From Metropolitan to Megalopolitan Riots

COMMENTARY

metropolis till the arrival of the “dirty” south Asian and “violent” Afro-Caribbean immigrants, who are held responsible for the riots that are ruining the city’s hygiene and social fabric! But, historically London had never been peaceful. Like many other metropolises that grew up during industrialisation (whether Paris and New York in the west, or Shanghai and Calcutta in the east), London has had an old history of propensity towards mob violence in the streets – long before its East End and northern peripheries came to be occupied by non-white immigrants. The well-known Gordon riots of 1780 (which spilled over from an initial anti-Catholic campaign into a mass upsurge against corrupt ruling politicians, attacks on troops, and breaking down of prisons – to end up as usual with its brutal suppression) seemed to provide the model for future street violence in London. Throughout the 19th century, protests by the English working class and pro-Fenian Irish radicals erupted into rioting – directed mainly against the symbols of state power, the police and the propertied classes – in places like Trafalgar Square and Clerkenwell Green (where now stands the Marx Memorial Library).

The latter half of the 20th century, however, saw a shifting of the focus of rioting from issues like class conflicts and anticolonial protests to racist confrontations between the white establishment and the non-white immigrants. Among the race riots during this period, the worst were those in Notting Hill in 1958 and Brixton in 1981 – both provoked by harassment of black men by gangs of white youths and persecution by a racist police force. Summing up the pathology of the London mob throughout the ages, a modern British historian of the metropolis, Peter Ackroyd detects a “prevalent instinct towards riot which has never been suppressed”, and draws our attention to “its irritability and sudden changes of mood, so that when a spark was struck in its depths it flared up very quickly” (Ackroyd 2001).

The second myth is about the London Bobby. While rebuking the metropolitan police for treating the looters and vandals with kid gloves in the recent riots, most commentators have attributed their failure to the traditionally soft nature of their training – “paternal and protective, not sadistic and authoritarian” (Caldwell 2011). Echoing similar sentiments, an Indian ex-CBI director bemoans the “halcyon days when an unarmed Bobby could hold his own against the largest of mobs”, and advises the British police to be proactive by adopting a new strategy of aggressive policing (Raghavan 2011). Despite this statesponsored friendly image of the London police that wins over the hearts of liberals, the Bobby (the term associated with Robert Peel who in 1829 established the Metropolitan Police, known as the Met) acquired the reputation of an oppressive cop among the city’s white underprivileged poor in the past, and is today hated as a racist “pig” (the derisive term used for him by his victims) by the immigrants from Asia, Africa and the West Indies. To start with, the Bobby, even when officially unarmed, often indulges in physical violence when raiding homes of the blacks. For instance, one of the worst riots (marked by looting of shops, burning of cars and the lynching of a policeman) that took place in October 1985, was provoked by the death of a woman during a police raid in the predominantly black Broadwater Farm Estate in north London. In fact, the latest riots – again in north London – were triggered by the shooting of an Afro-Caribbean youth by a Bobby (not “unarmed” as imagined by many outsiders). The Metropolitan police’s policy of “stop and search” to tackle gun crime has been used in a vicious manner particularly against the black youth.

Street Gangs

As in many other metropolitan cities of the modern world, criminal gangs (like the mafia in New York or dons in Mumbai) have always been a part of London’s street life. This time also they played an important role in the riots there. As in the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots, when many of the rioters wore masks or scarves to hide their faces, in the latest riots the youngsters put on hoods to escape identification. But the composition and objectives of the gangs have changed over the years in sync with the megalopolitan transformation of the city. Till the 1960s, the gangs were primarily white with names like “Elephant Gang” or “Titanic Gang”, which carved out certain areas of east London and southern suburbs into their respective

territories, where they monopolised underworld dealings in drugs, prostitution and protection rackets extorting money from shopkeepers. The East End, for instance, was ruled by the “Kray brothers” – a gang that shot into prominence in the 1950s, recalling the gangsters of Chicago of the 1930s. Led by the twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray, the gang in the tradition of the Robin Hood legend, managed to command both fear and admiration from the residents. When Reggie, the last of the family, died on 12 October 2000, thousands lined the streets of East End to witness his funeral procession – some applauding from a sense of relief from his threats, but others weeping at the loss of a patron who protected them from police harassment and prevented social crimes like child abuse and rape. It is this peculiar combination of fear and protection that had enabled gangs to survive in the backwater of our modern metropolises, the winding streets and lanes of London and New York, Mumbai and Kolkata, where the state had made its presence felt only by the hated and oppressive beat constables, and the destitute had sought protection from them by approaching the local gang leaders (like Reggie Kray in London or Haji Mastan in Mumbai).

The megalopolitan turn that London took during the closing decades of the last century dramatically altered the composition and priorities of the street gangs. Ethnic bands like the Jamaican “Yardie” and Chinese “Triad” appeared on the scene, challenging the hitherto dominating white gangs. They represented partly the black immigrants’ self-assertion against years of racist attacks by the white gangs, and partly the self-interested motivations among the immigrants to make use of any new opportunity. In the case of the ethnic gangs, it was the lucrative trade in heroin, crack and similar drugs.

The last decades of the 20th century in UK were also marked by a noticeable fissure among the immigrants – primarily bet ween the south Asians and the Afro-Caribbeans. The former, both Indians and Pakistanis, besides remaining engaged in traditional occupations like running groceries, and in professional roles as lawyers or teachers, ventured into business and industries. They threw up business

vol xlvi no 39

EPW

COMMENTARY

magnates (like Swaraj Paul from India) who found their way into the decisionmaking political system. Their prosperity stood out in sharp contrast with the degrading plight of the African and west Indian immigrants. The latter’s sense of degradation and deprivation was further accentuated by the south Asian immigrants’ flaunting of wealth and colourbased racist prejudice against them. I remember the expression used by an Indian grocery store owner in London some years ago “We’re brown, they’re black !”

It is this divisiveness among the immigrants that has added a new dimension to the recent London riots. The street gangs

‘The Fire Next Time’

As Indian metropolises are fast morphing into megalopolises, the old joke about rains in London causing sneezes in India is the most appropriate metaphor to be used for the changing scenario in the Indian urban backwater in the present era of globalisation. Historically, the pattern of riots in urban India had followed almost the same socio-economic trajectory as in London – transmuting from anti-police outbursts and

Economic & Political Weekly