10 August 2011

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Thatchers Great Grandchildren

Leon Fleming

Thatchers Great Grandchildren Leon Fleming The waste and desolation have been spread out before us on television screens, fed by cameras hovering in the sky and others fixed to the sides of buildings. It may be that seemingly spasmodic eruptions of demolition and crazed explosions of destructive energy have diverted our eyes from the sociological impact of the moment. Like everyone I know, I hate to see the violence and the theft, and the burning down of buildings and the victimisation of the innocent, but that is not what I refer to when I talk about the waste and desolation. I refer to the perpetrators of these crimes. Criminals, yes; undeniably. But these are our forgotten youth, a fragment of a neglected generation, whose overriding sense of hyper-individualism has thrown them into a mess of a situation which has become so large and so terrifying because of the sheer numbers of teenagers involved; and yet they do not realise their collective impact, because each of them measures the worth of what they do only in terms of him or herself. And there is the waste; there is the desolation. That so much energy, so much force of a mass of people be wasted on mere violence is what makes me weep; for who knows what they might have achieved had they took their cause and strove forward with it held in their adolescent fists. They might have done anything they had the mind to do, had the they stopped to think about what they were doing; and yet they chose to fill their pockets with iphones and their arms with forty-two inch, 3D-enabled, HD, Internet-ready, future proofed, colour LCD televisions that they can now switch on and see their own faces shining out on the news. These already unwanted children are now hated and derided by the general public. This generation of yobs out on the streets, smashing the place up are perhaps for the most part the first generation to have watched parents who have had no opportunity for real work, struggle through with broken pride, managing to carve out a seemingly normal existence by defrauding the benefit system here and there, bit of a job, bit of tax credit and maybe if theyre lucky , a little bit of under-the-counter cash-inhand work. What many of these youths have been brought up through is hard-nosed day-to-day survival. So is it any wonder that this is not an adult life they would relish for themselves; is it any wonder then that they dont see the social impact that looting has, or the harm in the idea of obtaining something for nothing? What is the point in qualifications, in working hard, in being a decent citizen of the country when the best they can hope for is a life on benefits and perhaps, if theyre lucky, a job that doesnt quite pay the bills and is never going to set anyones soul on fire? Where have the dreams gone; the aspirations? Theyre laying trodden into the street along with the broken glass. I imagine that to anyone who has played a part in this violence, I sound patronising; and to anyone who have had to live amidst it and has suffered because of it, I will

10 August 2011

th

Thatchers Great Grandchildren

Leon Fleming

sound disconnected. And perhaps I am described accurately by both of these words, but Im something else as well; Im disappointed. Amidst the organisation made through social media of this anarchic destruction, these scurrying violent entities have failed to use their electronic tools to any proper purpose. For instead of just dispersed individualism, they have proved that they could, had they seen the worth of it, have used this technology and this great pool of anger to raise a very real insurrection. They could have walked together on Parliament, occupied the Palace of Westminster, while their counterparts in other cities take over the town halls. They could have demanded to be heard; to shout from our sacred halls of democracy, with a refusal to budge, and they could have really made a change. To force their generation to be listened to, show that they will not be content to sign-on every couple of weeks, while watching the country, their country, be sold away to banks and foreign investors; unemployment going through the roof, and all the great social institutions of welfare; the NHS, education, state pensions, being dismantled and the pieces being cast abroad so that the cost of ever putting it all back together would be massively prohibitive. But they didnt do that, they didnt take responsibility for their country, unlike the real citizens who have come out of their homes to clean up the mess the morning after a generation lost their minds. They do not take responsibility, these youths; they only take. And here is where our current Tory, sorry coalition, government should be proud. Here is where they pat themselves on the back, even though their Big Society has failed, and even though a bunch of kids were able to get one over on them. Because what they have instead is proof that what they perpetrated the last time around, back in the eighties when their goddess of iron ruled her kingdom, really did set the county on a brand new track; it really did work, and the last few days have proved it. Without the massive sociological U-turn made in Thatchers eighties towards survivalism, extreme conservatism; the hyper-individualism of these mindless looting scavengers would not have occurred. Instead their anger towards the police would have been turned on the police, their anger at a government and society that had destined them to be derelict before they had even been born, would have been turned against the government, en-mass, as a real strike against the status quo. But instead they took their compensation from the communities that suffer just the same as they do, and they swapped their dignity for the latest in electronic gadgetry, designer clothes, and a whole lot of destruction. If Mrs Thatcher, now rocking half-stupefied in her chair, has enough of her mental resources still intact to have witnessed and understood what the country has just been through, then her heart must be swelling with pride for these youths; for they are her great, Great British grandchildren.