Erstellt am: 11. 8. 2011 - 15:06 Uhr

A history of violence?

Reality Check: the current riots in the context of past experience, and freedom of speech campaigner Heather Brooke talks about her time in the camp of Julian Assange

Vigilantism in the new word on the street

Amazon is reporting a worrying trend. Since the riots began in London there has been an increase in the sales of baseball bats.

The new word on the street is vigilantism. People exercising their own right to protect their property, street or town. A couple of nights ago a group of Turkish shop owners in Hackney massed together and chased would-be looters down a high street, as police seemed to be reluctant to get involved.

Meanwhile a murder investigation has been launched after three people were killed in Birmingham while apparently trying to protect their families and friends from looters. According to eyewitnesses a car mounted a pavement and ran them over before speeding away.

Prime Minster David Cameron has been speaking to MPs today and the rest of the country has been tuning in, eager to hear what he has to say. It’s important that the politicians get things right and capture the mood of the country; the authorities and police were caught on the back foot when the riots began last weekend.

Riots typically last 7 days

So how long will all of this go on for? Maybe about a week according to University of Leeds sociologist, Paul Bagguley. He’s studied riots and looking at the historical records, 7 days is about the average length. What normally happens is authorities seem to get more organized and begin to crackdown harder. Potential offenders decide that it is too risky to go out onto the streets and the flashpoints die down. The weather has a lot to do with things as well. Most riots have occurred in summer months when its warmer and in fact the rain over the last 24 hours in London has helped to keep your average rioter indoors.

So is all of this unusual in England? Not really, it’s hard to find a decade over the last 200 years where there hasn't been some sort of violent civil unrest. What’s remarkable about these riots are the size of the mobs gathering; they are often relatively small and the speed at which they are able to mobilize, cause damage and disperse again is striking. This is probably one of the reasons why water cannons haven’t been used to date, which are really only effective in breaking up huge crowds that are centred in one place.

I suspect that by this time next week, we’ll have moved on and these events will be buried under a mass of police and government inquiries. Then one summer in say the year 2021 an arrest or shoot-out out will spark a new wave of dissatisfaction. And we’ll be asking the same old questions as we did in August 2011.

"The Revolution will be digitized"

Journalist and freedom of speech campaigner, Heather Brooke, talks about her investigative work and life inside the camp of Julian Assange.

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