PM declares war on his broken society

Morning Star
Louise Nousratpour

David Cameron

David Cameron declared a "fightback" against the "moral collapse" of Britain today and dismissed warnings that the coalition's austerity measures were behind last week's devastating riots.

In what was billed as a fightback speech after the turmoil, the Prime Minister said: "These riots were not about government cuts - they were directed at high street stores, not Parliament."

Mr Cameron insisted that while there were local triggers, most of the disturbances had been down to "pure criminality" and "a twisted moral code."

Speaking at a youth centre in Oxfordshire, Mr Cameron said coalition ministers would be reviewing all policies for mending the "broken society" over the next few weeks, ranging from education to health and safety rules.

But rather than rethinking the cuts, Mr Cameron declared his intention to put "rocket boosters" under his plans to raid the health and safety rules and water down the Human Rights Act, which he said had undermined personal responsibility and common sense.

He also said he wanted to give "power back to people" by allowing individuals to buy local public services.

And he will crack down on a culture of "laziness" by scaling back the welfare state and speed up the expansion of academies.

Mr Cameron gave his speech at a youth project in Witney, where an unimpressed 17-year-old Jake Parkinson told the press: "He should stop blaming it on everyone else, he should stop living in la-la land.

"If he was doing his job right, this wouldn't be happening."

Ed Miliband renewed his calls for a full-scale inquiry and accused Mr Cameron of being "scared" to look into the real causes of social breakdown.

Speaking at his old school, Haverstock Comprehensive in north London, the Labour leader linked the widespread looting and disorder to the banking crisis, MPs' expenses scandal and phone hacking.
"Children's ideas of right and wrong don't just come from their parents and we can't honestly say the greed, selfishness and gross irresponsibility that shocked us all so deeply is confined to the looters or even to their parents.

"The bankers who took millions while destroying people's savings. The MPs who fiddled their expenses.

"The people who hacked phones at the expense of victims - greedy, selfish and immoral."

Communist Party of Britain chairman Bill Greenshields said: "The destruction and violence being wreaked on working-class communities by the Con-Dem government's 'austerity measures' is far greater than anything we have seen in recent days.

"What we are seeing in our cities reflects the anger and frustration of millions of people, who see the richest and most powerful sections of society getting richer, while they use their economic crisis to attack working people."

He called on the working class to bring an end to the Con-Dem government.

"This will need co-ordinated and increasingly general industrial action, with active and united community support."

Britain’s Riots: Thuggery, Looting, Lawlessness... By the Ruling Class

Global Research
Finian Cunningham

After a conflagration of arson attacks, riots and looting in several British cities, including the capital, London, there is a sense of order having been restored from a massive mobilisation of police forces.

There now follows the tracking down and prosecution of individuals involved in the mayhem. Conservative Prime Minister is leading “the fight back” to punish anyone who has inflicted damage and destruction to Britain’s society.

The events have visibly shocked the political establishment of all parties, police chiefs and the mainstream media. But what should be more shocking is the myopic and incredibly banal commentary that is being offered to “explain” the outburst of street disturbances and violence.

As pundits sit in comfy television studios trading inane insights about the “evils” of individual immorality, criminality, dysfunctional families, gang culture – in the background, so to speak, are the glaring signs scrolling across the screens of the cause of this societal breakdown. And yet the preponderant signs escape the mental radar of pundits and politicians alike.

The fact that the capitalist economic system is in worldwide meltdown is not even registered in the mainstream commentary. This is the system that the mainstream political parties have facilitated and fawned over, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, and which has resulted in social devastation across Britain while the corporate and financial elite has ransacked economic resources. This system of legalised looting has been going on for decades, but certainly took on a precipitous dynamic starting with Cameron’s Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s. Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were merely purveyors of the same dynamic.

In surveying today’s Britain, Karl Marx words are so right: “An accumulation of wealth at one pole of society indicates an accumulation of misery and overwork at the other”. That is the hallmark of capitalism in today’s Britain, the US and Europe.

All other problems are largely secondary in causation. Crime, racist policing, disorder, the lack of police budgets to restore order (so ironic), alienation and self-destruction, and so many other ills including the mobilisation of resources to fund illegal wars – most of our present day problems flow from the tap root of dysfunction that is the capitalist economy.

Speaking in the House of Commons Thursday, Prime Minister Cameron's “explanation” for the outbreak of street disturbances across England demonstrates a total ignorance and poverty of understanding on his part of the nature of the breakdown in his society. He blames it on “criminality pure and simple” and “pockets of sickness” and “lack of individual morality and responsibility”.

This view is largely echoed in the British political establishment of all parties and the media.

The looting, thievery and lawlessness that Cameron so condemns is but the reflection at the street level of British society of what is taking place on a much greater scale at the upper echelons of government and the economy.

Despite the appearance of pinstripe suits and well-groomed accents, we can, if we are honest, see decades of looting and thievery of economic and financial resources by corporate elites aided and abetted by Labour and Conservative governments. The taxpayer bailout of corrupt banks initiated by Labour PM Gordon Brown and now overseen by Cameron, paid for in large part by austerity in public spending cuts, is but the latest manifestation of official robbing of the majority to swell the already outrageous wealth of the ruling elite class.

Cameron Exploring Crackdown on Social Media After Riots

New York Times

Eric Pfanner

PARIS — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said Thursday that the government, seeking to prevent a repeat of riots and looting in London and other British cities this week, might bar suspected troublemakers from using social media and other digital communications tools.

Mr. Cameron said that Theresa May, the Home secretary, would meet with executives of the Web companies Facebook and Twitter, as well as Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, to discuss possible measures that could be put in place.

“Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media,” Mr. Cameron told Parliament during a special debate on the riots. “Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

“And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

While Mr. Cameron said that the Internet and sophisticated mobile phones had been used to coordinate the violence, his call for curbs drew protests from free-speech campaigners, saying they were reminiscent of moves by Arab rulers to block digital communications during anti-government uprisings this year.

Free-speech groups said restrictions on the use of social media or smartphones would be difficult to enforce and could violate basic freedoms.

“It seems like a bizarre and kind of knee-jerk reaction by the government,” said Padraig Reidy, news editor of Index on Censorship. “We’ve seen this kind of thing time and time again, especially with young people, when it comes to technology. Now it’s social networks and smartphones. A few years ago it was video games. Before that it was horror films.”


“More recently, we’ve seen this kind of thing in Egypt,” he said, where the government last winter moved to block access to the Internet and mobile phone networks as protesters took to the streets. “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. These things weren’t caused by Twitter or BlackBerry.”

Index on Censorship said that the police should be allowed access to messages related to specific investigations, but should not be permitted to monitor or suspend communications.

The police said Thursday that they had arrested three people in Southampton, England, on suspicion of using BlackBerry Messenger or Twitter to encourage rioting.

The Guardian newspaper has published examples of “broadcasts” that BlackBerry users sent to their contacts, urging them to join in the looting and arranging gatherings. The BlackBerry Messenger service is difficult for the law-enforcement authorities to track.

“If you’re down for making money, we’re about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight!!” one of these broadcasts read. “I don’t care what ends you’re from, we’re personally inviting you to come and get it in.”

While the BlackBerry used to be seen mostly in the hands of business executives, its security features and low price, relative to competing devices, have helped it gain new adherents. According to Ofcom, the British telecommunications regulator, it is the most popular smartphone among British teenagers, with a 37 percent market share.


Britain is not the only place where BlackBerry Messenger has come under scrutiny from law enforcement officials and politicians over its tight security. After being threatened with a ban on its services in countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Research In Motion has made certain concessions.

The company declined to comment on Mr. Cameron’s remarks, falling back on a statement it issued earlier in the week, in which it said: “As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the U.K. we comply with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and U.K. police forces.”

Neither the government nor Research In Motion has provided details about this cooperation, or about what, if any, information might have been turned over to the police.

Libyan Government Says Cameron Regime in UK Must Step Down Amid National Rebellion

PanAfrica News

Tripoli - The regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday called for British Prime Minister David Cameron to step down, saying he had "lost all legitimacy" because of the riots shaking Britain.

"Cameron and his government must leave after the popular uprising against them and the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations by police," official news agency Jana quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim as saying.

"Cameron and his government have lost all legitimacy," he said.

"These demonstrations show that the British people reject this government which is trying to impose itself through force."

Kaaim called on the UN "Security Council and the international community to not stay with its arms crossed in the face of the flagrant violation of the rights of the British people".

Nightly riots which began in London and quickly spread to other major cities have gripped Britain since Saturday when an angry crowd marched to demand justice after 29-year-old Marc Duggan was shot dead by police in London.

Britain and France are spearheading Nato's aerial bombing campaign against the Gaddafi regime since March, when the United Nations approved action to protect Libyan civilians.