H/T Garry
Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne is likely the Guardian’s most ideologically extreme commentator – which, considering the competition, is really quite an accomplishment.
Milne still passionately defends some of the worlds most brutal totalitarian forces as legitimate progressive “resistance” movements, be they the Soviet Union, the Viet Cong, or Islamist terrorist groups in Kabul, Baghdad, and “Palestine”.
Seumas Milne at a meeting of the openly pro-Hamas group, MEMO
So, his essay at CiF on the UK riots, “These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting“, Aug. 10, blaming the mayhem – which included looting, torching of buildings, robberies, and violent attacks against police and firemen – that he characterized as “multi-ethnic unrest “ on “police harassment”, “youth unemployment” “rampant [economic] inequality”, “the deepening economic crisis”, and the machinations of “neoliberal capitalism” may be an astonishing moral inversion, but also comes as no surprise.
However, what was remarkable was the number of readers who rejected Milne’s radical, Guardian Left, elitist glorification of destructive criminal behavior.
On CiF comment threads it’s impressive when a comment garners a few hundred recommends, yet the first comment out of the block to mock Milne’s take on the riots has received 2,435 recommends.
No, Milne still doesn’t get it.
Remarkably, thousands of Guardian readers apparently do.
Related articles
- Seumas Milne’s extraordinary duplicity on the nature of terrorist threats in Europe (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian at 190, The “unauthorized” CiF Watch biography. Pt. 2: Seumas Milne defends communism (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian helps Hamas hitch a ride on the ‘Arab Spring’ (cifwatch.com)
- The Norway massacre & the hypocrisy of the Guardian’s moralizing on conservative critics of Islamism (cifwatch.com)
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28 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 13, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Juan P. Lewis
“Thousands of Britons”
A fallacy ad populum. Numbers don’t make arguments stronger, unless you think the Islamic far right has a point when they say “a billion Muslims blah, blah, blah”
“the first comment out of the block to mock Milne’s take on the riots has received 2,435 recommends.”
Well, last week has seen a flood of right wing comments BTL on Cif and the Guardian. Many with an authoritarian slant. People asking for curfews, the army in the street and reinstatement of disciplinarian society. These riots were not political (or if they were, they showed the (a)political atomization of part of the British youth, sorry for the jargon). They were controlled quite quickly once the police decided to send 15,000 men to curb the looting. Nothing beyond what was in the manual was tried and it worked… contrary to what the prophets of doom would have made you believe.
Besides, that comment says more about who were commenting than about Milne. Before those “20 years of wet soft liberal policies” (i.e. when Britain was much more racist, much more anti-Semitic and much more homophobic), there were riots too. Those 20 years of “moral decadence” and no corporal punishment of children have resulted in a reduction of crime (as a trend at least…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10645702).
But I’m not sure everything has been that “liberal”. Yes, the Labour government has given us the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act, which many of those BTL commentators accused of being the cause of the riots. It also introduced a lot of quite authoritarian policies.
Milne’s analysis is too lineal. These riots had an element of randomness that very few took into account. But if you’re going to criticize Milne, spend your gun powder in what it’s worth, like his support of every far right Muslim against more secular types, his infatuation with Stalinism, etc. Parroting authoritarian cliches is as lineal as Milne’s pseudo-Marxism, and doesn’t make you look like a supporter of a free, liberal, democratic society that you claim to be.
August 13, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Juan P. Lewis
By the way, Milne didn’t defend the Vietcong. He chastised the Palestinian Authority for negotiating. and said,
“Try to imagine the Vietnamese negotiators speaking in such a way at the Paris peace talks in the 70s”
Which is a distortion of history. As I said then,
“The difference is that those were two victorious movements fighting an exhausted colonial power. Those movements had the backing of the second most powerful military power. The situation of the Palestinians is very different and history shows that not even their Arab brethren show much more than lip service to their cause. By the way, you forget that the Vietminh signed the Geneva accords in 1954. They had just defeated the French and nonetheless agreed to partition. I imagine that you think that Ho Chi Minh was a quisling.”
The Vietminh and the Vietcong were national liberation movements fighting against a brutal colonial power. The former played a key role in the defeat of the Japanese Army in Indochina. It was authoritarian, but to disqualified it with quotation marks and put it on a par with Hamas is incorrect. The Vietcong was possibly even more militarized and authoritarian than the Vietminh, but it wasn’t genocidal. In fact it stopped the genocide in Cambodia.
August 14, 2011 at 2:23 am
Another Joshua
“Milne’s analysis is too lineal. These riots had an element of randomness that very few took into account.”
I agree with you that the explanation for the “breakdown” commonly given is far too simplistic . I believe that while the behaviour of the crowd seemed to suggest that it might have resulted from either one OR the other explanations commonly given by left and right, the collective comments appear to indicate that it may have had to do with both, neither and or a very lot more. In short chaos. If one considers rioting in this country statistically one was probably due. Indeed an explanation is needed to the question why more people were not involved. I do not believe that children only behave in a classroom if the teacher rules it with fear. It takes a many qualities to achieve a calmness in the classroom and a combination of reasons why children will listen and why they won’t or can’t.
As for the likes of Seamus Milne, whose ideology informs his views and treats the news as fodder for the cause he espouses, this must be exposed for what it is- agitprop and lousy journalism that adds nothing to help us understand.
August 14, 2011 at 2:04 am
JerusalemMite
I noticed that thread. It seemed to be a ‘bright light’ attracting rational commenters to malign Milne and 20 years of radical left policies that can be held directly responsible for today’s criminal actions on UK streets.
It has been a bad week for The Guardian/CiF. The PC BBC too.
I hope that the reaction doesn’t go OTT BUT there must be fundamental changes to the UK educational system. How the teachers relate to pupils, how parents relate to teachers, how parents relate to their children AND the subjects learned.
Perhaps spending money finding talented teachers and teachers pay being related to the academic achievement of their students/pupils using careful examinations of pupil/student ability by independent sources. Independent of the school to get the correct assessment.
Whatever the result, it will not be to the ‘taste’ of the Guardian and the BBC who both seem bent on bringing anarchy to the UK and all the Western Liberal Democracies.
That is what most of the highly recommended commenters on that thread were saying.
August 14, 2011 at 2:27 am
Juan P. Lewis
“It has been a bad week for The Guardian/CiF. The PC BBC too.”
How? the Guardian/Cif was receiving more comments and hits than ever.
“I hope that the reaction doesn’t go OTT BUT there must be fundamental changes to the UK educational system. How the teachers relate to pupils, how parents relate to teachers, how parents relate to their children AND the subjects learned.”
This assumes that the riots are caused by bad schooling and parenting, which is a code for “our society is too liberal”. There is no evidence that that is the cause. People talk about this as if this is the first time there were riots in England. In fact, our “too liberal” societies are far less violent than more disciplinarian ones. The subjects learnt is another canard of the conservatives (little c here), that think that students only do “soft subjects”. The truth is that the number of students that keep choosing maths or physics has increased.
“the Guardian and the BBC who both seem bent on bringing anarchy to the UK and all the Western Liberal Democracies.”
This is just ridiculous, esp. wrt the BBC. The BBC is an establishment institution. The Windsor, the CofE, the armed forces, etc. received far less scrutiny than they should. The Guardian is not an anarchist rag.
This has been a bad week for Britain in the sense that it has given a lot of ideological clout to the authoritarians.
August 14, 2011 at 6:36 am
itsik
“This has been a bad week for Britain in the sense that it has given a lot of ideological clout to the authoritarians.”
And why is that?
Could it be that the gross abuse of the human rights act by nearly every imaginable movement / sector of society has made schooling, parenting, policing and social servicing a near impossible mission?
Call me old fashioned but when you see children as young as 8 raising 2 fingers to the coppers on a regular basis you know there is a problem.
August 14, 2011 at 7:13 am
Juan P. Lewis
itsik,
“Could it be that the gross abuse of the human rights act by nearly every imaginable movement / sector of society has made schooling, parenting, policing and social servicing a near impossible mission?”
ah, that canard again, you clearly haven’t read the HRA. The HRA has nothing to do with education. It consecrates rights such as free speech, fair trial and the banning of torture and death penalty. It doesn’t interfere into schooling, parenting or social services. It only restricts the police acting like Assad’s police.
This HRA is the legal embodiment of what western liberal democracies claim to stand for. I thought that you were proud of that… I might’ve been wrong.
“when you see children as young as 8 raising 2 fingers to the coppers on a regular basis you know there is a problem.”
Well, children play tantrums and like being naughty. They’ve always rebelled against authority. That’s nothing new. You talk as if these things never happened before.
August 14, 2011 at 7:37 am
Penny
Can I ask, Juan, if you have worked closely with these young people?
August 14, 2011 at 9:17 am
Juan P. Lewis
Not in Britain, but in Spain, with Moroccan kids. Most couldn’t even read in Arabic, let alone Spanish. They all came from poor families mostly from Marrakech. Some were into stealing stuff or doing drugs, but others were not. There’s no direct connection between the two phenomena.
My point is that these riots have been an isolated episode, quite focused and carried out by a very mixed crowed. They are not the result of decadent moral standards, or else you’d have to explain why these things don’t happen more often (in fact they’re happening less and less often). England has a long history of rioting, for political reasons, and for not so much.
But even if it was all about bad teaching and parenting… how is repelling the HRA or establishing a more disciplinarian society any better? This site is constantly praising Israel for being a beacon of tolerance and liberal values in a sea of repression and ignorance… I’d like to be able to praise Britain for the same reasons…
A riot that was controlled by the police quite quickly, after they decided to act, and you had a lot of people asking for Draconian measures. I wonder what those people would ask for if they had the Irish shelling Kassam rockets on their heads….
August 14, 2011 at 9:08 am
Gerald
Juan when you write “It doesn’t interfere into schooling, parenting or social services. It only restricts the police acting like Assad’s police.”
Have you not noticed that amongst the rights in the HRA are,
the right to an education;
the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property;
the right to respect for private and family life;
the right to marry and start a family;
And you claim the HRA doesn’t interfere in schooling, parenting or social services.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/governmentcitizensandrights/yourrightsandresponsibilities/dg_4002951
August 14, 2011 at 9:24 am
Juan P. Lewis
“And you claim the HRA doesn’t interfere in schooling, parenting or social services”
“right to education”:
It doesn’t in the sense that it only means that you can’t be deprived of schooling. So if your parents want you to drop out before you’re 16, then the HRA protects you. It has nothing to do with “teachers being unable to discipline kids,” which these days was a code for “reinstate the rod”. Education policies are decided irrespective of the HRA.
“the right to respect for private and family life;
the right to marry and start a family”
Nothing to do with how you educate your kids. Only that you cannot be denied the right to get married and start a family. It says nothing about letting kids get away with murder.
“the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property;”
how that is related to social services is beyond me.
If anything, the HRA enshrines what conservatives hold dear, education, family life and property. Why are they so hostile to it then?
August 14, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Gerald
Juan, if a child was being stopped from, or simply not, attending school who would you complain to? Education and/or Social Services of the Local Authority.
If you were being denied the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property, again who would you complain to? Again in the first instance your Local Authority.
Who deals with problem neighbours? The Local Authority, and if they have children you can guarantee Social Services will be involved.
Originally you claimed that the HRA “Only restricts the police acting like Assad’s police.” Clearly you were wrong, would you like to retract that erroneous claim?
One of the problems with the HRA is not what is written in it but the way it is interpreted by Lawyers.
August 14, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Juan P. Lewis
OK Gerald,
tell me how the HRA has created the conditions that lead to these riots? I’m interested to know.
August 15, 2011 at 3:17 am
Gerald
Juan can you show me where I have claimed that the HRA “created the conditions that led to these riots” ?
I note that you are still not answering the question raised by your erroneous claim that the HRA “Only restricts the police acting like Assad’s police.”
Once again would you now like to withdraw that claim of yours?
August 14, 2011 at 9:34 am
Mitnaged
Juan P Lewis, have they ever happened on this scale before?
What do you know about the development of morality or the role of carers, mentors, teachers and others in that development?
Have you ever asked yourself why, if the difficulties are so widespread so many youngsters from deprived backgrounds don’t turn into thugs? What makes people turn out well in spite of deprivation?
It would not benefit the thrust of Shameless Milne’s article to evidence some intelligence by asking those questions, therefore he carefully avoids them.
You know as well as I that the causes of the riots are complex and multifaceted but from my own experience of working with youngsters who might be considered to be “at risk” of resorting to such behaviour, I feel confident to posit some points about why this might be happening. My list is not exhaustive, but long before these riots I have had cause to reflect on them:
At around age six, a child looks at right and wrong only in terms of consequences – what will happen to him if he is caught? What punishment will he incur? The moral development of many of these youngsters, and of the adults responsible for them, has frozen at around that stage.
(Thanks to the influence of the limp Left like Shameless Milne who immediately place the blame on society as if these youngsters are automata, these plunderers know full well that nothing will happen to them, so they don’t even care about being punished. The police attempt to bring order with both hands tied behind their backs. They are doomed to failure. Moreover, the antics of our government in the past are hardly likely to set a good example).
Who do you think are most responsible for the failure of the development of morality and empathy in these young rioters – their caregivers, the schools or society?
We learn empathy from our earliest encounters with a “good-enough” parent or other caregiver who tunes in to us, from whom we then learn to tune in to ourselves and ultimately to tune in to others. How many of these rioters have ever known a trustworthy adult who has taken an appropriate and close interest in their lives, in the sort of people they are, in their hopes and dreams? The majority or very few?
We also learn empathy and right from wrong by attachment to those good enough caregivers – and because we feel that emotional attachment, the initial drive is not to want to upset or disappoint them. Only later on, as we mature and develop cognitively, do we come to believe that certain things are right or wrong per se. Another handicap, if we are never given the opportunity for that attachment, that feeling of safety, is that we never get a true enough image of ourselves and of who exactly we are. In extreme cases there is a dread of boredom or of feeling dead inside. We are therefore more likely to be led by the nose by manipulative others, and may only feel alive if we are acting out.
A child brought up in a materially poor home, perhaps by a single parent, is more at risk because that parent’s energies may be taken up by trying to make ends meet rather than spending quality time with the child at key stages of its development. Yet very many children from such environments, as I have said above, don’t turn into young thugs. True, it’s hard work to bring up a family alone, but many, many do it.
Blaming society for the riots, so simplistically, and for the reasons Milne does, helps no-one .
August 14, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Juan P. Lewis
Mitnaged,
I never said Milne was right. I said his analysis was too lineal. When you say “many children from such environments, as I have said above, don’t turn into young thugs,” you don’t say anything that contradicts what I said.
I’m just saying that blaming the riots “20 years of soft liberalism” shows an authoritarian mindset. Blaming it on “the misuse of the HRA” shows that you don’t have a clue on what the HRA is about or its jurisdiction.
My point is that there’re a lot you can say about Milne. I’ve criticized him on Cif many times, especially for his position regarding Israel, the PA and secular Muslims. Parroting authoritarian cliches that can be easily challenged doesn’t make your case stronger. To your question,
“have they ever happened on this scale before?”
Well, England has recorded riots since 1381. Google Notting Hill Race riots (1958, they lasted for six days), Brixton riots (1981, 1985, 1995). This time, the riots were less concentrated on one place, but the violence against people and against property was no different… and almost certainly the riots of 1958 were more violent and vicious.
The UK is a much less racist, homophobic and much more moral, pacific, compassionate society thanks to years of “soft wet liberalism”… that’s why Thatcherites hate modern Britain so much.
August 14, 2011 at 9:02 am
pretzelberg
20 years of radical left policies that can be held directly responsible for today’s criminal actions on UK streets
Specifically blaming either Labour or Tories – as many on CiF have done – is simply ridiculous.
I think you have to look at what makes the UK different from e.g. the rest of Europe (where there are also plenty of bored, poor youngsters). I would point to the higher degree of materialism – and TV culture is a big factor there.
August 14, 2011 at 8:58 am
pretzelberg
Remarkably, thousands of Guardian readers apparently do.
It’s not remarkable at all, Adam.
a) Most Guardian readers do not share Milne’s hardline views.
b) As Juan P. Lewis notes above – most commenters are not even Guardian readers. You really do need to stop referring to “Guardian readers” when what you actually mean is “CiF BTL posters.”
August 14, 2011 at 11:12 am
Penny
Firstly, Juan, you cannot extrapolate experiences gleaned from one country to another. I’ve seen intervention initiatives succeed in Sunderland and dive-bomb in Bedfordshire, let alone those that might work in Norway, Sweden, Spain or anywhere else.
Secondly, I have worked with disaffected youth and the reasons for their behaviour are, as Mitnaged pointed out, multi-faceted. There appeared to be no singular cause but a mesh of factors. Amongst those are most definitely parenting, education and peer pressure. Discipline and a failure of law seem also to be factors
If a group of children of, say, 10yrs old, misbehave and that misbehaviour manifests in say, deliberately breaking a window, and if there are no consequences for that action then it is possible further misdemeanours occur. Over time, emboldened by the lack of consequences the behaviour worsens. The kids feel almost invincible.
I’ve seen it happen so many times, I’ve had meetings with police because kids who might otherwise have stopped their anti-social behaviour were involving themselves in more serious actions. Attitudes amongst policemen were mixed. Some felt helpless, some felt that they were ‘just kids’. When my own son was attacked by a mob of youths with baseball bats and iron bars (he was in the wrong place at the wrong time), one policeman told me that the kids really do not know that their behaviour is criminal. Beyond a certain age, then, arrest comes as quite a shock to them. In my view, to leave kids in the ‘embolded/invincible’ state is hugely irresponsible. Why not deal with the minor misdemeanours? Why wait until kids have reached a stage whereby they are arrested?
The attitude towards poor behaviour has often been way too ‘trendy’. I was contacted by an 86yr old lady whose life was being made hellish by a group of kids no older than 12yrs. They played football near her home, trashing her very precious garden. She asked them to move and received nothing but verbal abuse. The poor behaviour then became very deliberate, with the kids not only trashing her garden but kicking the ball against her sitting room wall the whole night. They came onto her premises to do this and to upend her rubbish bins, knock on her door persistently and yell abuse through her letter box.
I would point out that a) this was no sink estate but a neat little cul-de-sac and the homes all privately owned and b) there was a perfectly good playing field opposite the lady’s home – with goal posts. It’s one thing for an able-bodied, young’ish person to deal with this but it is utterly terrifying and intimidating for a lady of 86.
My first port of call was the police but got no real joy beyond the promise to patrol from time to time. I then spoke to a man in a relevant local authority whose tone was at best sneering. “The real problem is this lady’s intolerance towards children” he informed me. “We intend to put out a leaflet n conjuction with the Chief Constable reminding residents that they are children, and that their concerns aren’t about crime, but fear of crime. They need to monitor their own intolerance” He then went on to lecture me that actually, we should be visiting these children to ask them what more we could do for them.
This was not the first or the last time I encountered such a situation. It was truly exasperating, and worrying for the children who, without any restriction on their behaviour, might well carry on to more serious misdemeanours.
Apologies for such a wordy comment!
August 14, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Penny
Ooops !
““We intend to put out a leaflet n conjuction with the Chief Constable reminding residents that they are children”
No sleep for 24+ hrs I’m afriad! The ‘they’ above refers to kids whose behaviour causes concern.
August 14, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Juan P. Lewis
Penny,
I’m not denying anything you say. I was not extrapolating. My point is that you are talking about individual cases, and for that type of thuggish behaviour, the Labour years have been, in fact, far from liberal (ASBOs don’t exist in many other countries and look Draconian to many people). If people want to make a serious case against Milne, sounding like a Tory parrot is not the best tactic. My point is, then, that you don’t counter bad arguments with worse ones.
August 14, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Penny
Juan – my post was necessarily brief because it is impossible to cover every single thing that – in my view at least – has contributed to very disaffected children. I may have cited an individual case but the area in which I worked was categorised as being one of the top 10% of deprived areas in the country and incidents such as I mentioned were very, very widespread.
So, taking your comment; have you any idea how difficult it is to actually enforce an ASBO? Or how many times a young person can get away with anti-social behaviour before one is used? By the time an ASBO is applied, the kid may well have the ‘respect’ he has been looking for by virtue of his ‘well hard street cred’, making the whole exercise sometimes pointless anyway.
ASBO’s were much ado about nothing for many years. A cosmetic touch that, in practice, was rarely applied.
I was a local poltician and I’m afraid by your comments I fear you have no idea just how many ‘trendy’ and ‘cosmetic’ laws were brought in during Labour’s terms. Nor how the ‘visions of the anointed’ (to use Thomas Sowell’s book title) applied in every area have left children so adrift.
So many initiatives failed to deal with the root causes of disaffection. Instead, it was a case that kids = nuisance to neighbours…solution = get the kids off the streets = throw millions of pounds at ‘solutions’ that will never reach out to the most seriously disaffected.
Under the Labour party it seemed their answer to most things was throwing money at the situation without any thought to the underlying cause. Perfectly decent initiatives that showed promise were shut down because a PC box or two was not ticked.
I don’t have time to reply any further, Juan, I’m afriad, although I really could write half a book!
August 14, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Penny
“……My point is, then, that you don’t counter bad arguments with worse ones.”
No – but Juan, you are not necessarily in a position to know what initiatives or measures were taken by the Labour party. You – like many others who have neither been in the thick of British politics nor worked with these children – only think you do.
I also feel it’s a tad rich to use terms like ‘Tory parrot’ and to attempt to counter arguments from those who have stepped into both worlds with what is little more than ideology.
August 14, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Juan P. Lewis
On the Tory parrot thing. I wasn’t talking about you, Penny, but about how this thread endorsed a very debatable position, and a very authoritarian one to boot. That’s all.
August 14, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Penny
Ok Juan
I forgot to mention an initiative brought in last year by the government as it was on its last legs. It may lend a little weight to some of the points being made here because it was a complete departure from Labour’s previous style of initiative.
I attended some of the sessions as an observer. Volunteers were being trained for one-to-one and residential courses designed to tackle all levels of disaffection. The underlying theme of these courses was Life Coaching. The gist of the sessions to confront kids with the notion that they are responsible for their lives; it is not everyone else’s fault. They have choices and are not powerless victims.
So after years of policies that caught kids up in a sense of being society’s victims – this course was attempting to undo that outlook.
For the kids involved it was emotionally very tough as it would be for anyone whose entire mindset and beliefs are being challenged. Nevertheless, the breakthroughs, when they came, were often quite dramatic.
August 14, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Another Joshua
Penny, you speak with clarity on this issue and am grateful to you for making the points well. I am certainly reading them with interest.
August 15, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Penny
Thank you, AJ
Although I’m afraid to say where the issue of disaffected kids is concerned I can get haul out the old soap-box!
August 15, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Ariadne
Five people are dead as a result of these riots.