A Tribute to Britain's Rebels of the Future

by Dallas Darling

(August 17, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is said that John Stuart Mill once rebuked Jeremy Bentham for being interested only in the question "Is it true?" Mill believed a more significant question was "What is the meaning of it?"(1) (Recall that Mill was a British philosopher and economist who believed in individual liberties instead of unlimited state control. He was also a proponent of Utilitarianism, or "the greatest good for the greatest number.")

When British rioters flooded the streets over deferred opportunities and dreams, Prime Minister David Cameron should have asked "What is the meaning of it?" Instead, ruling elites, backed by powerful corporate entities and financial institutions, sent thousands of security forces to arrest and beat "looters" and "gang" members. Social networking was banned, houses indiscriminately raided. Youthful dissent was crushed and criminalized.

Discontent and grievances over social, economic and political conditions and disparities in Britain is not new. The contentious but enlightening exchange between Mill and Bentham occurred during the Industrial Revolution. It was an era that disrupted families by forcing them from their small farms and imposing a harsh and regimental factory system, one that favored Britain's aristocracy and monopolists and large land owners.

To survive, family members, including children and youth, were forced to labor for long hours and low pay in squalid conditions and unsafe work environments. The factory system, a kind of techno-natural selection, caused mass unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and death. Strikes, protests and riots were common. Britain's rulers combated public disturbances with penal colonies, mass hangings, work houses, and even massacres.

Behind the recent rioting throughout Britain, or the meaning of it, is a large neglected youth culture. While Britain's ruling elites are able to send their children to expensive and private schools that afford them with the best education and opportunities, many British youth endure a lack of education and employment opportunities. A corporate and violent culture is stripping away their dignity and self-worth and sense of belonging.

This demeaning process, this dehumanization, is at the root of gang cultures in Britain. Unlike the British Government, gangs provide opportunities and a sense of belonging and value. And unlike British communities and families that have been devastated due to privatization and their jobs being outsourced, or their young being sent-off to fight foreign wars for Britain's aristocracy, gangs have provide cohesion and security.

A sharp increase in dyslexia and illiteracy among youth, coupled with emotions of painful disconnectedness and hopelessness, has swept across Britain. Due to budget cuts and austerity measures in order to fund oil cartels and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, along with overseas military and naval bases, many communities have been left without youth clubs, recreation centers, youth programs, and job training.

In this abandoned, unstructured and criminalized youth culture, consumerism, material coveting and violence become paths to greater social, economic and political opportunities. For some, police show racism against black youth and those of other ethnic and religious minorities. While there have been too many unaccounted deaths in police custody, Britain's ruling elites, corporate leaders, and military display criminal thuggery.

But Britain is known for this historical paradox, this hypocritical conflict, between its very wealthy and parliamentary classes and its very poor and working classes. In Britannia's war of myths, the nobles who attempted to overthrow and kill King John for raising taxes to fund his expensive wars are renowned. The Puritans and Oliver Cromwell are lauded everywhere for beheading King Charles and ending Britain's divine right of absolute rule.

But Levellers, Luddites, working rioters and suffragettes, were (and are) always met with suspicion. Cromwell brutally suppressed the Levellers for merely wanting economic and political rights. The masked Luddites, who tried to regain their stolen lands and then broke factory machines to save their pitiful jobs, were hunted down and killed. While surviving rioters were sent to penal colonies, suffragettes were painfully and forcibly-fed in prison.

Cameron and parliamentary rulers should know better than to meet disenchanted rioters and outraged protesters protesting injustices with more brutal crackdowns, militancy and censorship. This hypocritical conflict is evident as Cameron maintains his power by using Murdoch's electronic empire. Media perception becomes the new reality. Behavior is socially engineered. And professional "gangs" are sent to die in Central Asia for resources.

For Britain, it is one thing for the aristocracy to overthrow oppressive regimes, but it is another thing to be overthrown by poor rioters and those politically disenfranchised. This time, though, there may not be enough poor houses, penal colonies or nooses. Ghosts from the past may reappear and overthrow Britain's corporate ignorance and want. And on Cameron's Animal Farm, how long will unequal animals continue to sleep outside?

As William Wordsworth wrote: "Like you I grieve.../Of this great change such outrage done to nature as compels/The indignant power to justify herself,/Yea, to avenge her violated rights,/ For England's bane./ Men, maidens, youths,/ Mothers and little children, boys and girls,/ Enter, and each the wonted task resumes/Within this temple, where is offered up/To Gain, the master idol of the realm,/Perpetual Sacrifice."(2)

What is the meaning then, of Britain's youthful rioters? It might just be that they are tired of perpetual sacrifice, and that they may be the rebels of the future who establish economic and political equality and a society where everyone finally belongs.

(Note: A special thanks to Heidi, a Worldnews Correspondent, who has been in Britain and covering the youthful riots and public disturbances.)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling. He can be reached at darling@wn.com)

(1) Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Idea Of Poverty: England In The Early Industrial Age. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1983., p. 9.

(2) Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against The Future. New York, New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995., p. 24.