Running riot - Jennifer Allen

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I have no authority to comment on the recent UK riots. Like many foreign observers watching from afar, I looked for answers from politicians and commentators in the wake of the destruction – without much success. Perhaps a few pieces went missing from the puzzle: the history of the city mob and of vandalism. In light of the spread of popular uprisings around the world – from Athens to Cairo – such histories might offer insights about contemporary mass movements, whatever their politics.

Notes on City Mobs

The British historian Eric Hobsbawm – whose voice was conspicuously absent from the debates of the last weeks about the UK riots – wrote about social banditry in Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1959) and Bandits (1969). Historical peasant outlaws were portrayed as manifestations of a ‘pre-historic social movement’ in the country-side. In short: politics before political parties.

Yet the history of urban robbing and plundering in the city was a slightly different matter. Hobsbawm’s chapter on ‘The City Mob’ in Primitive Rebels contains passages worth repeating:

‘The mob may be defined as the movement of all classes of the urban poor for the achievement of economic or political changes by direct action – that is by riot or rebellion – as a movement which as yet inspired no specific ideology; or, if it found expression for its aspirations at all, in terms of traditionalism and conservatism (the “church and king mob.”).’

Acting without an ideology, city mobs appear as mindless, meaningless and senseless – adjectives often used to describe the UK riots. His definition of the mob’s norms – rioting for a claim (albeit without ideology), against the rich and foreigners – do not seem to apply to recent events. But other phrases strike a chord. Uprisings took place where ‘[t]he ballot had not yet come to be considered a serious weapon for the people.’ For many, it’s never been a serious weapon.

Hobsbawm also notes the odd relationship between the urban poor and their rulers, which was historically ‘equally compounded of parasitism and riot.’ Riots occurred when the ruler and the ruling aristocracy did not provide sufficient employment, by hiring or by attracting jobs. The state may well have taken over from such rulers – and failed to provide not only jobs but also an interest in politics.

‘[The] lack of interest in modern politics among the big-city poor – which expresses itself as some sort of conservatism, when they do vote – is not only the result of such peculiar symbioses [between the mob and the people against whom it riots], but may also be due simply to helplessness and to the absence of anything – such as large factories, craft or village solidarity – which helps them to crystallize their political opinions.’

Hobsbawm goes on to make a rather remarkable distinction between the politics of the urban poor, who have nothing, and the small shopkeepers, who at least have their shops. While this distinction was also recently noted in the UK riots, Hobsbawm offers insights into an earlier of political geography of London, which could be rewritten for today.

‘One of the best-known facts about the political history of London is the a-political voting of the East End until the 20th century, when it made the transition to the Labour Party without passing through the earlier stage of political consciousness, Liberal-Radicalism. The old boroughs of artisans and small shop keepers – notably those South of the Thames – took to political consciousness, i.e. to Radicalism, much earlier, and remained loyal to it much longer, switching their allegiance to Labour only in the 1920s.’

Notes on City Vandals

Another interesting history lies in the term ‘vandalism’, which was coined in French about two centuries ago by Abbé Grégoire (1750–1831). Grégoire – an important figure of the French Revolution who also argued for the abolition of slavery – used the term on 31 August 1794 as he presented his ‘Reports on Vandalism’ to the National Convention. The word is not entirely a neologism but stems from the Vandals, the Germanic tribe best known for sacking Rome in 455.

While the Vandals came from outside Rome, the French revolutionary vandals were compatriots destroying every trace of the toppled Ancien Régime, from buildings to statues. But Grégoire felt that the destruction had gone on for too long. The popular uprisings were eliminating not only objects that could prove valuable to the fledgling state also French heritage which could be enjoyed by future citoyens.

While Grégoire’s word gained currency far beyond France, one of his key arguments is less well-known: ‘Public respect should surround in particular national objects, which, belonging to no one, are the property of everyone.’ Most of the recent UK rioters seemed to turn this argument on its head: merchandise for sale, not yet belonging to someone, is the property of everyone. What may be interesting today is how the term was selectively applied because the destruction of traces of the Ancien Régime certainly did not stop with Grégoire’s reports but was carried out by the state instead of the crowds.

In April 1797, ninety Gobelins tapestries were burned by state decree in order to turn the gold and silver threads into currency. Ultimately, the term vandalism reflected the emergence of a state monopoly on ‘national objects’, which evolved into public property. As the French historian Dominique Poulot has argued, Grégoire’s condemnation of vandalism emptied the spontaneous acts of collective violence of any meaning, beyond marginalization. By referring to the history of the Vandals – instead of, say, iconoclasts – Grégoire suggested that the destructive crowds were foreign and unpatriotic. The vandals were excluded from the public: not quite as exiles but as social outcasts.

As Poulot argues, vandalism was part of a new political culture of the object, proper to the emerging nation-state. This state monopoly covered not only destruction but also preservation. Even before Grégoire’s reports, the two acts often went hand in hand as one national policy. On 10 August 1793 – the first anniversary of the fall of the monarchy – the royal necropolis in Saint Denis was destroyed while the brand new national museum opened in the Louvre for the public. Vandalism is historically linked with heritage and art.

Notes on a Future Revolution?

Each history holds parallels for today’s popular uprisings, from the condemnation of the destruction as meaningless to the attempt to marginalize demonstrators as unpatriotic. While the Arab Spring may be related to a revolutionary shift in regimes, other uprisings – in Greece, Spain, Italy or even the UK – are a different animal. Are these uprisings a ‘pre-historic social movement’? A kind of politics before political parties? If so, what movement and what party will come?

Or are we in the midst of a completely new type of revolution, which is eliminating, not the aristocracy, but the nation-state in all its manifestations, from public spending to public property. Paradoxically, the UK riots increased state presence – more police, more fire fighters, more court cases, more prison terms and, likely, more policies to come – at a moment when the state is trying to shrink financially. If one considers recent massive cuts to public spending that sparked many demonstrations across Europe, there may be a parallel with the historical state monopoly on destruction. What the future holds – apart from bad weather – is anyone’s guess.

From Frieze