Zaglul Ahmed Chowdhury
The rioting in London and several other British cities took most people across the world by surprise for the simple reason that it was the least expected thing to happen there. The worst violence and mayhem in decades, claiming five lives and leaving scores injured, occurred without any iota of indications of such a development and consequently, the whole episode has been shocking.
The event has been of such a magnitude that the British government and others concerned are still grappling with the factors behind the rioting. The British prime minister and the interior minister had to cut short of their holidays to respond to the escalating violence. This only shows how surprised they were about the shape of things that came as a bolt from the blue.
The conditions worsened at an unusually fast speed; the police were seen badly struggling to cope with the situation that spread like wildfire following the killing of a black youth by police in Tottenham district. At one stage, the authorities had planned to call the army and clamp a curfew. Fortunately, the violence receded considerably and things are returning to near-normalcy. The affected cities and many other areas, however, are still reeling under fear and insecurity.
Against this backdrop, issues that are boggling the mind of the people both in the United Kingdom and beyond are, what really prompted to trigger such an event. Lawlessness ruled the roost for few days in England -- an unusual one for the whole British nation that meticulously seeks to avoid anything contrary to law, even though some aberrations are not uncommon.
The trouble began in Tottenham when police shot dead 29-year-old Mark Duggan, who is reportedly known for his criminal record. This led to widespread looting and vandalism in the area and later engulfed other areas in London as well as other cities like Birmingham and Manchester. The severity of the lawlessness was to such an extent that the police initially looked helpless in face of the size, extent and nature of what was going on. It was like free for all and young people, mostly below 20 and as young as 13, were largely involved as they looted shops, burnt down offices and houses and clashed pitched battles with the security forces on the streets.
The British Prime Minister David Cameroon admitted that the condition reached such a stage that the authorities were mulling over whether to call the army and impose curfew for quelling the sharply deteriorating situation. Anyway, thanks to the rapidly strengthened police force and the "operation Woodstock" that helped contain the situation.
Businesses are now reverting to normalcy -- albeit very slowly and still with a sense of insecurity. About 1500 have so far been arrested for creating violence and prime minister Cameron vowed to take all responsible for the lawlessness to task.
But the questions that are now coming to the fore, in the aftermath of this worst rioting, revolve around the basic issue -- what was the behind such an unexpected level of violence and that, too, was spreading like an inferno? Several theories have been posited about the underlying causes of the rioting -- from moral decay to factors that include excessive consumerism and racial overtones.
Certainly, it was not just a case of looting and vandalism, although the developing situation had taken such a shape. The entire episode points fundamentally to a social unrest which has different dimensions, encompassing unemployment, cut in the social benefits, deprivations, attitude to the blacks and, last but not the least, a kind of unawareness on the part of the authorities about the pent-up anger and frustration that were vented in the course of the violence and extreme apathy for law.
True, things took the turn of looting and destruction, but that was essentially an upshot of the occurrences and not necessarily the real objective of the acts. It is also inextricably linked with a pattern that has crept into the social psyche somewhat unwittingly as many youths are left in the cold by their parents and a lack of direction -- both at family level and prospects of having the choice for a sound profession -- had their contribution to the happenings.
The feeling among the blacks that they are often treated badly by the police and others also played a role, even though the blacks and whites alike were involved in the lawlessness. Key figures during the debate in the emergency session of the British parliament touched on these issues, in tandem with the analysts in the media, as they gave varying reasons for the rioting while agreeing broadly that it was basically a social unrest. This raises the question -- are the British concentrating more on international crises abroad or other issues and in the process are being caught unawares by the gathering storm inside their own country?
Now that such rioting has taken place, the authorities are contemplating many measures to prevent its recurrence, ranging from ban to social media to strict application of laws as well as trying to stave off the reasons that accumulated the commotion.
In any case, this has been a kind of a "wake-up" call for the British government and other concerned quarters; the bounden task in this context is to look into things beneath the surface dispassionately and to take remedial measures as far as possible.
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