Riots

Like many people I suspect I've been watching the riots in London (and now in Birmingham and Bristol) with a lot of mixed feelings. The seemingly organised scale of the looting suggests this isn't just disaffected young people. But then again maybe disaffection is part of the cause. Time (and no doubt a costly public enquiry) will tell.

That said it is ironic that Nick Clegg a couple of weeks before the 2010 election predicted that a Tory government could bring rioting to our streets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItK1izQIwo&feature=player_embedded

And who knows once the cuts really start to bite then there could be more unrest. But for now, my gut feel (for what it is worth) is that this is just criminals jumping on a band wagon.

As a police chaplain I naturally think of he officers caught up in all of this. The adrenalin rush is what some of them live for it has to be said. But after that will come the after effects. The coping with physical injuries and the mental traumas. So my thoughts and prayers are with them.

I've been thinking back to the 1981 riots and to the Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham in 1985 (that saw PC Keith Blakelock murdered.)

This morning I recalled a Saturday afternoon in Newport in mid July 1981. Riots had been happening elsewhere in the country and even in Newport there was almost a sense of expectation that a riot might happen. People were talking about how Newport had been the centre of the Chartist Riots in 1839 and maybe now was the time for another riot.

The brass bad I was part of (Crosskeys Band) were playing in John Frost Square in the town centre. We'd been there from 9am and were playing through to 6pm as a sponsored fund raising exercise. Mid afternoon a gang of punks and skinheads started to hover round. We started to get twitchy. The youth band were playing at the time and parents of some of the younger kids (aged 10 or so) were looking worried. We started to play music from Bizet's L'Arlésienne suite. And suddenly the mood lifted.

Suddenly the punks and skinheads were dancing. To music from a 19th century French composer! Why?

L'Arlésienne suite contains a piece of music that ironically was in the charts at that time. The music used for the Can Can. And Bad Manners had a hit with a ska version at that time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoKcaanbh5E

We must have played it 4 or 5 times.

There weren't any riots in Newport. I don't think that was anything to do with Crosskeys Band. But I really remember how tense it felt and how the tension lifted due to Can Can.

In 1985 I was living in London. In Muswell Hill North London. About 5 or 6 miles from Tottenham. So other than rading about the riots in the Evenin Standard and seeing it on the news I knew nothing about them. But I remember one afternoon as I was walking along Muswell Hill Broadway, opposite the police station, everything went quiet. And next thing I knew the hearse carrying PC Blakelock's body was driven slowly past. Very moving.

I'm no lover of this government. And there is plenty to protest about. Unfair tax regime, cuts, student fees, NHS in danger, youth unemployment. Protest but not like this.