Tag Archives: London riots

Spiritual rioters

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One of the in, but characteristically meaningless phrases that fall effortlessly from the mouths of Anglican Bishops, is that people these days are spiritual, but not religious.

The implication is that anything, so long as it is “spiritual”, is meritorious, especially when contrasted with institutional religion with its foibles and failings.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells reckons that, while rioting is a criminal activity – for which he blames capitalism, not the rioters – it is also “spiritual”. Although Bishop Peter Price sounds just like any other run-of-the-mill barmy bishop, he may have inadvertently stumbled onto something: the rioting was evil and evil has its roots in the “spiritual”. The point is that not everything that is spiritual is good, a fact that has been fairly obvious to two millennia of Christians, but one that has now been obscured by the church’s ceaseless toiling to be inclusive, trendy and relevant.

From here:

Not that Anglican leaders do not deserve the scorn they attract; this year’s award for silliest comment must surely go to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who said that last August’s riots were a “spiritual experience”.

Bishop Peter Price told the Synod: “I have no intention of being sentimental about the people, mainly young people, who took to the streets last August and destroyed property, ruined other people’s lives and walked off with looted trophies.

“Riots embody appalling evil and criminality and those who get drawn in often display great wickedness.

“But as the Passionist priest, the late Fr Austin Smith, said after the Toxteth riot in the 1980s, rioting can be, literally an ecstatic spiritual experience.

“Something is released in the participants which takes them out of themselves as a kind of spiritual escape.

 

Riotous Rowan pontificates on the looting

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Rowan Williams offers ecclesiastical wisdom – or lack thereof – on the rioting in the UK:

Aug 11 (Reuters) – England’s most senior cleric on Thursday gave his first reaction to riots across the country, saying the government’s stated priority of building stronger communities was now a matter of urgency.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the violence would “intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability” in Britain, in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“The government has insisted on the priority of creating stronger, better-resourced local communities. This priority is now a matter of extreme urgency. We need to see initiatives that will address anxieties and provide some hope of long-term stability in community services, especially for the young,” he wrote.

I’m unsure as what kind of cycle of deprivation would include in its deprivations Blackberries with which to organise looting parties. I have no doubt that, had the government provided more community centres – offering free Blackberries, perhaps – they would have been looted too.

Rowan Williams has, predictably, placed the blame for the rioting on the government for not providing adequate community services, while, at the same time, missing the obvious fact that the government is to blame for not protecting its citizens.

The kind of long term stability that Rowan is looking for is not provided by governments but by families. What is his church doing to strengthen families? Oh, right, it’s promoting same sex marriage; that should do the trick.

British looting isn’t new

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In the UK during the blitz looting was not uncommon:

One of the most shocking crimes committed during wartime was the looting from bombed houses. In the first eight weeks of the London Blitz a total of 390 cases of looting was reported to the police. On 9th November, 1940, the first people tried for looting took place at the Old Bailey. Of these twenty cases, ten involved members of the Auxiliary Fire Service.

The Lord Mayor of London suggested that notices should be posted throughout the city, reminding the population that looting was punishable by hanging or shooting. However, the courts continued to treat this crime leniently. When a gang of army deserters were convicted of looting in Kent the judge handed down sentences ranging from five years’ penal servitude to eight years’ hard labour.

I doubt that any of today’s looters will face eight years’ hard labour (most are unacquainted with labour of any sort), although public opinion is certainly becoming opposed to leniency:

– In common with Conservative MEP Roger Helmer, 33 per cent of the public believe the police should be allowed to shoot the rioters with live ammunition.

– 78 per cent support the use of tear gas.

– 72 per cent support the use of tasers.

– 82 per cent want curfews imposed.

– 90 per cent support the use of water cannon.

– 65 per cent support the use of plastic bullets.

And now your daily laugh: Iran wants to monitor UK human rights violations

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From here:

Iranian official urges Britain to allow delegation into country to investigate police human rights violations.

As riots have spread across the UK leading to hundreds of arrests and the death of one 26-year-old man, Iran has called on British police to avoid using violence against rioters and demonstrators, and to show “restraint” when dealing with protesters, Iranian Fars News Agency reported.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast reportedly asked the UK government to open dialogue with “protesters,” and has called on human rights groups to investigate the killing of Mark Duggan, 29, which sparked the violent riots that has seen substantial damage and theft.

If something is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well, so Iran’s delegation is privately offering to share its longstanding experience in torture, rape, mutilation, murder and kangaroo courts with Britain, which never has had a particularly good grip on how to violate human rights properly.

Barbarians within the gates

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Malcolm Muggeridge spent much of his time predicting the downfall of the West in gems like this:

So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, laboured with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.

Although his prognostications of doom were premature, he was essentially right.