'A Multitude is a plurality of conscious and sensitive beings sharing no common intentionality, and showing no common pattern of behaviour. The crowd shuffling in the city moves in countless different directions with countless different motivations.' - the Uprising - Franco Beradi
I think it was on 7th or 8th of August 2011 that I was taking part in a pub quiz in Clapham, at a pub called the Lamb, and I was a tad squiffy. We were doing quite well, definitely in the top 3, we would maybe have won a bottle of wine or at least some money behind the bar, which makes what happened next even more galling. At a certain point in the evening, just over half way, there was a sudden and unexpected lull in the atmosphere and everyone somehow spontaneously got up to leave. My companions and I looked around with confusion and didn’t really know what was going on, that was until a mysterious stranger, with straggly hair and wild eyes, put his ruddy hands on our table leaned in and whispered: ‘the riots coming’, before disappearing in an instant. That may not be 100% accurate but that’s how it appears in my memory.
I think it was on 7th or 8th of August 2011 that I was taking part in a pub quiz in Clapham, at a pub called the Lamb, and I was a tad squiffy. We were doing quite well, definitely in the top 3, we would maybe have won a bottle of wine or at least some money behind the bar, which makes what happened next even more galling. At a certain point in the evening, just over half way, there was a sudden and unexpected lull in the atmosphere and everyone somehow spontaneously got up to leave. My companions and I looked around with confusion and didn’t really know what was going on, that was until a mysterious stranger, with straggly hair and wild eyes, put his ruddy hands on our table leaned in and whispered: ‘the riots coming’, before disappearing in an instant. That may not be 100% accurate but that’s how it appears in my memory.
We got up, rather lazily I thought, but then again it was a
hot day, dare I say perfect weather for a riot, and went outside, we stood for
a while waiting for this beast with many parts to come over the horizon, but when
it didn’t we said goodbye and headed in our relevant directions.
***
It’s been 1,029,600 minutes, or nearly 2 years, since the
riots of 2011 in London and suddenly the writing comes, like a brick through a
shop window (apologies, due to that plastic resin they use, it may take a few hefty
projectiles). Living in London I had a somewhat split perception of the events,
both immanent and mediated – both in the flesh and through the media. The
following is my experience of the ‘event’.
Ultimately, it wasn’t so much of a riot rather than an
unauthorised consumer binge; the donkey bucking off its rider and finally
munching the carrot, with as much intelligence and self consciousness as an ass
would have. Was it born from a revolutionary muster, the people lashing back at
their oppressors and sending them a message? The dissatisfaction with mediocre
government, greedy bankers and mechanistic corporations, all lacking in emotion
and spirit, spilling over into action? The actuality is no, well kind of, but I so
wanted it to be more. Maybe so did everyone else. It seems to me that the press
and media did its job in terms of conjuring a condemnation and general fear of
the ‘terrible things’ that were happening, killing all the complexity and nuance,
sounding out Professor Pavlov’s bell. My experience was very different and
somewhat unaccounted for.
Ok, so I have studied many a revolutionary book and film
relating to the French Revolution and May 68, so I was expecting principles and
some kind of artistic spontaneous expression relating to a future freedom. I
realise this may be a tad romantic and idealistic, but good, because that’s
where I live. There was definitely spontaneity, expression and anger
but there was also passion, humour and camaraderie and when it all kicked off and kept
growing there was that fear that anything could happen, what if this was
actually it, the end we have been imagining and playing out for years? Sadly the only organising principle of the
rioters seemed to be transient personal gain and there is nothing rousing or
revolutionary about that, in fact it is quite the opposite.
For me, as well as other Londoners out on the
streets, it was a thrill, the crack in a normal white line on a white page of
existence. Things were out of their place, people were taking things and
destroying things that used to be behind shiny surfaces; the surfaces were
shattered, the boredom was shattered; it was exciting, an event for everyone;
something happening in our own back garden. It had an eerie effect, things were
misplaced; the mannequins were on the wrong side of the window, among us.
The images and news articles from the media (the
unshatterable shiny surface) seemed to be coming from a different dimension to
my empirical reality. It was an uncanny place to be, between the ‘real’ of the
streets and the symbolic of the representation, it was presented like any other
news story as if it was happening 500 miles away in some other place. I presume
this is so that we could reassure ourselves that we are safe and morally
superior, and maybe providing this detachment is the collective function of the media. The images
kept it at a distance, but I looked out my window and it was there – I was
caught in the middle and it made me re-evaluate how I thought about those news
stories that actually were in places 500 miles away, what was I not seeing?
My only reference point for a riot was what I had seen on the news; I wasn’t sure which way around to work things. It was all so familiar on the TV: there were on the spot reports, replays of particularly lurid violence, we heard nothing from the rioters (just as we never hear from the Taliban etc). There were journalists that did interview some of the rioters after the fact, who were hooded and full of bravado, but this wasn’t on their own terms and produced mainly the same old crap fitted into the same old box; they fulfilled the expectations of the roles they were given – or edited as such.
Maybe there wasn’t a reason for the ‘violence’; it will go down as the great Dada revolution, no principles, no rules just expression – and a new pair of trainers.
My only reference point for a riot was what I had seen on the news; I wasn’t sure which way around to work things. It was all so familiar on the TV: there were on the spot reports, replays of particularly lurid violence, we heard nothing from the rioters (just as we never hear from the Taliban etc). There were journalists that did interview some of the rioters after the fact, who were hooded and full of bravado, but this wasn’t on their own terms and produced mainly the same old crap fitted into the same old box; they fulfilled the expectations of the roles they were given – or edited as such.
Maybe there wasn’t a reason for the ‘violence’; it will go down as the great Dada revolution, no principles, no rules just expression – and a new pair of trainers.
***
As I walked to Clapham Junction...
TBC
TBC
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