I believe civil action is necessary, I think people need to stand tall and reclaim and defend their communities. There is talk of things kicking off in High Wycombe and that's exactly what we're doing, I have called a few colleagues, mainly Youth Workers I know, and we've agreed that we will go out and try to engage with the young people should crowds start to gather, as between us, we will know most of the young people. There were good examples in East London last night of people who came together and done just that. People need to reclaim their communities. The Police are out of the depth and simply outnumbered. The sustainable solution has to come from within, otherwise you're conceding power and we could see repeats whenever people desire.
At the same time, we have to ask ourselves some more searching questions, where have we gone so far wrong that our young people are so disillusioned and have so little pride in our country and their own communities. And where are people's individual moral codes? A sense of personal morality that drives choices people make. Further I find it so so sad how quick people are to completely disregard our 'civilised' principals. These are people, young people, yes, what they are doing is outrageous, but the dehumanisation and inhumane ways people seem to think we should respond are disgusting to me. If we're a civilised society, we should remain that way, always.
The Government has got questions to answer, like I said at the time the student protests were going on, you can only push people so far before they push back. The cutting of public sector, youth services, EMA, housing benefits etc were always gonna have an impact in terms of unrest. I'm not by any means justifying anything that they've done, I think the stealing (it's not looting) is embarrassing and just totally undermines any political statement that might have been made, and the worst still is the arson, burning of innocent people's homes and businesses, they were showing pictures of an old Asian guy trying to protect his shop yesterday, honestly it broke my heart, knowing how hard the first generation worked, people like my parents and to watch it be destroyed just like that.
But water cannons as they leave no long term damage, I'm down with. But this cannot be a case of band aiding the problem, we have to recognise that we have major unrest in this country and a generation of people who think this is an acceptable means of expressing that, it isn't and that needs to be addressed.