12/08/2011 Newsnight


12/08/2011

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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Police, Tim Godwin, had done a good job. This is another poll, and this

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is interesting. It is about cuts to police numbers - should the cuts to

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police be reversed? 71% agreed that those cuts should be reversed. The

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Government says they will not be. And then, on the question of

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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

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the automatic jail sentence no matter how small the involvement.

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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

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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

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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

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divide you're on, the two things running in parallel have provoked

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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

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battles in the heart of English cities. Who would do such a thing,

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terrorising their own neighbours, stealing, looting, destroying

:05:56.:06:03.

anything they came across? The riots of 2011 came in a week which

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changed our country and made us ask some terrible questions about who

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we are and what we have become. Who were these people who were

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destroying our cities? What should we do with them? If we saw some of

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the worst, we also saw some of the best - community spirit and

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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

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proud. It started in Tottenham a week ago, one of the most deprived

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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

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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

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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

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say to those who wanted to come to Tottenham to cause violence and

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disturbance to stay away. But other people were also listening - those

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who saw the riot not as an outrage that as an opportunity. London is

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hit by a second night of rioting. Looting and vandalism spread to

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other areas of the capital... violence was to spread like a

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madness which proved contagious. Eventually it spread to Birmingham,

:07:49.:07:55.

Manchester, Nottingham and other English cities. When we woke up to

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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

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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...?

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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

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was the shocking incident of the Malaysian student robbed by those

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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

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very clear message to those people who are responsible for this

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wrongdoing and criminality. You will feel the full force of the law.

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And if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to

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face the punishment. And then, something remarkable - tens of

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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

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destruction as recreational rioting, shopping with violence. What

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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

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everywhere - were their reasons for the rioting, or merely excuses?

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we are doing is jailing our children. Look at the mental

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institutions - young, black people. His any of your kids in prison? His

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any of your kids getting stopped and searched? No, they're not. So,

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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

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question of parenting... Who has been in charge of parenting for the

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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

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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

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ethnic tensions and vigilantes. There are pockets of our society

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which are not just broken but frankly sick. But of all the words

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spoken this week, the father of one of the young men killed in

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Birmingham stands out. Anything I ever wanted done, I would always

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ask him to sort it out for me. Not my eldest, but my youngest. And

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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future. But one thing is for sure, profound changes have happened. In

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one sense, these riots are completely so official. Somebody

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brilliantly put it, it is shopping with violence. It is merely

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extended commercialism. For me, the key image was the woman cool the

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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

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profound cultural change. I have been re-reading Enoch Powell,

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rivers of blood. Its privacy was absolutely right in one sense. The

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river did not flow with blood, but flames wrapped around Tottenham and

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Clapham. But it was not into communal violence, this is where he

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was completely wrong. What happened was that a substantial section of

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the chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have

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become black. The particular sort of violent, destructive, and a

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holistic gangster culture has become the fashion. And black-and-

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white, boy and girl, operate in this language together. This

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language which is wholly false, which is a Jamaican patois which

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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,

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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.

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People, David, like myself, who maybe talk in a particular way.

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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 -

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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

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regimes may be laughing now at our own lack of order. Can we repair

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the damage in the Long Run? Here's Stephen Smith. Centrepiece

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of the festival, London South Bank exhibition opens on schedule.

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other time of economic hardship, the 50s, the Festival of Britain

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was staged beside the Thames in London.

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ARCHIVE: Escalators carry visitors to the top floor. For the then

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cutting edge technology on show, it was a showcase of British values,

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such as resourcefulness and pluck. 60 years on that event is recalled

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in another festival, which offers a nostalgic view of the great British

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summer holiday and perhaps a gentler time. This tribute to the

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Festival of Britain was supposed to embody similar values - optimism,

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the best of British in a time of austerity. But visitors coming to

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the country this week could be forgiven for having an all together

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different impression of the place. The way I perceive the whole way

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has been totally madness, frustration, feeling like, you know,

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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

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accustomed to seeing of us, a royal occasion with all the trimmings.

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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

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people, because when they come here as tourists, when they come to

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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

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not really connected with the social unrest and with social

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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

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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

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whether next year's Olympic Games in London would be safe. Television

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loyal to Colonel Gaddafi in Libya portrayed the riots as a deprived

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people fighting a repressive government. While some other

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broadcasters in the Middle East said this was Britain's Arab Spring.

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Some Greeks have even been marching in sympathy with English rioters.

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They've got the wrong end of the stick says a correspondent here.

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They assumed that this was a similar situation to theirs, that

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this was a middle class uprising against austerity, against cuts.

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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

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take on English events. TRANSLATION: The British people

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have reached the end of their tether. They've run out of patients

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during these times of economic hardship. What this suggests is

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that though we may live in a global village, what the English get up to

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in summer defies easy translation. With me in the studio the Chinese

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businessman and Australian trip newer Sir David Tang, the Canadian

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businessman, Tyler Brule and French journalist Nabila Ramdani. Thanks

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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