Browse content similar to 12/08/2011. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Tonight - after a week of rioting, how big is the damage to England's | :00:09. | :00:14. | |
social fabric? Will we look back on the summer of 2011 as deeply | :00:14. | :00:17. | |
significant, or a fleeting few days of madness? Gavin Esler has | :00:17. | :00:25. | |
surveyed the damage to the nation. We live in a very different country | :00:25. | :00:29. | |
from the one we thought we had one week ago. The institutions we took | :00:29. | :00:34. | |
for granted reasserted themselves in the end, but it also proved we | :00:34. | :00:38. | |
cannot always rely on them. With us at the end of an | :00:38. | :00:40. | |
extraordinary week, the historian David Starkey, author Owen Jones | :00:40. | :00:43. | |
and crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell. And as images of burning cities are | :00:43. | :00:46. | |
beamed around the world, foreign dictators are making mileage out of | :00:46. | :00:51. | |
our misfortune. What does the rest of the world make of us now? David | :00:51. | :01:01. | |
:01:01. | :01:03. | ||
Tang, Tyler Brule and Nabila Good evening. The streets are calm, | :01:03. | :01:06. | |
the rioters now diminished to a subdued and steady train through | :01:06. | :01:12. | |
the courts - public order, then, nominally restored. But the | :01:12. | :01:14. | |
reminders of an anarchic week are everywhere - burnt-out buildings, | :01:15. | :01:18. | |
broken windows, and yes, a highly visible police presence. Those | :01:19. | :01:21. | |
numbers will inevitably diminish as we try return to some kind of | :01:22. | :01:25. | |
normality. But tonight we ask if things have fundamentally shifted, | :01:25. | :01:28. | |
and whether the week of rioting has shown us something of our country | :01:29. | :01:33. | |
we didn't know before. Today, as the unseemly tussle continues over | :01:33. | :01:36. | |
who should take credit for bringing England back from the brink, our | :01:36. | :01:39. | |
political correspondent David Grossman has been speaking to all | :01:39. | :01:46. | |
sides. What has been the fauna of first of all from those comments | :01:46. | :01:56. | |
:01:56. | :01:56. | ||
made last night on this programme by Sir Hugh Orde? Yes, we have had | :01:57. | :01:59. | |
this bust-up between the politicians and the police over who | :01:59. | :02:03. | |
should take credit. There is a lot of annoyance from senior police | :02:03. | :02:06. | |
officers about the suggestion that it took the politicians coming back | :02:06. | :02:11. | |
from their holidays to bang heads together to get things sorted out. | :02:11. | :02:17. | |
Last night we did an interview with Sir Hugh Orde, where he said it was | :02:17. | :02:20. | |
ridiculous that the Home Secretary does not have the power to order | :02:20. | :02:26. | |
the police a cup of coffee. Today, the Home Secretary has been much | :02:26. | :02:32. | |
more appreciative of the role taken by the police. The Home Secretary | :02:32. | :02:37. | |
has no power whatsoever to order the cancellation of police leave. | :02:37. | :02:41. | |
The fact that politicians chose to come back is an irrelevance in | :02:41. | :02:45. | |
terms of the tactics which were already developing. I accept that | :02:45. | :02:48. | |
the people who got the riots under control were the brave policemen | :02:48. | :02:54. | |
and women who were out there on the front line, dealing with the riots. | :02:54. | :03:02. | |
What about the Prime Minister himself? There is some puzzlement | :03:02. | :03:05. | |
at Downing Street about these claims. He does not claim that he | :03:05. | :03:09. | |
came back to rescue the country. And going through what he said in | :03:09. | :03:13. | |
the Commons yesterday, he certainly did not claim that. The nearest you | :03:13. | :03:18. | |
could get was him saying that he had chaired a meeting. But we have | :03:18. | :03:22. | |
to cast our mind back to where we were a couple of nights ago, and | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
what the country did not need was a lesson about chains of command and | :03:26. | :03:30. | |
who has responsibility for the police and the judiciary. What we | :03:30. | :03:33. | |
needed to know was that people were taking tough decisions, and the | :03:33. | :03:38. | |
country had leadership. That is what they're emphasising tonight. | :03:38. | :03:45. | |
What about the public, who are they giving credit to? It is interesting, | :03:45. | :03:50. | |
we're getting the first polls in now. One poll tonight by ITN, 30% | :03:50. | :03:57. | |
said Cameron had done a good job, 45% said the acting head of the Met | :03:57. | :04:02. | |
Police, Tim Godwin, had done a good job. This is another poll, and this | :04:02. | :04:09. | |
is interesting. It is about cuts to police numbers - should the cuts to | :04:09. | :04:15. | |
police be reversed? 71% agreed that those cuts should be reversed. The | :04:15. | :04:21. | |
Government says they will not be. And then, on the question of | :04:22. | :04:26. | |
sentencing, we have seen some very robust sentences for some of the | :04:26. | :04:36. | |
:04:36. | :04:37. | ||
early offenders in the magistrates' courts. This was the question of | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
the automatic jail sentence no matter how small the involvement. | :04:41. | :04:46. | |
78% agreed. I understand that going forward, there will not be a | :04:46. | :04:50. | |
meeting of COBRA tomorrow morning. The meeting this morning was, I'm | :04:50. | :04:58. | |
told, just to reporting exercise, There can never be a good time to | :04:58. | :05:01. | |
have riots, but these ones have come at a particularly inauspicious | :05:01. | :05:03. | |
moment in our history, against a backdrop of austerity and severe | :05:03. | :05:07. | |
economic straits. Some have argued there's a strong link between the | :05:07. | :05:10. | |
two - others say that's facile. Whichever side of that particular | :05:10. | :05:13. | |
divide you're on, the two things running in parallel have provoked | :05:13. | :05:16. | |
the question of how much trouble our society really is in. Gavin | :05:16. | :05:19. | |
Esler has been assessing what happened this week, and whether it | :05:19. | :05:22. | |
gives any clues as to where Britain is heading. His piece contains some | :05:22. | :05:32. | |
:05:32. | :05:37. | ||
It was something we hoped we would never see again - cities on fire. | :05:37. | :05:42. | |
Residents fleeing their homes. got outside and saw the building, | :05:42. | :05:48. | |
the flames going up the building. Businesses destroyed, pitched | :05:48. | :05:53. | |
battles in the heart of English cities. Who would do such a thing, | :05:53. | :05:56. | |
terrorising their own neighbours, stealing, looting, destroying | :05:56. | :06:03. | |
anything they came across? The riots of 2011 came in a week which | :06:03. | :06:06. | |
changed our country and made us ask some terrible questions about who | :06:06. | :06:10. | |
we are and what we have become. Who were these people who were | :06:10. | :06:14. | |
destroying our cities? What should we do with them? If we saw some of | :06:14. | :06:19. | |
the worst, we also saw some of the best - community spirit and | :06:19. | :06:23. | |
extraordinary tolerance for people -- from people who have lost so | :06:23. | :06:27. | |
much. It was a week to be ashamed and occasionally, just a little | :06:27. | :06:31. | |
proud. It started in Tottenham a week ago, one of the most deprived | :06:31. | :06:37. | |
London boroughs. Police marksmen killed a man they were trying to | :06:37. | :06:42. | |
arrest, Mark Duggan, in disputed circumstances. In the aftermath, a | :06:42. | :06:47. | |
peaceful protest turned ugly. Patrol cars, a shop and a bus was | :06:47. | :06:54. | |
set ablaze by masked gunmen. The following morning, we slowly woke | :06:54. | :06:58. | |
up to what had been done to one of our communities by some of its | :06:59. | :07:04. | |
citizens. The victims were neighbours, small businesses, local | :07:04. | :07:10. | |
residents - us. Tottenham's aim be toured the community and expressed | :07:10. | :07:17. | |
the outrage of many of the rioters. We now need restraint and calm. I | :07:17. | :07:21. | |
say to those who wanted to come to Tottenham to cause violence and | :07:21. | :07:27. | |
disturbance to stay away. But other people were also listening - those | :07:27. | :07:32. | |
who saw the riot not as an outrage that as an opportunity. London is | :07:32. | :07:36. | |
hit by a second night of rioting. Looting and vandalism spread to | :07:36. | :07:42. | |
other areas of the capital... violence was to spread like a | :07:42. | :07:49. | |
madness which proved contagious. Eventually it spread to Birmingham, | :07:49. | :07:55. | |
Manchester, Nottingham and other English cities. When we woke up to | :07:55. | :07:58. | |
more damage, the same questions were repeated from the previous | :07:58. | :08:03. | |
night. Where were the police? Why didn't they stop it? Why was the | :08:03. | :08:07. | |
Prime Minister, his deputy and the Home Secretary all on holiday at | :08:07. | :08:12. | |
the same time? The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was the first | :08:12. | :08:17. | |
to be visibly back on duty. Can a ask you, is this what is going to | :08:17. | :08:20. | |
happen in England now, with the cuts? People suddenly being made | :08:20. | :08:27. | |
homeless? I don't think so. weren't we protected...? | :08:27. | :08:34. | |
violence continued. By now, the simmering anger of the law-abiding | :08:34. | :08:38. | |
majority was directed at police, politicians, and above all, the end | :08:38. | :08:46. | |
of the within. It is absolutely disgusting, they are feral Rats, | :08:46. | :08:51. | |
what are those parents doing? Those children should be at home. This | :08:51. | :08:55. | |
was the shocking incident of the Malaysian student robbed by those | :08:55. | :09:00. | |
who had been appearing to help him. It summed up the viciousness of the | :09:00. | :09:04. | |
events of the week. When the Prime Minister finally returned from his | :09:04. | :09:10. | |
holiday in Italy, his response was resoundingly tough. I have this | :09:10. | :09:13. | |
very clear message to those people who are responsible for this | :09:13. | :09:19. | |
wrongdoing and criminality. You will feel the full force of the law. | :09:19. | :09:24. | |
And if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to | :09:24. | :09:29. | |
face the punishment. And then, something remarkable - tens of | :09:29. | :09:33. | |
thousands of people, many with brushes in their hands, turned out | :09:33. | :09:37. | |
to help clean up their own neighbourhoods, waiting for police | :09:37. | :09:45. | |
to let them into crime scenes. Some scathingly talked of the pointless | :09:45. | :09:49. | |
destruction as recreational rioting, shopping with violence. What | :09:50. | :09:53. | |
happened here last night and most of this is not about politics, it | :09:53. | :10:01. | |
is about a individual and what they want to do, and all they want to do | :10:01. | :10:07. | |
is kill, take, steel and Rob from people but are working hard. | :10:07. | :10:13. | |
Political classes tried hard to catch up and catch on. It is time | :10:13. | :10:18. | |
we stopped hearing all of this nonsense about sociological | :10:18. | :10:24. | |
justifications for wanton criminality. Whatever people's | :10:24. | :10:28. | |
grievances may be, it does not justify smashing up someone's shop, | :10:28. | :10:32. | |
and wrecking their livelihood. train of discussion could be heard | :10:32. | :10:37. | |
everywhere - were their reasons for the rioting, or merely excuses? | :10:37. | :10:42. | |
we are doing is jailing our children. Look at the mental | :10:42. | :10:48. | |
institutions - young, black people. His any of your kids in prison? His | :10:48. | :10:52. | |
any of your kids getting stopped and searched? No, they're not. So, | :10:53. | :10:57. | |
continue the riots. From street corners in Clapham to the Newsnight | :10:57. | :11:02. | |
studios, you could hear the same differences of opinion. On the | :11:02. | :11:07. | |
question of parenting... Who has been in charge of parenting for the | :11:07. | :11:10. | |
last 13 years? If there is anyone who's responsible for the | :11:10. | :11:13. | |
environment in which these young people grow up, it is you and the | :11:13. | :11:20. | |
Labour Party. As London's slowly came back to normal, the violence | :11:20. | :11:25. | |
continued in other big cities. In Birmingham, three young men were | :11:26. | :11:29. | |
killed when a car ran into a group of Asian men trying to protect | :11:29. | :11:33. | |
their homes and businesses. New fears followed of reprisals into | :11:33. | :11:38. | |
ethnic tensions and vigilantes. There are pockets of our society | :11:38. | :11:42. | |
which are not just broken but frankly sick. But of all the words | :11:42. | :11:45. | |
spoken this week, the father of one of the young men killed in | :11:45. | :11:53. | |
Birmingham stands out. Anything I ever wanted done, I would always | :11:53. | :11:58. | |
ask him to sort it out for me. Not my eldest, but my youngest. And | :11:58. | :12:04. | |
they killed him. In the past week, you could see broken Britain and | :12:04. | :12:07. | |
sick Britain. You could also see people volunteering to clean up | :12:07. | :12:12. | |
their own neighbourhoods - Community Britain, solidarity | :12:12. | :12:17. | |
Britain, generous Britain. A society which got over the shock, | :12:17. | :12:21. | |
mostly kept calm and carried on. The young Malaysian student who was | :12:21. | :12:25. | |
mugged appeared in a news conference, and thousands of pounds | :12:25. | :12:29. | |
was donated to help him. We live in a different country from the one we | :12:29. | :12:34. | |
thought we lived in one week ago. The police, the politicians and the | :12:34. | :12:37. | |
government reasserted themselves in the end, but it proved that at | :12:37. | :12:43. | |
times, we cannot always rely on them. Beyond those institutions, | :12:43. | :12:48. | |
our society, people like you and me, also failed for a while. We did | :12:48. | :12:57. | |
come together, but only after so Joining me now, the historian David | :12:57. | :13:00. | |
Starkey, the author of Chavs, Owen Jones, and the crime writer Dreda | :13:00. | :13:03. | |
Say Mitchell. The scenes of wild rioting were played out around the | :13:03. | :13:12. | |
world. Do you think this has been a profound cultural shift this week? | :13:12. | :13:22. | |
:13:22. | :13:23. | ||
Not this week. I'm sorry, I'm a historian, we will only know in the | :13:23. | :13:28. | |
future. But one thing is for sure, profound changes have happened. In | :13:28. | :13:32. | |
one sense, these riots are completely so official. Somebody | :13:32. | :13:35. | |
brilliantly put it, it is shopping with violence. It is merely | :13:35. | :13:40. | |
extended commercialism. For me, the key image was the woman cool the | :13:40. | :13:44. | |
trying on a pair of trainers outside a shop which had been | :13:44. | :13:49. | |
looted. So, that's one aspect of it. But in one area, there has been a | :13:49. | :13:54. | |
profound cultural change. I have been re-reading Enoch Powell, | :13:54. | :13:59. | |
rivers of blood. Its privacy was absolutely right in one sense. The | :13:59. | :14:04. | |
river did not flow with blood, but flames wrapped around Tottenham and | :14:04. | :14:09. | |
Clapham. But it was not into communal violence, this is where he | :14:09. | :14:13. | |
was completely wrong. What happened was that a substantial section of | :14:13. | :14:17. | |
the chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have | :14:17. | :14:22. | |
become black. The particular sort of violent, destructive, and a | :14:22. | :14:26. | |
holistic gangster culture has become the fashion. And black-and- | :14:26. | :14:32. | |
white, boy and girl, operate in this language together. This | :14:32. | :14:36. | |
language which is wholly false, which is a Jamaican patois which | :14:36. | :14:41. | |
has been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this | :14:41. | :14:51. | |
:14:51. | :14:51. | ||
sense of literally a foreign In that speech he talked about the | :14:51. | :14:57. | |
black man having the whip hand over the white man. It's not skin colour. | :14:57. | :15:06. | |
It's colour churl. List ton David Lammy, a successful man. If you | :15:06. | :15:11. | |
with list tong him on radio, you'd think he was white. David, | :15:11. | :15:16. | |
absolutely, absolutely not at all really. Of all the theories we've | :15:16. | :15:21. | |
heard this week, this whole notion that this is down to the way that | :15:21. | :15:27. | |
some young people may choose to speak, that people... Behave. | :15:27. | :15:31. | |
People, David, like myself, who maybe talk in a particular way. | :15:31. | :15:38. | |
don't talk like them. "them ", this is the problem. It's them and us | :15:38. | :15:42. | |
culture. We can't keep thinking of this as them and us argument. We | :15:42. | :15:46. | |
keep talking about different communities. You keep talking about | :15:46. | :15:50. | |
black culture, black communities are not homogeneous groups. | :15:50. | :15:54. | |
course not. There are black cultures, lots of different | :15:54. | :15:57. | |
cultures. What we need to be doing, we need to be thinking about | :15:57. | :16:00. | |
ourselves as not individual communities, as one community. We | :16:00. | :16:05. | |
need to stop talking about them ar and us. We need to talk about our | :16:05. | :16:10. | |
children. We need to be using words like "we" and start putting this | :16:10. | :16:13. | |
blame on different people. The blame culture has got to psto. We | :16:13. | :16:17. | |
have to face head on what the issues are. When you say that white | :16:17. | :16:21. | |
culture has adopted black culture, are you saying that has been at the | :16:21. | :16:26. | |
heart of the rioting? Is it black culture that has caused rioting? | :16:26. | :16:31. | |
Remember, what we're dealing with, listen to these boys, listen to - | :16:31. | :16:38. | |
think you should answer the question. This is the text sent by | :16:38. | :16:43. | |
the girl who had been the Olympic ambassador, who then engages in | :16:43. | :16:49. | |
shocking acts of looting. Pigs shouldn't of killed that guy last | :16:49. | :16:59. | |
:16:59. | :16:59. | ||
night innit, then they wouldn't get blown up. Girls goes to steal wiis. | :16:59. | :17:04. | |
"That's outrageous, what you're saying. You're equating black | :17:04. | :17:09. | |
culture with criminality - No, a particular sort. Let me finish. You | :17:09. | :17:13. | |
said David Lammy when you heard him sounded white. What you meant by | :17:13. | :17:19. | |
that is that white people equals being respectable and that white | :17:19. | :17:28. | |
people, by adopting black culture is worse. You glorify rap? David I | :17:28. | :17:34. | |
use rap in schools to teach children literary devices and it is | :17:34. | :17:43. | |
a fantastic way - David, do you equate rap with rioting on the | :17:43. | :17:48. | |
streets? Is that what you think? glorifies it. Rap actually, some | :17:48. | :17:53. | |
rap, if you look at their void yoz, actually it reinforces the | :17:53. | :17:56. | |
materialistic world that we live in. When was the last time you watched | :17:56. | :18:02. | |
a rap video or looked at a rap song. Tell me about a rap artist, David? | :18:02. | :18:07. | |
I'm curious to know about this. You hear stories and you deal with | :18:07. | :18:10. | |
impeerical evidence, you base your theories on evidence. Explain what | :18:10. | :18:14. | |
your evidence is before you make, frankly what a lot of viewers will | :18:14. | :18:20. | |
find offensive generalisations. This these times, we need plain | :18:20. | :18:24. | |
speaking. Plain speaking is necessary. You need facts, David. | :18:24. | :18:30. | |
will give them. You are doing a Jeremy Paxman. I took part in | :18:30. | :18:34. | |
Jamie's Dream School. I was involved in this. We used rap. We | :18:34. | :18:39. | |
used rap to explore particular notions of masculinity, of violence, | :18:39. | :18:45. | |
of dominance, of the relationship between old aristocratic violent | :18:45. | :18:50. | |
practice and modern gang culture. It's very interesting. It is | :18:50. | :18:54. | |
historically interesting. When we look at the facts, bringing it back | :18:54. | :18:57. | |
to rioting, clearly it was not a riot that was only dominated by | :18:57. | :19:03. | |
black people. It was, there were many white people. It started as a | :19:03. | :19:09. | |
black protest about the killing of a black man. So can we just have | :19:09. | :19:12. | |
that fact absolutely straightforward. A peaceful protest. | :19:12. | :19:20. | |
A community protest. It quickly ceased to be peaceful. We've got to | :19:20. | :19:22. | |
understand in Tottenham in particular, in this country black | :19:23. | :19:26. | |
people are 30 times more likely to be stopped and searched. In | :19:26. | :19:34. | |
Tottenham one - let me finish. of gun crime is black. One in two | :19:34. | :19:37. | |
people in Tottenham grow newspaper poverty. I no know. There's a sense | :19:37. | :19:42. | |
of harassment by the police. This is just the latest in an example of | :19:42. | :19:46. | |
a civilian killed in very dubious circumstances. What the IPCC | :19:46. | :19:50. | |
originally came up with... utterly outrageous. I want to | :19:50. | :19:53. | |
manufacture this on. David Cameron said this wasn't about race at all. | :19:53. | :19:59. | |
He thinks it's about crime. Culture. He said it's crime actually. Let's | :19:59. | :20:02. | |
look at the damage to the social fabric in terms of what this says. | :20:02. | :20:05. | |
You talked about the shopping violence. Shopping with violence, | :20:05. | :20:11. | |
yeah. Do you think this is part of an inquiztive culture that endless | :20:11. | :20:15. | |
consumerism, it wasn't mindless rioting. It was rioting with a | :20:15. | :20:20. | |
clear commercial purpose. Absolutely. We are the society. | :20:20. | :20:24. | |
We've tripped ourselves up. What have we emphasised to children, | :20:24. | :20:28. | |
success equals money. That's what we've been saying for such a long | :20:28. | :20:32. | |
time. So is it any wonder that the type of shops they were looting, it | :20:32. | :20:36. | |
was all about materialism. If you think about it, we've had a | :20:36. | :20:40. | |
recession. One of the issues of our recession is about the way that | :20:40. | :20:47. | |
banks behave. We let our banks off basically. I don't - Were any bank | :20:47. | :20:55. | |
as tacked? Ferel bankers and looters. Despite all this stuff on | :20:55. | :20:59. | |
politicians, on the press, on bankers, no public buildings were | :20:59. | :21:03. | |
attacked. If you get a real political outbreak, public | :21:03. | :21:08. | |
buildings are attacked. Can we just move on to something - So that kind | :21:08. | :21:12. | |
of protest is OK? No, it's not OK. I mean I don't actually think that | :21:12. | :21:18. | |
direct, I don't think there is a human right to riot. There is a | :21:18. | :21:22. | |
right to protest. There is a right to protest. Can we turn this round? | :21:22. | :21:29. | |
I am not attacking these groups. What do you mean by "these groups". | :21:29. | :21:34. | |
Please, you correctly say these people feel excluded, they're poor, | :21:34. | :21:39. | |
they can't get jobs. They're searched bit police. Now why is it | :21:39. | :21:44. | |
that these groups particularly in these areas, you were saying black | :21:44. | :21:52. | |
males... I'll give you an example David. Can we look - I will give | :21:52. | :21:57. | |
you an example to this building - Can I move this on. I have to stop | :21:57. | :22:02. | |
this. You are using black and white culture interchangably as good and | :22:02. | :22:05. | |
bad. I want to know how much damage you think this has done to the | :22:05. | :22:08. | |
fabric of society. I think it's considerable amount of damage. What | :22:08. | :22:11. | |
I would like to see is a recognition that what is the way | :22:11. | :22:15. | |
out for these boys and girls. The way out - You think that's by | :22:15. | :22:20. | |
dropping black culture? No, well, I think it's a particular form. I | :22:20. | :22:25. | |
think - I find it really... Why is it so important to do so? Because | :22:25. | :22:29. | |
this type of black male culture mill taits against education. | :22:29. | :22:33. | |
is nothing to do with that. There will be people watching who think | :22:34. | :22:36. | |
that black culture is synonymous with gang culture at least. | :22:36. | :22:41. | |
Absolutely. That is something that we need to fight against. There's | :22:41. | :22:44. | |
an angry backlash and understandably so. People felt | :22:44. | :22:48. | |
terrorised in their communities. I felt that and my friends felt that. | :22:48. | :22:52. | |
There's a dangerous climate where to even begin to understand the | :22:52. | :22:56. | |
underlying social and economic causes is seen as justifying | :22:56. | :22:59. | |
mindless thuggery. It's not do-re- mi-fa-so-la-ti-do that. We have to | :22:59. | :23:07. | |
accept there is a -- it's not to do that. We have to accept that. If we | :23:07. | :23:10. | |
look at young black men it's half of them are out of work. If you | :23:10. | :23:15. | |
have a tiny proportion of people who feel they have no future, that | :23:15. | :23:19. | |
they have no future ahead of them, a tiny proportion take to the | :23:19. | :23:22. | |
streets in a way that happened this week, in the most tragic of ways, | :23:22. | :23:27. | |
that is enough to cause chaos on the streets. Unless we solve that, | :23:27. | :23:31. | |
this will happen again and again. Thank you very much for coming in. | :23:31. | :23:34. | |
The scenes of wild rioting were played out around the world. It's a | :23:34. | :23:38. | |
fairly safe bet the world can now see Britain doesn't just do queuing. | :23:38. | :23:42. | |
This time next year, London will again become a global media focus | :23:42. | :23:46. | |
for hopefully happier reasons, as the 2012 Olympic Games kick off. | :23:46. | :23:52. | |
How much has our international image been tarnished? Despotic | :23:52. | :23:56. | |
regimes may be laughing now at our own lack of order. Can we repair | :23:56. | :24:04. | |
the damage in the Long Run? Here's Stephen Smith. Centrepiece | :24:04. | :24:08. | |
of the festival, London South Bank exhibition opens on schedule. | :24:08. | :24:11. | |
other time of economic hardship, the 50s, the Festival of Britain | :24:12. | :24:15. | |
was staged beside the Thames in London. | :24:15. | :24:19. | |
ARCHIVE: Escalators carry visitors to the top floor. For the then | :24:19. | :24:24. | |
cutting edge technology on show, it was a showcase of British values, | :24:24. | :24:29. | |
such as resourcefulness and pluck. 60 years on that event is recalled | :24:29. | :24:34. | |
in another festival, which offers a nostalgic view of the great British | :24:34. | :24:38. | |
summer holiday and perhaps a gentler time. This tribute to the | :24:38. | :24:42. | |
Festival of Britain was supposed to embody similar values - optimism, | :24:42. | :24:46. | |
the best of British in a time of austerity. But visitors coming to | :24:46. | :24:49. | |
the country this week could be forgiven for having an all together | :24:49. | :24:54. | |
different impression of the place. The way I perceive the whole way | :24:54. | :24:59. | |
has been totally madness, frustration, feeling like, you know, | :24:59. | :25:04. | |
why is this happening to London? What's going on? Not understanding | :25:05. | :25:08. | |
at all. It's unbelievable because I have been here before. I've never | :25:09. | :25:12. | |
seen something like this. The kids were saying there's so much | :25:12. | :25:16. | |
happening in Pakistan, especially Peshawar. When we have come here, | :25:16. | :25:20. | |
we have brought the disturbance here. So I said no, no, it's not | :25:20. | :25:26. | |
that. It's just a mishap. It's a coincidence. Our parents gave us a | :25:26. | :25:31. | |
call and they said "Oh, don't go to London. There's a little bit | :25:31. | :25:37. | |
trouble, great trouble there." But we decided another way. We had a | :25:37. | :25:45. | |
nice day. No regrets so far? This is what the outside world is | :25:45. | :25:50. | |
accustomed to seeing of us, a royal occasion with all the trimmings. | :25:51. | :25:53. | |
Foreign reporters who are based here have had a very different | :25:53. | :25:58. | |
story to tell this week. I think it was a shock. It was a shock for | :25:58. | :26:02. | |
people, because when they come here as tourists, when they come to | :26:02. | :26:06. | |
London, what do they do? They look at Buckingham Palace, they think | :26:06. | :26:11. | |
about the Queen. They go to the usual tourist attractions. They see | :26:11. | :26:17. | |
Bond Street. They do some shopping. Britain is really in German eyes | :26:17. | :26:21. | |
not really connected with the social unrest and with social | :26:21. | :26:28. | |
problems of that magnitude. So the public image has got some really | :26:28. | :26:33. | |
big scratches through those occurrences. London on fire. A wave | :26:33. | :26:37. | |
of violence... Whether we like it or not, the riots in England have | :26:37. | :26:40. | |
been headline news around the world. The French were one of several | :26:40. | :26:43. | |
nations to urge their people to think carefully before travel to | :26:43. | :26:50. | |
the UK. While state TV in China took the opportunity to question | :26:51. | :26:56. | |
whether next year's Olympic Games in London would be safe. Television | :26:56. | :27:00. | |
loyal to Colonel Gaddafi in Libya portrayed the riots as a deprived | :27:00. | :27:04. | |
people fighting a repressive government. While some other | :27:04. | :27:10. | |
broadcasters in the Middle East said this was Britain's Arab Spring. | :27:10. | :27:14. | |
Some Greeks have even been marching in sympathy with English rioters. | :27:14. | :27:19. | |
They've got the wrong end of the stick says a correspondent here. | :27:19. | :27:22. | |
They assumed that this was a similar situation to theirs, that | :27:22. | :27:27. | |
this was a middle class uprising against austerity, against cuts. | :27:27. | :27:32. | |
This was something they could relate to. My job was to kind of | :27:32. | :27:38. | |
explain further the nuances. the Iranian government has its own | :27:38. | :27:41. | |
take on English events. TRANSLATION: The British people | :27:41. | :27:45. | |
have reached the end of their tether. They've run out of patients | :27:45. | :27:51. | |
during these times of economic hardship. What this suggests is | :27:51. | :27:56. | |
that though we may live in a global village, what the English get up to | :27:56. | :28:03. | |
in summer defies easy translation. With me in the studio the Chinese | :28:03. | :28:09. | |
businessman and Australian trip newer Sir David Tang, the Canadian | :28:09. | :28:12. | |
businessman, Tyler Brule and French journalist Nabila Ramdani. Thanks | :28:12. | :28:18. | |
for coming in. How do you think the world is viewing us now?. | :28:18. | :28:26. | |
images of the rioting and the burning and all the unrest, I think, | :28:26. | :28:29. | |
painted a very bad picture of Britain in the last few days across | :28:29. | :28:36. | |
the world. Two things I would imagine, one, for a foreigner and | :28:36. | :28:41. | |
in particular, even the seasoned travellers, who used to think that | :28:41. | :28:47. | |
London was a very safe capital, had to be amazed and possibly start | :28:47. | :28:52. | |
thinking again whether, in fact, it was such a safe place. Secondly, I | :28:52. | :29:01. | |
think that dictators and tie rants and toe tatt tairn states around | :29:01. | :29:09. | |
the world must be absolutely having a distinct sense of sharden Freuder. | :29:09. | :29:14. | |
Western democracy, touted as the argument for civilisation and in | :29:14. | :29:18. | |
Arab Spring in particular being pedestrianled and promoted is now | :29:18. | :29:23. | |
seen to be a totally vulnerable to social unrest and even more | :29:23. | :29:28. | |
important social injustice. What about how China deals with dissent | :29:28. | :29:33. | |
though. You saw my government there questioning whether London is able | :29:33. | :29:39. | |
to handle the Olympics. And I've talked to a lot of Chinese, I | :29:39. | :29:44. | |
wasn't in China at the time. I was actually in Europe, but when I talk | :29:44. | :29:48. | |
to them, they, of course, are laughing in a way, because they | :29:48. | :29:52. | |
couldn't believe that something like this could happen and so, they | :29:52. | :29:57. | |
are beginning to question all sorts of things. If it wasn't so serious, | :29:57. | :30:05. | |
it would be farcical hearing from Ahmadinejad in Iran and China's | :30:05. | :30:09. | |
government about whether London's capable. What's the danger here? | :30:09. | :30:12. | |
think David Cameron's knee-jerk reaction to the riots is certainly | :30:12. | :30:18. | |
going to attract an enormous amount of harm to Britain's international | :30:18. | :30:22. | |
standing. You think he's overreacted? Absolutely. The | :30:22. | :30:26. | |
possibility to bring in the army, not only upset the Metropolitan | :30:26. | :30:31. | |
Police, but it made him sound like some kind of insensitive autocrat | :30:31. | :30:38. | |
and you combine this with the mooted idea to curtail social | :30:38. | :30:44. | |
networking, and it makes him sound uncomfortably like the autocrats or | :30:44. | :30:48. | |
the behaviour of the autocrats, which provoked the Arab Spring. | :30:48. | :30:52. | |
you think there's a possibility of a massive overreaction here? Do you | :30:52. | :31:02. | |
think anything's going to hit us There has been a lot of discussion | :31:02. | :31:05. | |
about the poor Malaysian student, which was one of the most striking | :31:05. | :31:10. | |
images. But if I look at a second image, it is all about the second | :31:10. | :31:16. | |
biggest investors to this country, which is Japan. We had that | :31:16. | :31:21. | |
smouldering solely distribution centre. I think there will be some | :31:21. | :31:27. | |
board meetings, and people will be thinking about their investment | :31:27. | :31:32. | |
strategy in this country next year. Especially from the point of view | :31:32. | :31:36. | |
of the Japanese. Soon after their disaster, there was hardly any | :31:36. | :31:41. | |
looting. Everybody was behaving... But these are the same Japanese, | :31:41. | :31:46. | |
the same Koreans, the same Americans, who have been watching | :31:46. | :31:51. | |
our Royal Wedding... That's why they wanted to see something bad. | :31:51. | :31:56. | |
Unfortunately, in the world today, when you have images of burning | :31:56. | :32:01. | |
cars allowed by the police to carry on, and let looters loot and so | :32:01. | :32:09. | |
forth, unfortunately, those images are indelible. You lived through | :32:09. | :32:14. | |
the Paris riots of 2005 - would you say those images are now Indelible? | :32:15. | :32:19. | |
People do not say, I'm not going to Paris because of those riots six | :32:19. | :32:24. | |
years ago. Well, those riots certainly damaged the reputation of | :32:24. | :32:30. | |
the city of Paris. It made it appear a dangerous, turbulent city. | :32:31. | :32:33. | |
I'm afraid it is the same thing that will happen to the reputation | :32:34. | :32:41. | |
of the City of London. As David was saying, I think the pictures on the | :32:41. | :32:46. | |
footage of arson was perhaps the most depressing aspect, because you | :32:46. | :32:54. | |
cannot have a worse image. You did not actually see somebody torch a | :32:54. | :32:59. | |
building, but the images of people smashing up shops and looting, and | :32:59. | :33:06. | |
the police are standing by, rightly or wrongly, that sends a very bad... | :33:06. | :33:11. | |
You're saying, it is the failure of the institutions to take control. | :33:11. | :33:16. | |
People could not believe that the Great Metropolitan Police, Scotland | :33:16. | :33:23. | |
Yard, Sherlock Holmes... But it is a very old-fashioned idea. | :33:23. | :33:27. | |
people are old-fashioned. Gang here in a very modern way. People | :33:27. | :33:33. | |
outside of Britain have a very typical version, understanding, of | :33:34. | :33:41. | |
what Britain is. I think that caused irreparable damage. Does | :33:41. | :33:48. | |
Britain need to go on a PR offensive now? Not today. The last | :33:48. | :33:53. | |
thing the country needs to do right now is to buy up lots of airtime on | :33:53. | :33:58. | |
CNN to say how great it is. People need to see a plan. If you look at | :33:58. | :34:02. | |
international investors, they want to know what's going to happen with | :34:02. | :34:08. | |
youth unemployment - if I'm going to invest in this country, I'm | :34:08. | :34:11. | |
going to set up a semiconductor plant, I want to make sure there's | :34:11. | :34:16. | |
a trained workforce here. If you look at this country versus Germany, | :34:16. | :34:25. | |
our peers want to see a plan. We have not have that this week. | :34:25. | :34:27. | |
before we go, news of tonight's special Review. Thanks, Emily. | :34:27. | :34:29. | |
We're live from the Edinburgh Festival tonight, when we highlight | :34:29. | :34:31. | |
taboo-breaking comedy from Margaret Cho and Ruby Wax, explore | :34:31. | :34:41. | |
:34:41. | :34:43. | ||
exhibitions by Robert Rauchenberg, Tony Cragg and David Mach. We look | :34:43. | :34:46. |