AUGUST’S RIOTS should ring alarm bells for the organised working class. Everything that comes from employment, skill and collectivity – dignity, pride, confidence – stands in opposition to the looting and robbery that swept across some parts of England in August.
Capitalism has created an industrial wasteland, and has cultivated moral wastelands as well. Some members of our class have embraced with gusto the capitalist morality of wrecking and grab what you can. Looters waltzing into JD Sports are an imitation – even if a pale and ghastly one – of the unrestrained ransacking of Britain under this government, and those before it. Looters and arsonists destroyed the places where workers live and work, pathetically copying the destruction being wrought by the economic depression.
MPs have looted the public purse. Bankers have filched our national wealth. Newspapers have bought police officers. Ministers move seamlessly from public service to corporate boardrooms. Profiteers steal the assets created by our work. Why work for a living when you can steal one?
And after the riots, the crackdown. Draconian sentencing: six months for stealing two bottles of mineral water. By that yardstick, MPs stealing £30,000 should have been banged up for thousands of years. And the capitalist class is handed the excuse to sharpen the tools of oppression which it will use against political opposition, with talk of water cannon and plastic bullets (used in Ireland) and bringing in the army for civil control.
Most unemployed people don’t loot and burn, and don’t ape the worst practices of the ruling class. The people of Britain have not lost their sense of morality. But the effects of unemployment reach far and wide. The overwhelming majority of those prosecuted in the riots are under 24 and unemployed: of around 1,000 cases analysed by THE GUARDIAN, only 8.6 per cent of defendants had jobs or were students. Only a fool – or a politician – would say there is no connection.
The organised working class must confront the abandonment of youth in practical ways and the young must take responsibility too for their futures. Those in work must demand jobs for our young people – and that means forcing their own employers to take young people on, to provide work, training and apprenticeships. Communities must demand facilities for their young people.
Don’t expect the government to do anything: only we can find the solutions. It’s time – in truth, long past time – for workers to take responsibility and impose a working class morality on Britain. ■