What does it all mean?

'Today' programme presenter John Humphrys sounded shocked this morning when French journalist Agnes Poirer, who was asked to explain where she thought the riots had come from said,
'London is the epitome of inequality in the western world ... Profit, speculation and consumption are Britain's holy trinity.'

Ravi Somaiya, reporting for the New York Times saw front page interest in USA newspapers about the riots as based on the fact that there is 'similar inequality' there.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson, London's Mayor, fulminates about the need for 'more robust' policing and more robust family discipline. (Robust has become the word to be used for authorised violence.) The city he presides over provides few jobs for the young, little income above the minimum wage, longer and longer hours of work if you can get it. It is a cruel city which smashes up the economic security that holds up ordinary families and which provides a playground for the super rich that the rest of us can gawp at.

The 2005 riots in France (see below) shocked some on France's left with their wide scale of looting and the burning of cars. The left ached for the rejected poor to absorb (through the air - or the water?) the political focus that they cherished but which was so sadly absent among the Nike-hungry youth.

More broadly, politicians of all hues do not take responsibility for the effects of the society they are building. Like the the rich they denounce feckless families. This class already describe various poor countries as 'basket cases.' Patrician Douglas Hurd made that particular phrase popular. Now a part of our own society is to get similar designation. Who is to blame for the riots? Why, the very benighted families that our way of life is busily destroying!

There is a lot to be learned and re-learned. Do we really believe that tens of thousands of youth are in thrall and acting at the behest of Fagin like gangs? The Chartists did not accept, when masked marauders burnt barns and machinery, that they were beyond the pale. The ANC (of a different era) organised in the wildest townships. At those times, in those stages, those movements took responsibility for the poorest and the most oppressed parts of the movement, as well as the cause they fought for, also for the whole class that they were trying to build and represent. This society has rejected a large part of the youth? Then our class will have to try to find them a home - before somebody else does - in a camp or marching to a fascist drum.

So let's build the political focus now on (growing) inequality. So far Student Fees, the NHS and Pensions have dominated our public discussion and action. The TUC called a brilliant demonstration in March which brought them together. If there had been a festival of resistance this summer then thousands of young people might have made some positive connections between the anger they have about their lives and what to do about it.

We need a new TUC recall national demonstration aimed at young people asap. We need a guaranteed festival next summer.