Panic on the streets

 

Making my way from LICC HQ to the London Palladium after work on Monday, I wondered whether Morrissey might see fit to include The Smiths' anthem 'Panic' in his set list for the evening. After all, events the previous evening meant I approached the venue with a certain sense of trepidation - what state might the streets be in when I, and the rest of the sell-out crowd, emerged later that night?

Although there was no sign of panic on the streets of Oxford Circus after the concert, elsewhere in London, and beyond, it was a different story; as it was the night after, and for who knows how many more nights to come?

Fortunately, help is at hand for anyone, like me, who is at a loss to comprehend the purpose of the rioting and looting currently sweeping the country. Apparently, it's a means of showing both 'the rich' and the police that 'we can do what we want'. At least, that's according to the two young girls who gladly bragged to a BBC reporter of their involvement in 'the fun', whilst swigging the bottle of Chablis they'd looted. Hearing that, I confess, reminded me of the first words Morrissey sang on Monday night:

'On the day that your mentality
Decides to try to catch up with your biology...'

The aching tragedy of this 'explanation' is its stark revelation of the shriveled vision of identity that now pervades our society. So inextricably are personal identity and worth now bound to the accumulation of consumer goods, that some who lack them will go so far as to violently take them for themselves. Not by chance were the primary targets of the rioters and looters clothing and jewellery stores, and those selling electrical goods.

Whatever legitimate arguments about social deprivation, lack of opportunity and the like, that will doubtless surface in the aftermath of these disturbances, there can be no justification for the scenes we have seen this week. However, it is an easy thing to speak out against the aggressive covetousness of others whilst disregarding our own compulsive need to line our own lives with whatever trophies of identity we deem necessary for our acceptance. It is a much harder thing to actually live as those who really do believe, and are willing to demonstrate, that a person's life doesn't consist in the abundance of their possessions.

Dear God, please help me...

Nigel Hopper