GREEK SCENARIO IN ENGLAND
09.08.2011 19:45
Young people seeking justice in England, in arson, broken shop windows and burned cars
For several consecutive days in a row, the UK shook with civil unrest, which in the bourgeois media is traditionally referred to as "disturbances". Beginning in the outlying districts of London, they overwhelmed mega-cities of Birmingham and Liverpool. Onto the streets of UK cities poured young people - children of "dysfunctional" working-class suburbs, migrant workers.
The detonator of the people's wrath was the killing by police of 29 year old Mark Duggan. Outraged by the arbitrariness of the police, the residents of London's Tottenham on August 6th went to the streets to demand "justice" and laid siege to a police station. Under the same slogan - the restoration of justice - unfolded events at the Manege Square in Moscow, and almost the same (with the murder by police officers of a 15-year-old) began a wave of unrest by anarchist youth in Athens in 2009.
Protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at two police cars and burned several civilian cars, smashed shops ... if this was the only thing, the British authorities could have easily convinced the world community that Saturday's performance was a one-off and "taken all measures to prevent this happening again"- these words usually end the stories of bourgeois reporters about the events of this kind.
But the unrest quickly broke out in other areas of the city: Enfield, Croydon, Clapham, Peckham, etc. All of these – are so-called slums, but in Russian - working-class suburbs, with their perpetual poverty and despair. It is against poverty, slave labour, lack of prospects - better to say, against all the conditions of their life – that the young Englishmen rebelled, challenging the very neo-liberal model. Their anger was wrongly directed at the material symbols of capitalist reality - in the troubled areas, shops and bookmakers were looted, restaurants windows broken, cars set ablaze. This indicates the absence in the ranks of the rebels, of an organizing force that can send a spontaneous protest of the masses into the mainstream conscious struggle for the abolition of capitalism. Such, is meanwhile what replaces resentment, accumulated over years of living under draconian laws of capitalist society. Police use it to discredit the protesters, portraying them as hooligans and looters. In addition, this approach allows to justify in the eyes of the public the use of harsh methods of suppressing riots. According to press reports, from the beginning of mass demonstrations in London arrested 220 people, 25 of whom are accused of looting and riots. Only the first two days of clashes injured 11 people and 26 police officers. (The number was a lot higher after -3000 approx- FB)
The gulf between workers and the elite of the oldest capitalist country of Europe was exposed: while the British youth and adolescents, crushed by poverty, terrorized by the police authorities, were fighting on the streets of their cities, much of the country's leadership, it turns out was holidaying abroad. Cold cynicism emanates from reports that "the British prime minister, David Cameron interrupted his vacation in Italy, where he was resting with his family and returned to the country because of the riots," "from overseas" was ready to return, and the Mayor of Birmingham "holiday in Switzerland," and quickly returned to Britain, Interior Minister Theresa May. Of course, at the first sign of really serious political action by the people, all the ministers and other officials of the bourgeois government get ready to fly abroad to their "friends" and fellows in imperialist camp, and from there, direct the suppression of popular uprisings. Equally characteristic of this situation is in Russia, where the Governor (i.e, the governor of the Kaliningrad region, Georgy Boos), just from seeing posters demanding his resignation, climbed on board his "awaiting" aircraft and flew to Moscow under the protection of a handful of same looters themselves having given themselves supreme authority.
As one of the causes of unrest in the UK is called what we decide to call ethnic strife - claiming that the British "can not afford to create a multicultural society." But is it really what the British elite are aiming for? After all, the notorious "multiculturalism" boils down ultimately to the neglect of national cultural traditions and replacing them with thre implanted in society so-called "ideology of consumerism." We should not forget that the introduction of discord between workers of different nationalities – is the trump card of the bourgeoisie in its struggle for the extension of its rule. And it is inter-ethnic clashes and hostility that benefit the bourgeoisie of all nationalities because its helps keep workers in a state of fear and disunity.
In the ranks of protesting British youth, as you might guess, were a lot of provocateurs, either for their own selfish goals (evidenced, for example, in robberies of jewellery stores), or acting on orders from the police. However, it is not worth reducing what happened to the actions of some provocative groups. Of course, the root cause of riots that swept Britain in those days is capitalism. It is capitalism that creates poverty of workers and screaming luxury of the exploiters, unemployment and high prices, lawlessness and violence over millions of people, generated by the permissiveness of a tiny number of elite.
What we witnessed on those days in England were the echoes of massive class struggles, that swept continental Europe and several U.S. states. For years, workers in Greece have been organizing strikes and protest marches, fighting against the plans of the bourgeoisie to escape from the crisis of their fortunes at the expense of the people. Students and unemployed in Madrid on the streets, Chilean youth fighting with police, including school and college students, for free education. Yes, and in the UK the current unrest is not the first. In winter, there were the massive student demonstrations against the commercialization of education within the framework of the well-known in Russia, "Bologna process". Then, too, that was not without smashed up cars, but the British young people showed their solidarity and determination to succeed. It would be nice, if our own suffering students with their well-known apolitism, remembered the experience of their overseas peers – because the commercialization process and the final destruction of Russian education is gaining momentum.
The fact that for millions of Soviet people there was natural - free education, free high-quality and the same medical care, permanent employment, lower prices - under capitalism, these becomes the subject of a fierce struggle, often with fatalities. At any moment, that entire rotten facade concealing its exploitative system, touting itself as a "democracy" with "human rights" - may turn out, and turns out, as the imperialist predator bearing its teeth: police terror, fascist dictatorship, and military action. But working people who are forced to literally tear from the bourgeoisie its right to exist, is gaining invaluable experience of class struggle and the understanding that cannot be a peaceful way to solve the existing problems and that the only way to get rid of them - once and for all, is to put an end to capitalism.
The August riots that took place on British soil, signed the sentence of the imperialist "neoliberal model". The discontent of working people and young people at own situation and what is happening in the country, the anger against the fattening of the elites, sucking the juices from the people, is growing close to a critical point. This means that the early collapse of imperialism and the seizure of power by the working class is inevitable.
E. Fatyanova, AUCPB
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