Fair weather anarchist

By Paul Flower on Apr 1, 09 11:04 AM

"Anarchy in the UK it's coming some time, maybe"

It's a common occurrence in my life that song-lyrics can often adequately sum up my feelings or the points I'm trying to make. Read as a solitary collection of words without the 'tune' the qualifying statement, the cautionary question at the end of the verse tends to stand out. It may be coming, possibly, if we can be bothered. I suspect that anarchy isn't a typically English pursuit, I don't think we see the point - we're either not confident in our individual ability to effect change, or we just simply can't be arsed.

At some point in our social evolution the right to riot got replaced by the right to buy our own council houses, an era of Tory-rule transformed us from workers to consumers, the interests of the masses monopolised by self-interest. The destruction of the unions clearly played some part in this - contrast our own ineffectual protests with the effective unrest of our neighbours France for evidence of this.

I also suspect that anarchy in the UK is a largely middle-class pursuit. The working-classes having had their work removed are subject to constant chav-style ridicule or reduced to appearances on the Jeremy Kyle Show. They don't need to travel to the city of London to see boarded-up-shops; they can see them every day. Without their traditional industries the working-class are more likely to be worried about turf-war than class-war.

So it falls to the students. A group of people born of middle-class home-comforts, once politically motivated it's now all about social mobility and motivation. The last thing they all complained about was student-debt. They may be concerned about capitalism - but possibly only in the context of whether they can get a job amongst the capitalists in order to pay off the loans quicker! Today's students are more interested in star wars than class war.

As I write London is in lock-down, it has become the capital of a police state. I don't doubt that there'll be some 'unrest', vandalism or violence. Nor do I doubt that it'll look far more serious when we're watching it on tonight's news. Reduced to a short series of images the most minor of skirmishes can look like a riot. It's a little ironic that we're finally getting the truth about TV coverage of the miner's strike some 25 years after it happened. This was the last real worker-unrest in the UK, fighting for a real cause rather than for the sake of fighting or getting on the news.

The British don't riot without good reason, nor do we riot without good weather. The fact that it's sunny today will bring out a crowd - some just to watch the gathering of crowds and police. With this combination there can often be a tipping point where one random act provokes a response and the reaction sends everyone scattering. We've all been there; it suggests that the British are fair-weather rioters and there'd be a lot of truth in that. Both Handsworth riots took place in the summer and could be construed as less of a political protest and more like people hanging around the streets with nothing better to do than bait the police, it's rioting as a spectator-sport. This is what we did for fun before the wii was invented.

By now you may have wised-up to my disguise, whereby I am partly adopting the role of advocatus diaboli, the intentional misquoting of John Lydon (which'd be a great biog or album name) at the top of the page will have given me up as April's biggest fool - given that the lyric actually goes on to state that for most of us the idea of anarchy might be intentionally giving someone the wrong time of day.

Anarchy for the u.k it's coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time stop a traffic line
your future dream is a shopping scheme

A song that proved oddly prophetic. Our future dreams are shopping schemes - the Government has incentivized spending as a method to kick-start the economy. It doesn't appear to be working, which is a problem that many more of us are facing. Frankly who can afford to travel to London for a riot? Ending on another song it's becoming obvious that if I want to riot, I'll riot on my own.

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More Miners strike info:

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Reflection?

The truth?