It's an urban thing; the mayhem and looting in the UK isn't taking place in rural areas, nor is it taking place in middle class comfort zones, apart from the cathedral town of Gloucester.
By and large, it isn't a race issue, nor does religion seem to be a factor, although three men were mown down by a car as they left their mosque in Birmingham, and Asians have been confronted by Afro-Caribeans. Some argue that these are shopping riots, characterised by the looters "consumer choices".
Many of the targets are the shops in their own communities, yet one can't really describe retail shopping parks, vast estates of hypermarkets and furniture stores, as being community orientated. The looted objects of desire have been objects for idle times: large TVs, bicycles, brand name trainers and laptop computers. Several phone shops have been looted too, but it appears that the looters already had these and through Twitter and instant messages have been able to co-ordinate their raids, drifting from shopping area to shopping area as the police have belatedly arrived.
And the same media have broadcast the news, allowing instant responses from the 'bring-back-flogging' brigade as well as enabling vigilante groups to protect their areas from approaching mobs, and communities to arm themselves with brooms (pic) to clean up their areas.
Certainly, these riots have few parallels with those I witnessed in 1981. Those were a reaction to heavy handed police provocations in pockets of social deprivation and lead to massive 'urban aid' programmes initiated by Margaret Thatcher's Minister of the Environment, Michael Heseltine. I had many objections to the Tory policies at the time, and still bear many resentments against her regime, and what we are witnessing now is in many respects her legacy.
Yet, one cannot continue to complain about one figure from the past. After all, Britain has subsequently been lead by the Labour Party which, historically, was diametrically opposite the Tories in prioritising social welfare rather than personal wealth. More recently, however, they continued 'market-friendly' policies, encouraged consumerism and competitiveness rather than co-operation and community action. Politicians have proved to be venal and uncaring, and that is the first connection with Indonesia.
So-called public servants and elected politicians, at all levels of society and across this vast country, have had their snouts in the troughs of easy money. Many have continued to run businesses for the benefit of their families without any consideration for society at large, or within sight of the environmental disasters they have caused.
In Jakarta, the consumer is 'king', even though many malls are half-empty, but will we see shopping malls ransacked by vengeful youths? I think not. Indonesians may be numerically speaking among the most voracious tweeters in the world and, as I witnessed today, even the poorest, smelliest busker on a bus has a handphone.
Would the forces of law and order stand by and watch if looters descended on masse? Quite possibly, but they are not to be trusted. As in the UK, they've stood by as minorities have been intimidated, even murdered, by mobs. They would probably wait until a paymaster, an oligarch or two, authorised bonus payments.
A more likely scenario is that one of the Betawi gangs would be paid to sweep angry rakyat off the streets, as they do when they are paid to 'protect' a plot of land with disputed ownership. However, it is the 'angry rakyat', otherwise unemployed young men, who may have left school at 14 or 15 having, possibly, completed junior high school albeit with few marketable skills who tend to join the Betawi gangs because they see them "as a means of survival in an often cruel modern urban environment."
They offer the sense of belonging, of mutual respect, which has been lost in the UK.
In a recent interview with local TV program JakTV, the head of Bamus Betawi, Nachrowi Ramli, said such Betawi organizations might have a tendency toward aggressive behavior (i.e. protection rackets) because they were unsatisfied with the unbalanced distribution of wealth in the rapidly developing capital.
There's a distinct mutuality of concern in that statement, a mirroring of what can only be called a moral decay or ethical fading. Religion holds sway here, largely because the false promise of a better hereafter allows the abrogation of responsibility and respect towards one's fellow citizens.
Religion long ago lost its power in supposedly secular Britain, although that and the community spirit which had kept Britain afloat in World War II was the moral basis of society when I was a lad. It wasn't until 1957 when Prime Minister Harold MacMillan told his fellow Tories that most of we Brits had "never had it so good", that the notion of spend, spend became the norm and lead to the vicious cycle of inflation and wage restraint, borrowings and cutbacks which has now produced two generations of disenchanted and disenfranchised rakyat.
There are some here who long for the certainty of the Suharto era. They have yet to understand that the greed and corruption which is now endemic among the 'rulers' is his legacy.
Unless that is fully understood, assuming that future elections don't produce a generation of morally clean and respected politicians with a vision for a fair and equitable society which they are seen to be working towards, then that is when the streets of Jakarta, Surabaya, Makassar and other urban centres will resemble the London, Birmingham and Liverpool that we have been watching this week.
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First published in The Jakarta Post 12th August 2011
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+ An excellent article – well worth reading.
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