Today we're fortunate to have a guest post by Scott Jenkins, a postgraduate at Swansea University (UK). Hopefully, this will be the first of many more posts. Welcome, Scott!
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Between the 6th
and the 10th of August 2011 rioting engulfed England’s capital
London and widespread looting was reported in several other urban centres
across England. The press gleefully reported the incident, with minute by
minute accounts, interactive maps showing flashpoints of the disturbance and
long sweeping aerial shots of buildings ablaze. In the meantime politicians and
community leaders fell about one another in a rush to condemn those
responsible, and the British judiciary worked through the night processing
those 3,100 individuals arrested.
In the end five people died, sixteen others injured and a total of £200
million worth of property was damaged.
The riots began
after the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29 year old man during an attempted
arrest. A peaceful march was arranged by friends and family of the deceased. This
peaceful protest deteriorated shortly after nightfall into rioting and looting.
The following evening the disturbances were repeated but this time the violence
was more widespread with similar and significant outbreaks reported across the
city. Night after night this pattern was repeated, and copy-cat riots engulfed
the city centres of Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and elsewhere.
These seemingly
unconnected incidents, by people who mostly had not known the victim or had
close association with the issue which supposedly sparked the violence was
roundly condemned as ‘pointless’ and with ‘no justification’, ‘needless and
opportunistic’ crime. The Prime
Minister David Cameron, spoke of the ‘sickening scenes of ...looting,
vandalising, thieving and robbing’. The majority of politicians blamed a ‘small
minority’ who were causing the trouble, who seemingly did not fear the agents
of law and order. A ‘tough
crackdown’ was promised and the use of water-cannon in the UK mainland,
hitherto unprecedented, was under discussion by senior politicians and Scotland
Yard.[1]
In the aftermath
of the rioting numerous intellectuals stepped forward to espouse their own
explanation or interpretation for the events, and the motives of the
protagonists. The historian David Starkey appeared on BBC current affairs show
‘Newsnight’, and like a Mary Whitehouse for the 21st Century, blamed
the riots on the effect of rap culture. "A particular sort of violent,
destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion" he said,
in an analysis which appeared as outdated as it was utterly irrelevant.[2]
Yet this got me
wondering, my own field of historical research is concerned with massed urban
unrest committed by swarms of seemingly lawless youths. The students who
attended Oxford University in the Middle Ages had a reputation for violence,
looting, thieving and robbery which by comparison makes the London rioters seem
positively law abiding. Similarly
this behaviour has been dismissed by historians without any attempt at engaging
with cause or motive.
On the evening
of February 10th 1355 two students of Oxford, Walter Spryngheuse and
Roger de Chesterfield were drinking in Swyndlestock Tavern. The two students complained about the
quality of the wine on offer to the vintner, John de Croydon. A heated argument
ensued and during the exchange one of the scholars threw his wine vessel in
John’s face. The townsfolk in the pub quickly leapt to John’s aid, and urged
him not to put up with such abuse. The bailiffs asked the two students to make
amends, which they refused. The Chancellor of the University refused the Mayor’s
request to arrest the scholars. The mayor was impotent to act against the
students himself as a result of the clerical privileges which ensured no
scholar, except for the most serious of crimes, could be tried outside the
Bishop’s court. Instead of making amends, and submitting to justice, the
scholars rang the bell of their church, St. Mary’s, and were armed as if for
war. They chased the townsfolk, and the Mayor’s justices from street.
The following
day, the Mayor of Oxford rode to complain to the king, Edward III, who was by
good fortune residing near the town at the time. The Chancellor ordered his
scholars to go back to their studies, and while some did, others closed the
gates of the town, set fire to buildings and robbed the homes of Oxfords
townspeople. The town retaliated,
breaking up a determination of Austin Friars and ambushing scholars at play in
Beaumont Fields, killing some. In the meantime the Mayor had gathered to him a
band of peasants from the outlying villages, who marched on the town under a
black banner. The scholars resisted the attack for a while, but were eventually
put to rout. The following morning it was this time the Chancellor of the
university who rode to the King. While he was away the town took revenge upon
the scholars, some were scalped and left in the Bocardo (the town’s prison),
and the scholars’ homes were looted. A procession of Friars called for peace
between town and gown, and even this was attacked resulting in many
deaths. The scholars at Oxford
fled from their homes and schools and returned to their home towns. The town’s
victory was complete.[3]
What do these
two events, separated by over 650 years and 60 miles have in common? On both occasions the spark which
caused the original disturbance was soon forgotten in an orgy of violence and
looting. Both involved the
actions of a number of lawless youths, and a large amount of looting, arson and
assaults. Yet the events which took place in Oxford escalated and involved
reprisals by the townsfolk, something which did not happen to anywhere near the
same extent in London. Several members of the communities’ involved did speak
out against the rioters. One such individual, Pauline Pearce, became an
internet sensation as The Heroine of
Hackney, when she was filmed chastising the rioters. She later went on to
criticise the historian David Starkey for his comments Vis-à-vis hip-hop.[4] Three men were run down in a hit and
run attack in Birmingham while attempting to defend their community. Internet
site Amazon reported an increase in
sales of baseball bats and truncheons as people attempted to arm themselves in
order to defend their homes and businesses.[5]
Users of social networking site Twitter organised mass clean-ups of the areas
affected which did much to ameliorate tensions within the community, and almost
a million users of Facebook joined a group ‘supporting the [London] MET[tropolitan]
police against the rioters’.
Some of the
clashes between rioters and vigilantes had a distinctly ethnic dimension, as
Sikh and Muslim communities armed to defend their places of worship from the
rioters, at the same time the Right Wing ‘English Defence League’ was
mobilising football casuals and racist thugs in an attempt to cynically
capitalise on the perception of the rioters being predominantly black.
On both
occasions the seeming disrespect for the law on behalf of the rioters
engendered outrage and encouraged individuals and groups to take matters into
their own hands. The difference in the level of violence in Oxford has been
explained by some historians as a result of the ubiquity of weapons, or the
violent tenor of the age, but both of these explanations are inadequate.[6]
The modern world is far more violent than the medieval (the death toll from the
holocaust, the savagery of trench warfare, the detonation of nuclear bombs in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima) and the ubiquity of arms would only increase the
severity of injuries sustained; rather than inspire vigilantism.
The difference
between medieval Oxford and modern London is the multiplicity of identities.
Violence is not random, nor is it sense or meaningless to the actor. Victims
may be chosen at random, but they are chosen. They are chosen because they are
identified with some supposedly legitimate grievance or because they represent
some aspect of the intended victim.
The violence which took place in medieval Oxford was between two
completing bodies, the university and the town. Their identities were acquired
and strengthened through numerous rituals and ceremonies, the boundaries of
which were clearly demarcated both in dress, speech and lifestyle. This meta-contrast strengthened the
antagonism between these two groups; an antagonism which was by 1355 at least
150 years old. Throughout this
time both sides had engaged in tit-for-tat struggle and a battle to dis-empower
the other corporate body. The riots of St Scholastica’s Day, 1355 represent the
watershed moment, the peak of a large and long fought campaign for economic,
political and judicial superiority. The reprisals against the scholars, the
invasion of the rustics from the country and the expulsion of the university members
represent the last ditch effort of the town to end this conflict; to once and
for all settle the long standing grievances.
The limited
reprisals during the London riots suggest that the riots were not the flare-up
of long standing conflicts, ethnic jealousies, or tensions between established
identities. Political parties and protest groups tried to associate the
violence in the immediate aftermath with the resistance to austerity measures,
or to portray the rioters as the result of a ‘broken society’ in ‘moral
collapse’. That this political football was possible shows there was no unified
interpretation of motives of the individuals involved.[7]
It is without doubt that when scholars and townspeople fought with bow and
arrow in Oxford’s High Street they were aware of past grievances and aware at
least in some vague sense, of who they were fighting, and what they were
fighting for.
This flies in
the face of the notion of medieval Oxford students, and the violence they
engaged, as being ‘gang’ violence, a term which was also used again and again
to describe the London riots.
Recent research by NatCen, published by the Cabinet Office, has
suggested that among the rioters in London there was no single unified cause or
ideology. We must, however, take care to separate the motives of individual
rioters, with the underlying causes of the riots, whatever these may have been.
The riots were seen as an exciting, liminal, event like a ‘wild party’ or ‘a
rave’. This does not in itself
deny a political ideology, anyone who has read Robert Darnton’s wonderful
analysis of ‘The Great Cat Massacre’ will know that having fun, a sense of
carnival, can still be rooted in and a response to, social pressures. There was also the thrill of obtaining
‘free stuff’, stuff which ordinarily would be outside the realistic aspirations
of the participants. Lastly, the report suggests, the handling of the shooting
of Mark Duggan was seen as an example of the lack of respect shown by police to
young black people.[8]
The report is
far more complex than the summary above, and criminologists and sociologists
will undoubtedly debate its relative merits and demerits in the months and
years ahead. What is clear is that
the violence was not senseless, it was not meaningless, ‘needless and opportunistic
crime’. The violence which occurred was the result of the breakdown in order, a
prerequisite for carnival , and
created a space for individuals to express their dissatisfaction with society
as they perceive it, as they have experienced it. Similarly the violence
scholars engaged in throughout the Middle Ages was not senseless gang violence,
but the expression and defence of their identity. If we continue to look at
violence as ‘meaningless’ or ‘spontaneous’, if we do not learn to separate
‘cause’ and ‘motive’ when discussing it, we can learn nothing from it. And our
analysis of such riots will be as shallow as David Starkey’s blaming ‘hip-hop’.
[1] For quotes see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14435251 http://www.heralddeparis.com/london-violence-needless-opportunistic-theft/143750
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14460554
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/07/politicians-condemn-tottenham-riots
http://www.uxbridgegazette.co.uk/west-london-news/local-uxbridge-news/2011/08/10/police-praised-for-preventing-riots-in-hillingdon-113046-29210870
[3] The details of this event are taken from numerous, often
conflicting, sources. For an introduction to the event and its wider
significance see H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle
Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, Vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1936)
[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/vigilantes-join-16000-police-on-capitals-streets-2334910.html
[6] An excellent summary of the historiography surrounding academic
violence, and violence more broadly in the middle ages can be found in Dean,
Trevor. Crime In Medieval Europe, 1200-1550. (London: Pearson, 2001).
[7] For Conservative
interpretation see David Cameron’s comments in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14524834 For more liberal interpretation see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/25/uk-riot-born-in-deprivation
2 comments:
Wonderful post! Thanks for drawing the connections and showing the differences between the Middle Ages and today. There's a lot to chew on with this post and I shall be thinking about it all day. Thanks!
Very interesting! Concerning the "tenor of the age" explanation, Steven Pinker has made a fairly good statistical argument that the medieval world was in fact much more violent than the modern one. See his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He summarizes his argument in this WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html
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