Police car set alight by working class youth in rebellion against the capitalist economic crisis in Britain. The government has ordered 16,000 cops on to the streets in London to put down the unrest., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
11 August 2011
Last updated at 10:01 ET
David Cameron: 'The tactics the police were using weren't working'
The police admitted they got their riot tactics wrong, the prime minister has said, as he announced measures to help homeowners and businesses.
David Cameron told MPs the riots in cities across England were "criminality pure and simple", but there were "far too few police" on the streets.
He announced a crackdown on facemasks and a review of curfews during an emergency recall of Parliament.
More than 1,500 arrests have been made since the unrest began on Saturday.
The prime minister earlier chaired a meeting of the government's emergency committee Cobra to discuss the violence with cabinet ministers.
A 17-year-old aspiring dancer who handed herself in after seeing her picture in a newspaper was among the defendants at a busy, yet efficient, Westminster Magistrates' Court.
An estate agent and students studying accountancy, journalism and engineering faced the district judge on charges arising from the riots.
The fate of an 18-year-old man who bought sports clothes which had been stolen from JD Sports in Clapham illustrated how seriously these offenders were being treated.
Ordinarily punished by a fine or community service, he was remanded in custody to face the heavier prison sentences of the crown court.
"Given the seriousness of the circumstances" was the repeated refrain of the district judge as she refused bail and sent each defendant to the crown court.
She said her power, to send people to jail for six months, was not enough.
Mr Cameron told MPs that it had become clear there had been problems in the initial police response to the disorder.
Former Cabinet minister Sir Malcolm Rifkind also raised concerns that officers were instructed to "stand and observe looting".
Mr Cameron told MPs: "There were simply far too few police deployed on to our streets and the tactics they were using weren't working.
"Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened.
"Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue - rather than essentially one of crime.
"The truth is that the police have been facing a new and unique challenge with different people doing the same thing - basically looting - in different places all at the same time."
The prime minister promised he would do "whatever it takes" to restore order to the streets as he set out a range of measures aimed at helping businesses and homeowners affected by the riots.
They included:
--To look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social media when "we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality"
--Plans to look at whether wider powers of curfew and dispersal orders were needed
--New powers for police to order people to remove facemasks where criminality is suspected
--Courts could be given tougher sentencing powers
--Landlords could be given more power to evict criminals from social housing
--Plans to extend the system of gang injunctions across the country and build on anti-gang programmes, similar to those in the US
--He said the government would meet the cost of "legitimate" compensation claims and the time limit for applying would increase from 14 to 42 days
--A £10m Recovery Scheme to provide additional support to councils in making areas "safe, clean and clear"
--A new £20m high street support scheme to help affected businesses get back up and running quickly
--Plans for the government to meet the immediate costs of emergency accommodation for families made homeless
He said: "This is a time for our country to pull together.
"To the law abiding people who play by the rules, and who are the overwhelming majority in our country, I say: the fightback has begun, we will protect you, if you've had your livelihood and property damaged, we will compensate you. We are on your side.
"And to the lawless minority, the criminals who have taken what they can get, I say this: We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done."
Mr Cameron ruled out bringing in the Army, but added: "It is my responsibility to make sure that every contingency is looked at - including whether there are tasks that the Army could undertake that would free up more police for the front line."
He said a reinforced police presence of 16,000 officers on the streets of London would remain in place over the weekend.
Police cuts
On Wednesday a deputation of Labour MPs from London went to the Home Office to demand a "moratorium" on plans to reduce numbers in the Metropolitan Police.
And in the Commons, Labour leader Ed Miliband repeated their calls to reconsider police cuts in the wake of the riots.
He said: "The events of the last few days have been a stark reminder to us all that police on our streets make our communities safer and make the public feel safer.
"Given the absolute priority the public attaches to a visible and active police presence, does the prime minister understand why they would think it is not right that he goes ahead with the cuts to police numbers?
"Will he now think again on this issue?"
Mr Cameron insisted the cuts were "totally achievable" without any reduction in the visible policing presence on the streets.
"At the end of this process of making sure our police budgets are affordable, we will still be able to surge as many police on to the streets as we have in recent days in London, in Wolverhampton, in Manchester," he said.
"I think it's important people understand that."
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Lib Dem sources had told him there is "absolute coalition unity" on reducing police budgets and the cuts will not be reversed.
Meanwhile, Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has told the BBC its members have voted unanimously to hold an inquiry into the causes of the riots.
It will also look at the role of social networking, the police response and police resources.
Today marks the second time in less than a month that MPs have been recalled for an emergency session - the first was for the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World newspaper.
In other developments:
--More than 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive
--Up to 250 officers were sent from Scotland to help police in the Midlands and North of England deal with rioting and disorder
--Police in London say they have more than 100 arrest warrants to work through "in the coming hours and days"
--The government launches a website with advice to the public on how to cope with the unrest
--Saturday's Premier League match between Tottenham and Everton at White Hart Lane has been postponed
Meanwhile, the Met Police have made a total of 922 arrests and charged 401 people in connection with violence, disorder and looting in the capital since Saturday night.
More than 330 people have been arrested in the West Midlands and a further 140 people have been arrested so far over the trouble in Manchester and Salford.
Courts sat through the night in London, Manchester and Solihull in the West Midlands to deal with people arrested during the four nights of disturbances, with those appearing in court mainly facing disorder and burglary charges.
Mr Cameron said anyone convicted of violent disorder would be sent to prison.
But Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh said some officers who had been on the streets had voiced disappointment at the sentences handed out so far.
Mr Kavanagh added that there had since been "constructive conversations" between the home secretary, the Met commissioner and the courts.
London Mayor Boris Johnson praised the police, and insisted the authorities were not "complacent" despite the violence subsiding.
Met Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin paid tribute to his "brave" officers after the meeting, saying they had "faced unprecedented violence and damage and criminality and looting" and that "any suggestion the officers stood back is wrong".
A candle-lit vigil has been held for Haroon Jahan, 21, Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, who died when they were hit by a car in Birmingham on Tuesday night.
Police have been given more time to question a 32-year-old man on suspicion of murder.
Mr Cameron said the deaths were "truly dreadful" and offered his condolences to the men's families.
The riots first flared on Saturday after a peaceful protest in Tottenham over the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, 29, by police.
Mr Cameron told MPs his death was being investigated "thoroughly and independently" by the police watchdog.
British riots show poverty of ‘greed is good’ philosophy
By Nick Young
Thursday, August 11 2011
It has never felt worse to be British. First a financial crisis caused by the failure of governments to govern a finance industry previously hailed as an economic powerhouse.
Then draconian public spending cuts that threaten to create recession. And now the worst riots in living memory, which seem to have less to do with politics than with opportunistic, loosely networked lawlessness and looting. “We’ve shown we can do what we want!” two young women rioters told the BBC.
They described smashing into shops to obtain “free alcohol” as “a laugh” and said they would definitely be at it again the next night.
The rioters are mainly young, some of them children. The British media are therefore wheeling out youth workers to explain what’s going on in young heads. But this can’t be treated as just a “youth” issue.
The youth of any society are its most real “output.” If we Brits don’t like our youth, or sections of them, it is a reflection on us and the way we made them.
Many young Britons today have legitimate grievances, but so do other Europeans and they do not behave this way. The Spanish economy is in worse straits than the UK’s, with unemployment among Spanish youth now near 40 per cent.
Some of them have taken to the streets in an informal movement of “indignados” (indignant people). But Spain’s is, so far, a peaceful movement and, although it has no clear agenda, it is a political movement : one that wants policy change, even if it doesn’t know what policy is right. British rioters, it seems, just want a good night out.
What kind of a society could produce something like this? It is a society steeped, on the one hand, in the moral cynicism of economic neoliberalism--that greed is good, a necessary component of economic vitality; that only the individual matters—and on the other in the sharp inequalities that these doctrines have generated.
It is a society where even the poorest have been enticed to consume beyond their means, endlessly assailed with advertising and offers of credit for goods they cannot afford, leading many into insuperable debt.
It is a society where human oversight of public space has been replaced by the world’s most comprehensive system of closed circuit TV surveillance, creating a Big Brother atmosphere which the rioters are not alone in resenting.
It is at the same time an increasingly informal and demotic society which celebrates the ordinary and encourages everyone to express their opinions, however unformed and banal.
And it is a society networked with new communications technologies that have been praised for putting everyone in touch—but which here, as in the case of terrorism, again show their ability to join up some dangerous dots.
Some of the underlying factors in this potent cocktail reflect global trends and deserve global attention. The specific and puzzling mix of empowerment plus disempowerment is, however, peculiarly English—not even, properly speaking, British, since the riots have not reached Wales and Scotland, whose electorate have consistently rejected neoliberal politics over the last 30 years.
So England has some real thinking and heart-searching to do. The right will react by saying this is all the result of too much liberality, that we need more discipline, more law and order, less immigration, less multiculturalism. The left will lament the social exclusion of youngsters in a neglected underclass and call for greater efforts to create civic and economic opportunities for them.
What’s needed, and unlikely to be forthcoming, is a deeper conversation that admits rights and wrongs in both perspectives. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. If I had to name one person who is benefitting from this, I would nominate Yoweri Museveni. For he will doubtless soon be citing the UK riots as post hoc justification for his suppression of civic protest in Uganda.
Mr Young is a British writer based in Kampala
He blogs at www.nickyoungwrites.com
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