The Shaming of England

One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from the moment of their first outbreak…every symptom of order or preconceived arrangement among them, vanished. When they divided into parties and ran to different quarters of the town, it was on the spontaneous suggestion of the moment. Each party swelled as it went along, like rivers as they roll towards the sea; new leaders sprang up as they were wanted, disappeared when the necessity was over, and reappeared at the next crisis. Each tumult took shape and form, from the circumstances of the moment…in a word a moral plague ran through the city. The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had for hundreds and hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist. The contagion spread, like a dread river: an infectious madness, as yet not near its height, seized on new victims every hour, and society began to tremble at their ravings.

So, what do you think? Is this a description of events in London last week? It’s a description of events in London alright but it’s not August, 2011; it’s June, 1780, the Gordon Riots as depicted by Charles Dickens in his novel Barnaby Rudge.

The savagery of 1780 was brought on by a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria, but this kind of thing really requires no motive; disorder, violence and the ugliness of the mob becomes an end in itself; it became an end in itself last week in London and other English cities, as a Twitter contagion spread across the land, shaming it in the eyes of the world.

The thing that outraged me most about this outrage was the way that it was wilfully misinterpreted, a serious news story draped in an ideological fog, balderdash about deprivation and cuts. I wrote Shopping with Violence, my previous article, as a rapid corrective to misinformation. I also wrote it, I freely confess, in a mood of acute anger. But I had no time to stand and stare; I had to react, a little attempt to ensure that a lie was not swallowed as the truth.

Now I have had time to think, and I’ve been thinking hard ever since, talking to friends and contacts over the weekend, including some journalists I know. I’m no less angry but a lot more focused. There is now some additional information that I would like to share. So, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London; I’ll show you something that’s bound to shake your mind.

Let me begin by telling you a tale of two cities, of two lives about as far apart as is possible to imagine. My first is an 89-year-old man by the name of Aaron Biber, a barber who has been cutting hair in Tottenham, the district where the riots started, for over forty years. His shop, a one-man business, was trashed; his equipment, such as it was, taken, even his kettle. “I will probably have to close because I haven’t got the insurance and can’t afford the repairs”, he said afterwards.

My second is Laura Johnson, a 19-year-old student. She does not live in Tottenham, oh, no; she is the daughter of a millionaire whose gated home, complete with tennis court, is in opulent Orpington. What on earth is the relevance of this spoiled little rich girl to the story of Biber the Barber? Simply this: he is a victim of a riot; she is an alleged rioter. She has been charged with driving away in a car containing stolen televisions, mobile phones, cigarettes and alcohol, all at an estimated value of $8000. Is if fair to ask if daddy was keeping her short in her allowance? Was she a victim of the government’s heartless cuts? Was she outraged by the condition of the hungry proletariat? I’ll leave you to make up your own minds.

It goes on like this, the stories go on like this, stories of little people whose lives and businesses have been blighted by a venal mob, out to take what they could, and what they could not take they destroyed. I mentioned in my previous article an injured man, robbed as he was helped to his feet, an incident filmed and posted on YouTube. I now know that his name is Asyraf Rossli, a 20-year old student from Malaysia, here on a visit. He has now become a symbol for the riot, a living indictment of the sub-human brutes that broke his jaw and took his things.

He is one symbol. Another is Chelsea Ives, an 18-year-old who was seen hurling bricks at the police. She also stands accused of leading an attack on a mobile phone store. This woman, who previously had been selected as an ambassador to promote the London Olympics because of her sporting abilities, later boasted that she had had “the best day ever.” Unfortunately for her she was spotted by her own mother, who, in a mood of disgust, reported the incident to the police. Ives has now been remanded in custody.

Now I’m going to take you further north, out of London to the city of Birmingham, where the disorder spread in Twitter copy-cat fashion. There 21-year-old Haroon Jahan was killed after a suspected looter drove a car directly at him and his two brothers as they attempted to defend shops, mosques and businesses from the contagion. As justifiable anger overtook the Muslim community, his father, Tariq, with incredible nobility of spirit, prevented an even greater evil:

I have no grievance against anyone, especially the guy who ran his car into my son. I don’t feel anger. What he did I leave in the hands of the Lord to punish him the way he wants. I have nothing to do with that. I don’t blame the police; their hands are tied by the Government. I don’t blame the Government; they can’t control the kids. They can’t stop everyone; there are more public that there are police.

I have a grievance alright; I feel anger and sadness on Mister Jahan’s behalf. I also feel anger and sadness at the fate of 68-year-old Richard Mannington Bowes, a pensioner from Ealing in London, who was beaten unconscious by a group of youths after he tried to stop them setting fire to large rubbish bins across the green from his apartment. Police were held back from reaching him by a mob throwing bricks and chunks of paving slabs. Mister Mannington Bowles died after three days on a life support machine.

I took part recently in a discussion thread on Blog Catalogue, a multi-author forum, concerning Another Brick in the Wall, a song by Pink Floyd, an old British rock band. “We don’t need no education”, they sing self-refutingly. The mobs in London, Birmingham and elsewhere do not have no education, I would guess, and do not want no education. But they certainly needed those bricks in the wall, to loot and to maim. There is a sickness in this land, the sickness of people who care for nothing but themselves and their own vile appetites, the sickness of those who would look for political purpose in murder and mayhem, people like Ken Livingstone the former mayor of London, a man whose brains are more addled than most.

Whatever the outcome of these August days, this summer in the city, I sincerely hope there is no repetition of the mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing liberalism that saw previous disorders given a kind of retrospective justification, which saw millions of pounds of public money wasted on wasters. I sincerely hope that you, who may not know this country, are not deceived by attempts at a political whitewash. I hope you understand that hooliganism is no more than hooliganism, theft no more than theft and that violence, for some, simply carries its own vicarious pleasures.

England was shamed last week but I would like to finish on the upbeat. There has been a huge upsurge in support for the police, a community counter-reaction against thuggery. There has been a popular surge in support for Mister Biber, an online campaign called Keep Aaron Cutting set up on his behalf. So far over $45,000 has been pledged. Aaron will keep cutting. London and England will keep cutting too; the world expects no less.

Shopping with Violence

This I a slightly amended version of an article I wrote for Broowaha.

I want to say a word or two about the riots in London, my city, my home. My view is that - as with the Norwegian massacre - it is best to stand back from such events before forming a definite judgement, simply to allow the facts to settle. But judgements are already being formed which have nothing whatsoever to do with facts and everything to do with politics. The suggestion is that these events, which have disgraced my country and its capital in the eyes of the world, are somehow to do with cutbacks. This is no more than a supposition, based not on evidence but wishful thinking.

The opportunity has also been taken to attack the police, that somehow they do not respect the 'right to peaceful protest,' an assertion that again is utterly at variance with the facts. No it's more; it's an outright lie, one that is clearly intended to give a completely wrong impression to people who know little of the Metropolitan Police, who know little of London and little of this country. If anything the police have gone too far in the opposite direction, a softly softly approach that sometimes makes the force look fumbling and weak, an approach that saw them lose control at the weekend

To try to play politics at time like this really is appalling. The present government of David Cameron has been in power for just over a year, inheriting a massive and unsupportable debt from the previous administration. There was no alternative to serious fiscal retrenchment, but the cuts, such as they are, have not yet had an impact. No, people are not starving in the streets while capitalist fat cats sit back complacently smoking Havana cigars. I would simply ask you to see this Marxist fantasy for the risible nonsense it truly is.

Simply put these riots are anarchy for the sake of anarchy, not for politics, disorder as an end in itself. Who are the targets? The bastions of capitalism, perhaps, the banks and the stock exchange? No, ordinary traders, little shopkeepers, who have seen their stores looted and their livelihoods destroyed. Workers of the world unite; you have DVDs and a couple of video games to gain, to say nothing of shoes and sofas.

So what is the truth? Rarely pure and never simple, perhaps? Pure and simple for some, that much is obvious. The reality is we are dealing with a hijack here. What started as a peaceful vigil over the shooting of a man called Mark Duggan (leader of a drug gang, incidentally) in the district of Tottenham was quickly taken over by those who had never heard of him and had no interest at all in making a political point. A great many involved in this Twitter riot (yes, that's the medium) are teenagers. One, a fifteen year old, was caught on camera, saying that it was 'fun.' Commenting on this Richard Evans, who edits an online news forum, said;

Make no mistake, they're not crusaders on some just cause, most of them don't even have a point to make, these are morons acting like morons — nothing more, nothing less. It must actually be insulting to Mark Duggan's family and friends — who have spoken out against the riots — that people are doing this in his name, using his death as an excuse to steal some crappy trainers from a JJB Sports.

Morons, well, that's certainly one way of putting it; I'm not quite sure what other term could be used for those who were filmed helping an injured and bleeding teenager to his feet, only to start rifling through his backpack to take anything of value. Was he a capitalist, a supporter of the cutbacks who just happened to have lost his way, perhaps having mislaid his merc? Well, that's one possible spin, I suppose.

Then there is the woman who was stabbed in a fight over...over what exactly?, over some principle of the revolution? No it was over a looted cut-price sofa. Incidentally, as the mob smashed its way into this furniture store a member of staff (a capitalist lackey) had his jaw broken while paramedics stood in fear of their lives. Elsewhere, in front of a smashed store window, a woman can be seen trying on a pair of shoes. As one report says, this wasn’t a spontaneous uprising of dissent from the downtrodden masses, it was shopping with violence.

Most people not from this country have probably never heard of Tottenham, Hackney and Brixton, the districts at the heart of the disorders, For the benefit of Americans, the closest parallel that comes to mind is Watts in Los Angeles. Yes, these areas of high social deprivation, much of it inherited, ghettos of state dependency. There have been riots here in the past. What was the result; more oppression, more deprivation? No millions and millions of pounds were poured into community reclamation schemes which have clearly reclaimed nothing.

There is racism here, something else an audience beyond England may not be aware of, but it's not as you may suppose. Black mobs were seen attacking white people but that's really only one dimension. The racism is multi-faceted. Think of the movie Crash, set in California, then you may begin to understand something of the complexity. The hostility is one of ethnic fragmentation, rather than skin colour, black Nigerians hating black Jamaicans, both hating people from the Middle East. Anybody who has managed to rise above the common herd, anybody who has made a success, no matter how modest, has turned into a potential target. One Tweet in this Twitter riot reads "F**k the electronics, them Turkish jewellers needed to get robbed." Yes, the needed to get robbed, as lots of others needed to get robbed.

There are no politics other than the political irresponsibility of the left, singing a hymn that bears no relationship to reality. This includes various Labour MPs, whose administration had over thirteen years to be tough on crime and the causes of crime and did absolutely nothing, other than to pour in endless doles. There are notable exceptions, including Diane Abbott, a black Labour MP, a former leadership contender and a leading left-winger, a person with whom I have virtually nothing in common, politically or ideologically. But she has taken the bold step, distancing herself from those who have irresponsibly blamed the illusory cuts, adding to the Twitter conflagration - "Cuts don’t turn you into a thief. What we saw was people thieving for hours...the violence in London was totally opportunistic and utterly unacceptable."

I would only add brutal and ugly. The victims will all turn out to be other members of the community, not bankers and speculators. The victim is also London, a city I both hate and love in equal measure, a city that is in my blood. I try to be measured but I have no respect at all for those who have abused the city, who have traduced and cheapened it in the eyes of the world and, above all, those who are attempting to twist the facts for their own ideological ends. If you think these dreadful events are about injustice, inequality and deprivation I would urge you to think again. It's no more than hooliganism, based on forms of avarice that would shame even the greediest banker.

Introducing Captain Anarchy, the wage slave

Thanks to the Sunday Telegraph I am able to put a name to one of the oiks behind the recent peaceful riot in London. He is Jack Upton, the son of Jonathan Upton, who was head of the Labour Party’s corporate development when Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997.

Upton Junior, apparently know to his many friends and admirers as Captain Anarchy, heads a group calling itself the Brighton Solidarity Federation (thoughts of the Judean People’s Front or the People’s Front of Judea leap to mind), which wants to overthrow the government – naturally – and end ‘wage slavery.’

It just so happens that the Cap’n is a ‘wage slave’ himself, working, or pretending to work, for Brighton Council as an information officer. No, I don’t have any idea what that is either. I may very well write to the Council suggesting that they should do the decent thing and liberate the poor man from his present burdensome condition and, by happy coincidence, reduce the council tax for the good people of Brighton by whatever amount it takes to enslave an information officer. We might have stumbled on a major solution to the country’s financial problems here – end all wage slavery in the public sector. No more information officers, thank you very much.

The dear Captain, a graduate of Essex University, also runs a website for the aforementioned Brighton Solidarity Federation, steers the ship, you might say, a steady hand on the wheel. It was on this site that an article was published, revealing what a lovely time the members had in London, joining with like-minded morons for a spot of anarchist bovver, a photo helpfully provided of a masked man hurling a bottle at the window of a bank. “When we arrived,” the writer proceeds, “we met up with other anarchists who had the same idea.”

It wasn’t the Captain who wrote this article, you understand; of course it wasn’t. No, he’s been busy denying that he was even took part in the ‘peaceful protest’. But, alas, his Twitter feed, which he has been desperately trying to remove, suggests otherwise, suggests that @stormingheaven, the self-styled “Angry commie from Brighton”, was there in spirit, deed and person.

The Telegraph was really quite coy about Captain Anarchy Angry Commie from Brighton’s tweets, but this is not a family newspaper and I operate under no such restrictions. So, hold tight and read the kind of English favoured by Essex alumni. “Ed Milliband. (sic) Doesn’t matter what you say, you are a fucking cunt. Ed Milliband (sic) – this is how it feels to be an irrelevance.”

Having dismissed the irrelevant Mili Minor, the author goes on urge people to join the south London feeder march, with the enticing promise that “his majesty the violent minority rises again.” He, she or it goes on to say that he, she or it feels like going back to its yoof – “but seriously, fuck all police. Vile, disgusting scum.” Captain Anarchy (oh, no it wasn’t him) would know all about vile, disgusting scum, I feel sure.


The poor wage slave has been in such a tizzy. Not only has he –unsuccessfully- been trying to delete his Twitter profile but he has been saying that he has nothing to do with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Brighton, though his many friends, admirers and followers continue to refer to him as “our glorious leader” on their own internet postings.

Apparently the same “glorious leader” is now saying that he has been a “bit out of the loop” recently, loopy, yes, but out of the loop. When asked about the website he said "Yes. I think they use my credit card. I’ve no real involvement with them.” What, the Captain has a credit card which he lends out in his munificence? It makes one wonder just how deep in wage slavery information officers employed by Brighton Council really are.

The Masque of Anarchy

Decent people did well to keep out of central London on Saturday as a ghastly mob exercised their right to ‘peaceful protest’ against the present government’s cuts (cuts; what cuts?). How much more convenient it would have been if they had marched across the English Channel, the waters helpfully parted by God. How much we would have benefited if, half way across, God had allowed the waters to close again, in a moment of ennui or perhaps exercising His own peaceful right to peace.

Just think how much this country would have saved if these tax eaters, dole recipients, holders of worthless public sector jobs (Assistant Deputy Chief Liaison Officer to the Disabled Black Lesbian Caucus); student nurses, ready to learn how to abuse the elderly in lethally dirty National Health Hospitals; teachers who teach nothing in state schools to pupils too stupid to learn anything; recipients of third rate degrees from fourth rate universities, the work-shy ‘workers’, ignorant and worthless people of all sorts, had disappeared for ever. Oh, I can always dream.

No, instead they exercised their right to ‘peaceful protest’ bringing violence and chaos to the streets of our capital, summoned there by the Trade Unions Council; summoned by the likes of Red Len McClusky, a lover of Cuba, Communism and Castro (what; no peaceful right to protest?), so repellent to look at with his thick nose and his heavy features that he would win any ugly man competition nem con.



Once this mob had gathered it was given the support of the Labour Party in the person of Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, a former member of a government, a criminally incompetent government, responsible for the financial morass this country is in at present. Oh, yes, however he may wish to distance himself from the thugs who rampaged along the city streets, sub-human orcs (sorry, I couldn’t resist that!) who relish destruction for the sake of destruction, his very presence was a spur, an indication of the true worth of his loathsome party. This rampage was planned months in advance, as a casual glance at Twitter and Facebook would have shown. Only an idiot would have failed to realise that a riot was in the offing. Oops, sorry, I’ve clearly given Ed a way out.



Only an idiot and the Metropolitan Police, apparently, who in their handling of the mayhem appeared more Keystone than ever, even more than they did in last year’s march against the increase in tuition fees. What the hell is going on? How much more pathetic can London’s police force become, not the ordinary officers, who had light bulbs filled with ammonia thrown at them, but the command, senior officers so anxious to be goody goody that that they invited civil liberties activists to monitor their softly softly approach. How are these idiots going to cope with the forthcoming royal wedding, another anarchist target?

On Saturday they probably took heed of Ugly Red Len’s admonition to keep their hands off “our kids”. I expect they planned a nice party with the anarchists, all sitting down and singing Kumbaya. What a pity it is that heads were not broken instead, what a pity that the ‘accidental’ mayhem was beamed across the world as ‘their kids’ behaved like the apes and troglodytes they are, what an impression others will have of England. How sorry I feel for the poor benighted tourists caught up in the sickening madness.

Does it get any worse? Yes, unfortunately it does. We have a government that pretends to cut public expenditure while increasing it in practice; we have a government that loses control of the nation’s capital while bombarding that of another; we have a government that last week sent six Storm Shadow rockets flying into Libya at a cost of £1million pounds ($1.4million) each. Yes, that’s quite right: £1million each! We have a government unable to read the intelligence properly, a government so besotted with ‘uman rights that it sees virtue in the ‘peaceful right to protest’ even when that ‘peaceful right’ is the prerogative of low class animals, the vermin of the inner city estates, trade unionists and other such creatures. I could suggest a better use for those rockets, another way of reclaiming the expense, just as efficacious as the waters of the Channel.

Last came Anarchy; he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

Ass...ange

We face a rising tide of stupidity and subversion; for the two invariably flow together. The Times reported on Saturday that anarchist groups - the people who dominated and guided the recent student demonstrations in England - are planning further exhibitions, including one against the royal wedding. It must not be assumed for a moment that these people are any more significant than they were in the past, but the Internet, the medium of instant communication, the arena of flash mobs, has given them a power that they had never hitherto possessed: the power of concentration and rapid mobilisation.

So, there they are: an army of weirdoes, geeks and hackers, people who smash a Macdonald’s window at one moment and attempt to sabotage the web sites of banks and credit card companies at the next. These organisations have become targets because the digital anarchists, the Jacobins of the net, do not like their boycott of Wikileaks. Hardly surprising this: delinquents are bound to support one of the most delinquent enterprises spawned by the net. They are bound to support that Julian Assange fellow, that alleged sexual predator, in his monumental irresponsibility. He is just like them; they are just like him.

I suppose there is a counter-position here. This one-sided betrayal of the process of diplomacy, which, of it’s very nature, has to be conducted in confidence, in the frankness induced by confidence, has hugely increased my admiration for the United States of America and the way it caries out its business. The leaks have shown American diplomats to be statesmanlike and controlled, in contrast with the hysteria of some of those with whom they do business. It's such a disappointment to the Guardian-reading crowd.

Wikileaks is a joke, a pathetic anti-American conspiracy which turned out to be, well, pathetic, a purveyor of gossip and international small-talk. Assange is little better than a schoolboy saboteur, an ass with ass’s ears, for those with the wit to see the man in his Bottom-like form. But his anarchist, conspiracy monger and UFO-spotting admirers are blind, unable, or unwilling, to see that his revelations also carry dangers.

I think, on further reflection, that they may very well welcome these dangers, a chance for a spot of practical sabotage. His site has identified targets across the world considered vital to American security. A number of these are in my country, which means that the terrorist threat is all the greater, the threat to innocent people who happen to work in, for example, centres for the manufacture of smallpox vaccines.

I simply do not comprehend those who offer encouragement to this sort of thing, these kinds of leaks, one-sided and deeply undemocratic, by a secretive web organisation accountable to no one but itself, whose own activities are far from transparent, beyond the posturing of Assange, its laughable and self-promoting front man. It’s all part of the conspiracy that we face from the geeks of the world, who only need the internet to rampage behind Bottom.


My Oberon! what visions I have seen!
Methought I was enamoured of an ass.

Freedom, Religion and Anarchy

What follows is my contribution to a debate on freedom, religion and anarchy on a pagan website.

Ana Says

There is a lot in your preamble that I simply refuse to accept, particularly your comments on ‘the rise of fascism’ in the United States. I would urge you to be highly economical in the use of that term. It is often employed as a catch-all for the things one does not happen to like, which only serves to rob the word-and the practice-of all meaning. In this regard you might care to note an example from German history. In 1930 President Hindenburg dismissed the democratically elected government in the Reichstag and replaced it with a minority administration, using the special powers granted to him under the Weimar Constitution. Next day Die Rote Fhane, the newspaper of the Communist Party, appeared with the banner headline-Faschismus ist schon da! (Fascism is now here). Three years later they were to discover just how wrong they had been.

Also, I do not think the point of paganism is to ‘fight Christianity’, as you put it, or to fight anything else, for that matter; the point of paganism is to be free, or at least it is for me. I’m not altogether sure what the ‘principles embodied by the Christian church’ are; for there as so many churches and so many principles! Even if I look at this in simple national terms, I can assure you that the principles embodied in your churches in the United States are quite, quite different from those embodied by the churches in England. Here the Church of England, the official ‘state’ church, is literally dying on its feet, with an Archbishop suggesting in his unique and muddle-headed way that there might even be a place for Sharia Law in English society!

You also suggest that Christianity represents a ‘danger to all non-Christians’. Well, not that I can see. It may be uncomfortable for some people in your particular community self-identifying as pagans and living alongside some of the more repellent evangelists; but that is a highly specific case.

I have to say that I found your dissertation on the ‘organised structures’ both confusing and breathless. Many of the features of contemporary life, the adverse features that you identify, were also present in the past, when the state structure, and the official religion, was pagan. Jihad, incidentally, has nothing at all to do with ‘state structures’ or even an organised church; it is a practice, a dimension, if you will, that emerged from a particular form of militant religious thought. Most contemporary jihadists have neither the support of the state nor organised religion. In this sense one might even describe them as the ‘anarchists’ of the Muslim world.

I would not worry too much about Christian fundamentalists in your country, nor would I suggest that turning towards anarchism is a solution to this particular problem. Do not let them pin you down; do not let them identify you as an enemy and as a social threat. They need this; they need to feel threatened to give energy to their forward momentum. If you raise a flag, saying that the point of paganism is to fight Christianity, is to fight the danger of Christianity, they will swarm towards you like killer bees. Rather, let them break on the rock of your secular constitution. That is your greatest strength and your shield; not anarchy.

Terrorism then and now

What Al-Qaeda is for us, anarchism and anarchists was for people living in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries. You will find contemporary fears reflected in the literature of the day; from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to E. Douglas Fawcett's Hartmann the Anarchist, and George Glendon's The Emperor of the Air. The latter work, published in 1910, actually envisages a terrorist attack on New York from the air, by aircraft loaded with dynamite and piloted by anarchists.

Consider also Emile Zola's Germinal, with the unforgettable and single-minded figure of Souvarine, who can destroy even those he loves in the pursuit of his ideal. It was a time that saw the murder of several heads of state and prominent public figures; a time when bombs were thrown into pavement cafes, at religious processions, or into crowded theatres, as in Barcelona in November 1893.

People were worried, in essence, about the same things they are today: that an unscrupulous and amoral terrorist (or 'freedom fighter' if you prefer; the end result is just the same) would get a hold of ever more destructive weaponry and use it without scruple of conscience.

It was a time also when England, yes, England, was felt by various countries to be a 'refuge for terrorists' because of its lax asylum laws. In 1898 an international conference was held in Rome to try to secure co-operation against the anarchist threat. The recommendations included tougher immigration laws and easier extradition. England attended, but effectively ignored the provisions. It was felt at the time that a more stringent policy in this area would be unpopular with an electorate, suspicious of Continental despotism. How things have changed!