Much has been made about the social alienation felt by the London rioters this week. Confused, bewildered and completely unable to relate to haiku of despair on their television screens; the middle-classes have been scrambling for reasons behind the violence. Overcrowding, poverty and unemployment are to blame say the left. But rioting is about power and there are deeply complex reasons for why these incidents have taken place. As police sirens and helicopters pierce through from my South Hackney window, it’s important to remember that social alienation is not the reserve of ‘feral rats’ smashing up apartment stores.
Nearly everyday I buy my groceries at the nearby Co-op across the road, and while it’s a bit expensive and the food isn’t very good, I usually can’t be bothered walking anywhere else. I’ve been going to the same shop for over two years and everyday I meet the same dead-eyed man behind the till who never fails to blank me. Now if I were scanning pints of milk, biscuits and ham slices for eight hours a day, I suppose I wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about greeting the next customer either. It’s just that after two long years, I had hoped the sad lonely man would have recognised me by now. Alas this is modern day London and community relations are forever a transient affair.
Living in a transaction based society, I could have easily been using one of those bleeping machines at the Co-op such was the human void. At the nearby Tesco store, which have spread across the country like a virus, I experience the same robotic gestures and beeping devices on a regular basis. With nobody holding any allegiances to anyone and affluence the only barometer of success, I find myself an isolated consumer on a residential council estate. Foreign flatmates share my living space and outside the post-war estate is full of anonymous strangers who only know themselves.
Inner cities are harsh, unforgiving environments where the architecture is brutal and greenery is a luxury confined to the affluent suburbs. Everyday I say good morning to the little black lady cleaning the stairwell and she is my only community friend. Next door is a Spanish speaking family but I don’t know their names or what they do, and this is despite being their neighbour for over two years. All I do know is that they have the world’s most irritating dog and I can’t imagine what her shrill barking does for community relations. Apart from that I could die tomorrow and nobody on the estate would even notice. Living in a metropolis where nobody seems to care or know each other, it creates a social void where respect is very much a currency in decline.
However, there is one family on the estate that everybody recognises but not in a good way. Sitting on their concrete patio with the door wide open, the family are a Channel 5 documentary in waiting. In fact they represent a grotesque parody of Britain’s ‘Sick Society’. The kids are always topless and sit outdoors next to a flea ridden mattress, with streams of rubbish spilling out from the hallway onto the pavement. Sipping tins of cider and low price lager all day long, the fat family provide a comic spectacle to an otherwise faceless community.
Outside their kitchen window, they have a carved wooden emblem stating ‘Hello, Welcome and Piss Off’ as a greeting to strangers. Presumably this is to ward off evil spirits. Sadly it tells you all you ever needed to know about this family. Such charming manners don’t usually encourage people to ask about their well being. One can only wonder if their kids took part in the rioting this week. On the surface they suffer from all the swamp conditions of a sick society – poverty, boredom, unemployment and a perennial lack of space. But judging by the size of them rioting would probably seem like far too much work. Violence has now spread to other English cities with similar social conditions. Meanwhile across the road at the Co-op, the sad lonely man remains dead-eyed and aloof, swiping hummus, Galaxy chocolate and copies of The Guardian to familiar looking strangers.
