Difficult to read, even this far removed from the riots. Very moving, very informative.
August 11, 2011: Police tell of life on the frontline during riots: fatigue and hunger under hail of missiles. Public support for officers on the frontline has helped keep up morale amid chaos, frustration and 20-hour shifts
Sunday, January 29, 2012
More headlines ripped from the pages of Google News. The quote from eGov monitor about Cameron saying that the Met's senior officers were wrong to treat the riots as public disorder instead of criminality set off a predictable uproar at the Met was somewhat unfair if the Met and the vacationing Cameron could only have communicated with each other via carrier pigeon.
However, Cameron and the Met knew within the first hours of the riots that the incidents couldn't be controlled by the 'softly softly' domestic policy of the British government and should have switched gears. This fact brought forth a diatribes from a worker in the financial sector who wrote for the Market Oracle. I think he might have connected too many dots and flung around too many accusations but his fury was justified. See here and here for his op-eds.
However, for Cameron to up-end decades of policy and order an adequate police response, he would need the political winds at his back. And for the Met to go ahead on its own initiative to order the police would have required having someone at the top at the Met with the political clout to make the order stick. (If I recall the top post was vacant at the time the riots broke out, but I'd go back and check to be sure.)
And yet the problem the Met and Cameron initially faced was circular: if the police had cracked down at the start, the riots would have been quickly contained, leading to the accusation of unnecessary police force! Even with the relatively mild police crackdown, there were such accusations. See the headline from the Socialist Worker, below. The problem shouldn't have been such that it froze the Met and Cameron, but there's nothing like Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Financial Times - Elizabeth Rigby, Jim Pickard - 45 minutes ago
The army might also be called on for support if riots occur again. Police tactics were revisited many times in the debate as politicians voiced anger that innocent
UK riots: four days of chaos that reshaped the political landscape
The Guardian - 45 minutes ago
'This is not about poverty, this is about culture,' David Cameron told parliament. 'In too many cases, the parents of these children – if they are still around – don't care where their children are or who they are with, let alone what they are doing. ...
Rioters could be sprayed with dye says David Cameron
Mirror.co.uk - 5 hours ago
By Mirror.co.uk 11/08/2011 David Cameron has not ruled out allowing police to spray rioters with dye so they can be identified and arrested later. The controversial tactic has been used in other countries, most famously by the apartheid regime in South ...
UK riots: text of David Cameron's address to Commons
Telegraph.co.uk - 9 hours ago
And, as I said yesterday, while they would not be appropriate now, we do have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours notice. Some people have raised the issue of the Army. The Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan ...
Nations Mocking Britain Over Riots
Mathaba.Net - 9 hours ago
Libya's Foreign Minister, the Assistant Secretary of the General People's Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation, said that British Prime Minister Cameron had lost all legitimacy and should step down, because of the force used ...
Cameron uses riots as excuse to crack down
Socialistworker.co.uk - Tom Walker - 8 hours ago
And another Tory, Conor Burns, called on Cameron to “scrap the Human Rights Act”. Tory father of the house Sir Peter Tapsell even called for Cameron to round up “hoods” and put them in Wembley stadium. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad used this tactic ...
UK Riots: PM Announces £30 Million To Rebuild Communities And Raft Of New ...
eGov monitor - 5 hours ago
In addition, the Prime Minister said senior officers were wrong in treating the looting as public disorder when it should have been treated as criminal acts. However, the Prime Minister was effusive in his praise of the brave work done by police ...
However, Cameron and the Met knew within the first hours of the riots that the incidents couldn't be controlled by the 'softly softly' domestic policy of the British government and should have switched gears. This fact brought forth a diatribes from a worker in the financial sector who wrote for the Market Oracle. I think he might have connected too many dots and flung around too many accusations but his fury was justified. See here and here for his op-eds.
However, for Cameron to up-end decades of policy and order an adequate police response, he would need the political winds at his back. And for the Met to go ahead on its own initiative to order the police would have required having someone at the top at the Met with the political clout to make the order stick. (If I recall the top post was vacant at the time the riots broke out, but I'd go back and check to be sure.)
And yet the problem the Met and Cameron initially faced was circular: if the police had cracked down at the start, the riots would have been quickly contained, leading to the accusation of unnecessary police force! Even with the relatively mild police crackdown, there were such accusations. See the headline from the Socialist Worker, below. The problem shouldn't have been such that it froze the Met and Cameron, but there's nothing like Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Financial Times - Elizabeth Rigby, Jim Pickard - 45 minutes ago
The army might also be called on for support if riots occur again. Police tactics were revisited many times in the debate as politicians voiced anger that innocent
UK riots: four days of chaos that reshaped the political landscape
The Guardian - 45 minutes ago
'This is not about poverty, this is about culture,' David Cameron told parliament. 'In too many cases, the parents of these children – if they are still around – don't care where their children are or who they are with, let alone what they are doing. ...
Rioters could be sprayed with dye says David Cameron
Mirror.co.uk - 5 hours ago
By Mirror.co.uk 11/08/2011 David Cameron has not ruled out allowing police to spray rioters with dye so they can be identified and arrested later. The controversial tactic has been used in other countries, most famously by the apartheid regime in South ...
UK riots: text of David Cameron's address to Commons
Telegraph.co.uk - 9 hours ago
And, as I said yesterday, while they would not be appropriate now, we do have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours notice. Some people have raised the issue of the Army. The Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan ...
Nations Mocking Britain Over Riots
Mathaba.Net - 9 hours ago
Libya's Foreign Minister, the Assistant Secretary of the General People's Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation, said that British Prime Minister Cameron had lost all legitimacy and should step down, because of the force used ...
Cameron uses riots as excuse to crack down
Socialistworker.co.uk - Tom Walker - 8 hours ago
And another Tory, Conor Burns, called on Cameron to “scrap the Human Rights Act”. Tory father of the house Sir Peter Tapsell even called for Cameron to round up “hoods” and put them in Wembley stadium. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad used this tactic ...
UK Riots: PM Announces £30 Million To Rebuild Communities And Raft Of New ...
eGov monitor - 5 hours ago
In addition, the Prime Minister said senior officers were wrong in treating the looting as public disorder when it should have been treated as criminal acts. However, the Prime Minister was effusive in his praise of the brave work done by police ...
England Riots, August 10 developments
Two men have been sentenced to 10 weeks and 16 weeks for their part in last night's disorder in Manchester, Greater Manchester Police reports. The force tweets: "Swift justice," adding they will be the "first of many".From the Telegraph's coverage of the riots:
London and UK riots: August 10 as it happened
"Rolling coverage of the riots as police braced to counter further disturbances in cities across the country after the first suspected looters appear in court."
Counterwarm in England Riots: Bad title, good report in this CNN article
Note CNN's use of the term 'vigiliante' instead of the more accurate one of citizen patrol.
August 11, 2011:
August 11, 2011:
Vigilante groups protect London streets
By Bryony Jones,
CNN
London (CNN) -- As riots broke out across London, leaving shops and homes burning, and residents cowering in their homes, Elif Mills returned to her flat in the east of the city to find a burned out bus around the corner, and a mob of burly men in the street outside.
But rather than looting, this gang was working to protect the neighborhood. And far from mugging Mills, the men handed her a free kebab, walked her to her front door and promised to keep her and her terrified neighbors safe as trouble raged in streets nearby.
What Mills calls her "Turkish Army" -- dozens of shopkeepers guarding Kingsland High Street in Dalston -- was just one of many groups of vigilantes armed with makeshift weapons determined to protect their areas of London from looters.
After several nights of violence in towns and cities across England, the public backlash against the rioters has begun.
Hundreds of men wielding golf clubs, baseball bats and sticks have been patrolling areas of London -- from Southall in the west to Dalston in the east, and from Eltham in the south Enfield in the north -- and other cities to ward off gangs of rioters.
Online retailer Amazon has reported a massive spike in the sales of baseball bats and batons as Britons prepare to protect themselves.
TV producer Mills is full of praise for the groups, who she says are doing their bit to help -- at a time when police have found themselves stretched to the limit.
British PM: Police waited too long to act
"They aren't doing it in a 'looking for trouble' way -- they are protecting us, and it has worked -- roads nearby have been destroyed, but this area is completely untouched.
"It's not the best thing for everyone to do, but it has worked in this situation.
"It has made me feel very safe, especially on the night when there wasn't a big police presence in the area -- I slept soundly knowing I had a 'Turkish Army' of burly guys armed with bats standing guard under my window."
In Ealing, an affluent west London suburb which was hit hard by rampaging gangs of youths on Monday evening, locals have been encouraged to come out in defiance of the rioters.
Flyers posted through the doors of homes in the area on Tuesday implored residents to "stand together to protect our streets."
"If you see any trouble, please sound your car horn," they demanded. "The aim of this is to show these despicable thugs that we will not be terrorized."
And in Enfield, which was badly affected on Saturday, the first night of the riots, residents were also out trying to reclaim the area from looters.
One local, who gave his name as Nick, told CNN: "We're out here looking after our town. We're all trying to do it, and yet the police are more interested in pushing us back -- it's not on. We want to look after our town."
As anger at the actions of looters grows, a jazz-singing grandmother from east London has become an unlikely symbol of the public's desire to stand up and be counted.
Pauline Pearce has been dubbed the heroine of Hackney after a video of her giving the young rioters around her a stern dressing-down went viral after being posted on YouTube.
"Why are you burning people's shops that they've worked hard to build up?" She demands of those rampaging around her.
"And for what? Just to say you are warring and a bad man? This is about a man who was shot in Tottenham, this ain't about busting up the place. Get real people!
"We're not all gathering together to fight for a cause -- we're running down footlocker and thieving shoes. Dirty thieves!"
But the Metropolitan Police has warned against vigilantism, calling on members of the public not to put themselves in harm's way, after several incidents where those who tried to step in found themselves under attack from the looters.
In Ealing, a man was left with critical head injuries after he tried to remonstrate with a gang of young rioters who had set bins on fire, and was attacked.
"These are testing times and I urge the public to remain vigilant and report any information you have to police," said Ealing Borough Commander Andy Rowell.
"If you do experience further disorder, I urge you to contact police and not take steps to try and intervene yourselves, this will put you and others in danger - please allow the police to tackle these crimes."
Instead they have urged people to help identify those responsible for the riots and looting.
The Metropolitan Police's Flickr stream of CCTV images of the rioters had been viewed by more than 300,000 people by Wednesday afternoon.
Metropolitan Police Flickr stream
The Sun, Britain's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, caught the mood of many on Wednesday with its "Shop a moron" campaign, encouraging readers to name and shame those caught looting on security cameras.
And others have taken a practical stand, rolling up their sleeves to join in clean-up operations across London and in Birmingham and Manchester.
Organized via Twitter, using the hashtags #riotcleanup and #broomarmy, and on websites riotcleanup.co.uk and broomarmy.co.uk, hundreds of people have helped sweep broken glass from the streets and repair wrecked shops.
Manchester resident Rachel said she and her friends were planning the clean-up even as riots in the city were going on.
"Manchester people are very resilient and they're not going to let this beat them. Once things calm down we're going to go out together onto the streets and start tidying up the mess that they've left in the city," she said.
However they choose to go about it, it seems the British public is only too happy to join in with what Prime Minister David Cameron has called the "fightback" against the rioters.
"We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets," Cameron said.
Counterswarm in England riots: headlines on role of social media
I pulled the headlines (below) from Google News. On one level the use of social to counter the rioters is heartening. On another level the huge emphasis that the mainstream media gave to the 'Internet patrols,' as against the relatively light coverage given to the on-foot citizen patrols points to a disturbing trend, which manifested full-blown during Egypt's 'revolution': the attempt to give social media a much greater role and signifance in the struggle for freedom than it merits.
The same happened with press coverage of the mass protests that led to Mubarak's ouster. The citizen patrols in Cairo and other cities in Egypt that were formed to protect civilian life and property during the widespread arson and looting that descended -- patrols often working in tandem with the police, who'd led their offcials posts -- were an example of a true counterswarm tactic.
Yet publics around the world were unaware of the situation if they were taking their understanding of the unrest in Egypt from television; that's because major media TV (notably CNN International and al Jazeera) were not showing viewers the violence that broken out all over the country.
Looters hunted down via websites
Sydney Morning Herald - 7 hours ago
LONDON: Some Britons have taken to social networking sites to expose rioters who went on the rampage, posting photographs of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles. Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of ...
London Riots 2011: Violence Caught on Surveillance Cameras
ABC News - Ned Potter - 9 hours ago
London Police posted images of alleged rioters on Flickr, and asked the public to help identify them. (London Metropolitan Police/Flickr) British police, trying to catch instigators of the London riots, fought back with ...
The London Riots: Social Media's Latest Watershed Moment
PC Magazine - Peter Pachal - 9 hours ago
The police pursuing rioters in London have a new ally: social networks. How Twitter, Flickr, and their brethren are making the world a safer place. By Peter Pachal A city descends into chaos and rioting following a terrible loss ...
The same happened with press coverage of the mass protests that led to Mubarak's ouster. The citizen patrols in Cairo and other cities in Egypt that were formed to protect civilian life and property during the widespread arson and looting that descended -- patrols often working in tandem with the police, who'd led their offcials posts -- were an example of a true counterswarm tactic.
Yet publics around the world were unaware of the situation if they were taking their understanding of the unrest in Egypt from television; that's because major media TV (notably CNN International and al Jazeera) were not showing viewers the violence that broken out all over the country.
Looters hunted down via websites
Sydney Morning Herald - 7 hours ago
LONDON: Some Britons have taken to social networking sites to expose rioters who went on the rampage, posting photographs of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles. Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of ...
London Riots 2011: Violence Caught on Surveillance Cameras
ABC News - Ned Potter - 9 hours ago
London Police posted images of alleged rioters on Flickr, and asked the public to help identify them. (London Metropolitan Police/Flickr) British police, trying to catch instigators of the London riots, fought back with ...
The London Riots: Social Media's Latest Watershed Moment
PC Magazine - Peter Pachal - 9 hours ago
The police pursuing rioters in London have a new ally: social networks. How Twitter, Flickr, and their brethren are making the world a safer place. By Peter Pachal A city descends into chaos and rioting following a terrible loss ...
Counterswarm in England riots: role of social media
Looters hunted down via websites
Sydney Morning Herald - 7 hours ago
LONDON: Some Britons have taken to social networking sites to expose rioters who went on the rampage, posting photographs of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles. Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of ...
London Riots 2011: Violence Caught on Surveillance Cameras
ABC News - Ned Potter - 9 hours ago
London Police posted images of alleged rioters on Flickr, and asked the public to help identify them. (London Metropolitan Police/Flickr) British police, trying to catch instigators of the London riots, fought back with ...
The London Riots: Social Media's Latest Watershed Moment
PC Magazine - Peter Pachal - 9 hours ago
The police pursuing rioters in London have a new ally: social networks. How Twitter, Flickr, and their brethren are making the world a safer place. By Peter Pachal A city descends into chaos and rioting following a terrible loss
Sydney Morning Herald - 7 hours ago
LONDON: Some Britons have taken to social networking sites to expose rioters who went on the rampage, posting photographs of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles. Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of ...
London Riots 2011: Violence Caught on Surveillance Cameras
ABC News - Ned Potter - 9 hours ago
London Police posted images of alleged rioters on Flickr, and asked the public to help identify them. (London Metropolitan Police/Flickr) British police, trying to catch instigators of the London riots, fought back with ...
The London Riots: Social Media's Latest Watershed Moment
PC Magazine - Peter Pachal - 9 hours ago
The police pursuing rioters in London have a new ally: social networks. How Twitter, Flickr, and their brethren are making the world a safer place. By Peter Pachal A city descends into chaos and rioting following a terrible loss
Counterswarm in England Riots: "Vigilantes' join 16,000 police on London streets"
This report from the Independent, as with similar reports on the same topic, might be misleading because the question is which came first: the larger police deployment or the appearance of citizen patrols (called 'vigiliantes' at first by the British media). I will have to dig through the old news reports to nail down the answer, although I'm leaning toward the answer that it was the patrols. In any case, the phenomenon of the citzen patrols that arose during the rioting is, I believe, a true counter-swarm tactic albeit an unplanned one.
Counter-swarm in England Riots: Communities use social media to take streets back from the mobs
Daily Telegraph report.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/communities-use-social-media-to-take-back-the-streets-from-mob/story-e6freuy9-1226112382882
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/communities-use-social-media-to-take-back-the-streets-from-mob/story-e6freuy9-1226112382882
England riots: Rioters target police dog
Several police dogs suffered injuries during the rioting; some of the injuries were 'accidential;' e.g., the dogs' paws were cut up when they walked with unprotected paws on large amounts of broken glass, some were inflicted when the rioters targeted the dogs. One attack on a dog that really hit a sore nerve in the UK for its cruelty was reported by the Daily Mail. I hold the police responsible to some extent because once the police realized they were taking the dogs into a veritable war zone without giving them protective gear, they should have stopped using the dogs.
England riots: Headlines about uproar over historian David Starkey's remarks
UK RIOTS: David Starkey backed in furore over 'whites and black ...
Daily Mail - Jack Doyle - Simon Cable - 8 hours ago
'Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. ...
Historian's racist remarks on UK riots spark uproar: NewsDay
UK riots: BBC under pressure to apologise for David Starkey's ... Telegraph.co.uk
Daily Mail - Jack Doyle - Simon Cable - 8 hours ago
'Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. ...
Historian's racist remarks on UK riots spark uproar: NewsDay
UK riots: BBC under pressure to apologise for David Starkey's ... Telegraph.co.uk
"It was the sheer scale and speed with which the attacks took place across London last night that was truly unprecedented"
Tuesday August 9, 2011:
"Stretched beyond belief": Met police braces for more violence
There will be 13,000 police officers on duty in London tonight, as the Metropolitan police face unprecedented levels of disorder across the capital.
One senior officer said the Met was "stretched beyond belief" as it struggles to cope with violence across the city.
The Met is receiving reinforcements from nine other police forces, as well as British Transport police and City of London police, but it is far from clear the extra numbers will be sufficient to contain more rioting expected tonight.
"It was the sheer scale and speed with which the attacks took place across London last night that was truly unprecedented," deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh told BBC1's Breakfast programme.
"From Harrow in the north through to Croydon in the south, East Ham in the east to Ealing in the west, there were multiple fast-acting groups and the Met was "stretched beyond belief in a way that it has never experienced before".
The police are considering using more extreme tactics to control marauding mobs.
In Lavender Hill, the Metropolitan police used armoured police vehicles to push back over 150 people, bringing the area under control.
The tactic's success means it is now being considered elsewhere as required, the Met said.
"We are using tactics flexibly to respond to the disorder we are still seeing in different areas of the capital," Commander Christine Jones said.
"Anyone involved in criminality should be under no illusion that we will pursue you."
Despite stretched resources there were over 200 arrests last night, with CCTV examinations taking place during the night. There were a further 100 arrests in Birmingham.
Former Scotland Yard commander Roy Ramm warned that the Met could lose control of London's streets.
"That has to be a possibility and the home secretary and [Met] commissioner are going to have to make some difficult decisions," the Express newspaper quoted him as saying.
Headlines about England Riots, various sources
England riots: Theresa May under fire over proposed police curfew powers
The Guardian
Police powers are not the issue but officer numbers are, say rights groups. Link to this video Human rights groups have expressed alarm over the home secretary's proposal to give the police new powers to create "no-go" areas to clear the streets ...
Related:
UK Police May Require Curfew Powers to Tackle Riots, May Says: BusinessWeek
UK police foiled riots at Olympic venues: Herald Sun
In Depth: Politics and police prove volatile mix in Britain: Reuters
Wikipedia:2011 England riots
The Guardian
Police powers are not the issue but officer numbers are, say rights groups. Link to this video Human rights groups have expressed alarm over the home secretary's proposal to give the police new powers to create "no-go" areas to clear the streets ...
Related:
UK Police May Require Curfew Powers to Tackle Riots, May Says: BusinessWeek
UK police foiled riots at Olympic venues: Herald Sun
In Depth: Politics and police prove volatile mix in Britain: Reuters
Wikipedia:2011 England riots
London Riots: "Lies of Left reduced to ashes"
Aug 16, 2011:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH16Dj06.html
London riots reduce lies of left to ashes
By Chan Akya
Asia Times Online
A lazy and semi-educated Chinese man will probably not get married given the country's ratio of males to females; and even if he did, life would be made hell by the curses of his mother-in-law. A lazy Indian is likely to decline in society to the point where all support systems fail him. leading to an early death or a violent one. There are no lazy Africans because they wouldn't survive to adulthood.
A lazy European on the other hand, gets to sit at home and watch television while receiving benefits from his government. On his television over the past week, he would have seen unfamiliar scenes - rioting in the streets of London and other major cities across England, where youth apparently much like himself can be seen running from shop to shop grabbing the latest consumer gadgets and other easily sold items. For the average lazy European on government benefits, the pictures may have been amusing and probably even shocking.
August is a time for Europeans to go on holiday, vacating their cities for the influx of Arabs and Asians fleeing the oppressive summers of their geography. This summer, the veterans of the Arab Spring might have brought more than their dollars to London, as events for the past few days showed the scale of ugliness that were seen earlier in the year in Cairo, Tripoli and Manama.
It was delicious irony for various left-leaning, anti-imperialist commentators in the British press to make comparisons between the age of the English empires and the sudden echoes from its former colonies on the streets of its capital.
The scenes may be familiar, but the situation on the ground couldn't be more different. For what echoed in the streets of London wasn't the pro-democracy protests of the Arab world, but the portents of the failed welfare state to come. Terms such as disaffected youth, protesters, hooligans all do gross injustice to the description of the phenomenon that actually erupted in London over the past week.
The ghost of Marx ... and Keynes
Perhaps it is Europe's fate that while Karl Marx was buried quietly with the implosion of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the path towards a post-Keynesian world may well be littered with copious doses of violence as a civil war looms between those who produce value and those on state welfare.
The ideological battle being waged now does have its foundations in the post-war reconstruction of Europe wherein governments had to attend to mass impoverishment and nutritional issues in the population.
The expansion of the state as part of the social contract meant increased taxes relative to the rest of the world. Some, like the Scandinavian states, embraced comically high marginal rates of taxation at over 75% from time to time in a bid to provide equality at all costs among the populace. Language barriers and a general stability of the population kept these various experiments - like alternating versions of botanical gardens - in check.
As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Grand French Project - the European Union - took root, the bad habits of the French were to be transferred to all. Elites ruled over the less privileged, but in return shuffled enough subsidies to ensure that the mortal coil was never insufferable. That particular lesson had been learnt well enough when the Bastille fell even if the other supposed achievements such as democracy were quietly emasculated.
Soon, the various European experiments had to be integrated under the French banner and, as with all lies of the left, it was always the "sum of" mistakes rather than a choice between. Thus, for example, Italian workers had strong rights while the country's farmers received very little in the way of subsidies; after the European project, workers had stronger rights and farmers received generous subsidies. Spaniards had long holidays but awful salaries; after joining the EU, their holidays got longer still while wages soared.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, after having embraced Labour reforms following the defeat of Winston Churchill in the aftermath of World War II, had created social programs that produced the most immediate benefits, such as vast improvements in health metrics across the population.
The reconstruction of the country after the war helped to stabilize its economy from the depravations of the Nazis and, sure enough, the credit for the achievements was laid at the door of the Keynesian policies of the government; a case of happenstance being confused with causality.
However, the slide to militant trade unionism soon damaged industry, and with the steady collapse of export competitiveness in state-owned sectors and the steady decline of the pound sterling as a reserve currency of any note by the end of the 1960s, the grounds for a crisis were at hand.
The oil crisis of the 1970s alongside crippling strikes would have felled the UK; but the discovery and exploitation of North Sea oil in the early 1970s saved the day followed as it was in short measure by the advent of Margaret Thatcher and her structural reforms.
The politics of the left, though, were never too far behind. and following from the evisceration of industrial capacity in various manufacturing sectors, time was ripe by the mid-1990s for a different set of politics. So it came with "New" Labour in the late 1990s, leading to substantial increases in welfare spending, particularly in the most broken parts of society - single mothers, drug addicts and the like.
The major impetus for the UK to go down this path was its apparent desire to "integrate" closer with Europe where such norms had been in force for decades.
Why not sooner
So much for the background; but why, when various smaller countries with similar financing problems as the Europeans tend to blow up rather quickly - the Latin American descendants of European colonialists hit the wall pretty quickly after the first oil shock and its subsequent US recession by the early 1980s - did the Europeans manage to hold on much longer?
The answer is that they were much bigger to start with as economies - the UK, France, Germany and Italy are seriously large economies - and that also means that the relative increase in debt since the 1990s was slow and methodical. Indeed, until the advent of the 2007 financial crisis, overall European debt stocks only rose around 4% annually - high, but not high enough to panic the world into action.
The second part of the answer was extraneous factors that overwhelmingly helped the Europeans, ranging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the peace dividend it caused (smaller armies for one), the technology boom of the 1990s, and the rise of China and other emerging economies (adding to demand for otherwise surplus European goods like cars and ships).
Ironically, it was Germany, which had to face its own sudden increase in debt levels following the absorption of the former Eastern Germany in 1989, that enacted significant reforms aimed at reducing the stock of debt and increasing productivity measures; in essence being the only European economy that entered the new millennium with the right strategy.
The Germans suffered privations while the rest of Europe boomed. France and others who had suffered against the Germans in World War II took the signs of progress to mean a resounding vote of confidence in their economic systems, when it was once again a case of mistaking happenstance for causality.
Sovereign crises
Today's debt crisis in Europe is but the Ghost of Christmas past. Those of the present and the future are yet to visit the old continent. This is because sovereign debt funding is simply a function of confidence reposed in the ability of one people to pay by usually another people. Thus, Chinese buying Greek debt is as much a calculation on the part of the former as it is of the latter that a failure to repay to the Chinese will have unhappy consequences in other areas.
The most telling aspect of the current crisis management (or whatever passes for it in Europe) is the simple observation that not a single voice has been raised against the continuance of the welfare state. Rather, the discussions have all been around the mechanics of adjustments - does Greece default, and when it does what is the settlement price on credit default swaps - rather than its core logic.
Asians and other savers watching the process are not fooled as the Europeans may think they are. Riots in Greece exposed the population's severe opposition to any austerity plans, and guarantee that the road to reform will be paved with Molotov cocktails in that country. Seeing the rioters, German politicians withdrew some of their harshest demands for austerity, subscribing to the French idea that piecemeal achievement was better than none at all.
That particular brand of nonsense has now been exploded in the streets of London. Here in an economy that is outside the euro, and hence free from the structural constraints, are the same rioters with apparently the same complaints against any adjustments to the welfare state (it is another matter that cuts have hardly taken place yet in the UK). The UK is a large enough economy that its totality can be compared to the aggregate reality of the European economy.
That reality isn't one of whether austerity will succeed or not - it is whether the European welfare state will survive.
The alternative of no reform is no longer available to the Europeans because there just isn't enough additional savings being generated in Asia to absorb the increased debt loads of both the US and Europe. So savers have a real choice - to vote for the economy that they see has the best chance of succeeding in the long run. As of now, that is not Europe but rather the US (much as that choice isn't cast in stone, much as Republicans and others like to pretend otherwise).
To confront the idea of cutting welfare payments though, Europeans have to come to grips with the idea that not everyone is entitled to everything - housing, education and what have you. The youth burning shops and looting homes in London had been given houses and free education to boot and yet there they were, exercising and reveling in the kind of anarchy around which broadly disenfranchised and perennially looted peoples in Cairo and Damascus were coalescing.
If there is no absence of ability to address basic needs and the environment exists for hardworking people to succeed, why then are the rioters in London showing their ingratitude towards the welfare state? The question boils down to one of negative and positive reinforcement strategies: for too long the left in Europe have argued that society's failures must be embraced rather than cast out for life's hard knocks. The burning shops of London are proof that leftist thinking is dangerously wrong - the rioters aren't sated by the welfare state, they are spoiled by it.
What is needed is the fear that a failure to work hard and so one will lead to social downward mobility. It is the absence of this fear that was most visible in the streets of London last week. Careless violence and dismantling the properties of others will likely visit other European capitals over the next few years as the feral youth of Keynesian benefits enter the economy completely confused about their worth and role.
The Chinese and Indians buying sovereign debt these days do not care for the structural deficits being run by either America or the EU: this is money down the drain, which will never be recovered by revenues unless a miraculous growth trajectory can be found.
For their money, the structural deficit is more galling in Europe than in America simply because of the sheer unfamiliarity the welfare state holds for them. Therefore for Europeans, the choice is clear - cut the welfare state today, or the Chinese and Indians will do it for you tomorrow.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH16Dj06.html