Mark Duggan, Police Fit-Ups, Water Cannons, Boris Johnson, Riots, Looting, Drugs, Chipping Norton, and Theresa May

The simple truth: we don’t know who to believe any more

By John Ward: Most bloggers, threaders, mob orchestrators, Loony Left and Risible Right would like to convince you that every issue is over-complicated by the other side, and in fact quite easy to understand….if you just believe their version. Which is why almost everything they write is unconvincing tosh.

Suggest that the truth might be different again or somewhere inbetween – or even worse, disappointingly absent – and you can become anything from smeared and ostracised to pilloried as “sitting on the fence”. The whole world loves being in a lynch mob: it’s so much more in keeping with our wired hunting instinct than quietly letting the left cortex be dominant for just a few hours.

Two years ago, I posted on the subject of Mark Duggan’s death at the hands of the Metropolitan Police. Duggan was known to carry guns and be a senior dealer in at least one gang, say the police. His family remain convinced that the shootout was an execution. What else were the two sides going to say? My verdict today is the same as then: both the Duggans of this world and the Met play with fire in a regular basis. They earn our disgust. Why should they be surprised?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.
For the event took place in London, a City run by the Mayor, Boris Johnson. Johnson stands accused of trying to spike the phone-hacking Inquiry, and dragging his leaden feet on the politically charged Elm House Inquiry. He also faces allegations of corrupt or unwise dealings in relation to Yeo’s taxis, the Earl’s Court development, Rupert Murdoch’s school donations, and Bob Diamond’s role in the London Cycles scheme.

BoJo is known to have ambitions to turn London into a sort of Singaporean City State, and both the Tottenham and Croydon riots happened on his watch. This week, it has been revealed that he is broadly in favour of using water cannon against rioters. Now there’s a pattern to think about.

But as always, there is another side. For some rioting is merely looting by any other name. I watched it first hand while resident in Brixton thirty years ago. Mark Duggan’s best mate, for example, was so “gutted” by the man’s death, he felt there was no alternative but to grab £100 in coins from a change giver, and then the contents of the till at an amusement arcade. I too have often thought about breaking open my neighbour’s safe when I hear Jeremy Hunt’s voice. It must be some sort of chain reaction as yet little understood by neuroscientists.

To the Guardian, a gathering that turns nasty is a demonstration insensitively policed. To the Daily Mail, it’s black hoodlums needing an excuse to steal Whitey’s electro-gadgets. Neither side ever budges a millimetre in the debate.

However, there are yet more complications. For last year, Theresa May said she didn’t want “to see water cannons on the streets of Britain” so now what will she do – tell Boris to naff off? Nerr-nerr-ne-nerr-nerr, what a wanker. So what does the Left want her to do, switch to dum-dum bullets?

But on the other hand, what do nasty gangs deal in, the Right asks? Drugs! And what does the fast set do in Chipping Norton, the Left asks? Take drugs! So allegedly much so in fact, these drugs are now endemic in the UK’s professional and politico-media class, allegedly: thus nothing will be done to stop these horrible gangs, otherwise the Chancellor might have to start sniffing glue.

Well, there might be something to do…like pulling a dealer over and, when he reaches for his sock, blowing him away. He kept his phone in his sock, say the Left. Funny place to keep your phone, say I. There’s a gun at the scene. It was planted, say the Left. He threw it there when he saw the cops, say the Right. He pointed it at me, says the cop who shot him.

We will never be sure about the truth, and the reason is simple: if everyone spins (aka, lies) 24/7, then before long nobody knows who to believe. Black Yardies are always, once dead, fine upstanding fathers who loved their kids. Badly-trained cops are always, when accused, officers with an unblemished record of policing.

Part of the problem is always that the community leaders conduct a media prosecution, and the police conduct a secretive defence. Frankly, I find both sets of conclusions dubious. As I say, there is no taking of responsibility, merely the passing of judgement and blame.

Where does all this get us to? Sadly, it’s nowhere we haven’t been fifty times before at The Slog. But this morning, if I may, I’d like to be more blunt than usual. I’ll probably wind up alienating almost everyone. But the truth is the truth. It’s a more precious commodity than the adoration of crowds.

The black community-to-Guardian-Libero-Left dreamers created and nurtured the bollocks about all black people being jolly nice really and Britain being “systemically racist” for over fifty years from roughly 1968 to the present day. The business-to-Hard-Right nasties created and nurtured the bollocks about a squeaky-clean police force, and neoliberal economics being the answer to all our ills, from roughly 1975 to the present day.

At one time, they were both at least partly right. Now, they are both totally wrong – because their own dogged, pig-headed, hypocritical mendacity over four decades has caused them to be so….and plonked us, the People, in the most appalling socio-economic mess. Black community leaders play victim to the media gallery, and the police play up to the political class. They both want the power, but neither wants the responsibility. It is another story from the never-ending annals of Fool Britannia.

What I would like to say this morning is sod ideology, let’s bring on social anthropology; sod tribal politics defending the indefensible, let’s show how decency can be the Resistance online; and sod political corruption, let’s see some good governance from clean people.

But whenever I suggest that, the response is not what you might call awe-inspiring. And when it doesn’t work, there’s always the odd pillock on the threads saying “Haha, told you – now look at you, taken your ball home to sulk”. The world is, largely, peopled by linesmen.

There are millions of Left and Right out there who scoff at the idea of ditching the past in favour of united resistance now, and something fresh for the future.. What we need, they tell us, is more of what we used to have. You know, like more 3 day weeks, more poll tax riots, more Railton Roads, more strike-led inflation, more neoliberalism, and more socialism. Well here are three simple facts which, in a world where nobody knows who to believe any more, you are forced to believe.

Number of MPs who have ever studied social anthropology at degree level? Zero. Number of Tories prepared to come out and call for Murdoch to be deported? Zero. Number of Labour MP’s prepared to condemn Ed Balls’s role in the Co-Op-to-hedge funds scandal? Zero.

I rest my case. All you naysayers – rest happy on the sofa. Let’s rest on our laurels. It’s what we British do best.

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