

What of the aftermath? Although the police appeared to be helpless at the height of the riots, they were quick to swing into action as soon as order was restored and by the middle of September had arrested nearly 3000 people, traced through CCTV footage, charging half of them with a range of offences arising from the riots, resulting in many convictions. This is a continuing operation and may go on for many months, with more to follow.

While the work of compiling and evaluating detailed statistics of the rioters’ profile goes on, according to The Guardian of 24 October, an early set of official figures showed

that those arrested were poorly educated and came from deprived areas. And those brought before the courts for riot-related offences varied significantly from the local population, with 42% of defendants white and 46% black and only 7% … Asian.

There has however been some criticism (‘rough justice’, ‘bench rage’) of the harsh sentences meted out to most of the culprits, and a number of cases have gone on to appeal but, at the time of writing this, not many of them have succeeded. While this is understandable, the greater cause has to be the security and solidity of civil society against the forces of anarchy.

So, yes, London did burn but not as extensively as in 1666. London is vast, and the riots were concentrated in only a few areas; most of the suburban outer boroughs remained peaceful, as was the rest of the country except for a few copy-cat incidents in some provincial cities.  And all this happened in England alone.  The other home nations of the United Kingdom – Wales,   Scotland, Northern Ireland – were untouched. So this was a peculiarly English affair.  But even if the riots on this scale were a shock to the system, from a global perspective, they did bear a fair comparison with those that occur from time to time, and have done, in other major cities across the world from Los Angeles to Paris to Cairo to Mumbai to Jakarta and so on.

By Ramnik Shah
Ramnik (better known as RKD) Shah practicesd as an advocatre in Nairobi for 10 years from 1964, and was Vice-Chairman of the Law Society of Kenya for 1973/74. After settling in Britain, he practiced as a solicitor there for 30 years from 1975 and following retirement continues to write as a critic and commentator in various forums and as a member of the editorial board of the London-based Journal of Immigration Asylum and Nationality Law.
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