One of my all-time favourite singles is definitely 'London Calling' by The Clash: I totally love the guitar bit in it, but, being totally fascinated with words (and having an apocalyptic approach to life…), I mainly love the lyrics and the way they seem to perfectly summarise in just a few lines various events – from the works on the Thames Barrier (“London is drowning/and I live by the river”) to the UN discussing food shortages at the World Food Conference (“the wheat is growing thin”) and the Three Mile Island reactor leaking radioactive steam ("a nuclear error") – that took place in a specific decade, the ‘70s. Somehow Joe Strummer and Mick Jones managed to make a perfect collage of newspaper headlines, describing a scary vision of an almost surreally dystopian London.
Eight days ago when the riots in London broke out, followed by further protests and violence in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, 'London Calling' came to my mind together with a question: what would the song be about if it had been written 30 years later? I’m sure it would have featured lines about terrorist attacks, natural catastrophes, more nuclear errors and wars, the financial downturn, new migration flows, unemployment, frustration, desperation, poverty, credit doom and deranged consumerism. Who knows, maybe it would have even contained some hints or explanations (because governments and sociologists are at times simply useless in finding answers…) about the creation of an entire generation of young and often confused people, suspended between an idle life with no ambitions and no sense of community and the frustration of not being able to find a job and therefore not having any hope in the future. In many ways we – politicians, the media, society in general – are all responsible for this mess, for the creation of this new generation of "zombies" of destruction and death.
For years the media contributed to create the myth of an idle and easy life mainly consisting in behaving stupidly, showing absolutely no interest in culture and taking part in reality shows à la Big Brother, that seem capable of turning people into popular and rich stars, into powerfully vapid celebrities. In the last few months we have also successfully repackaged the British Royal Family, transforming it from a moribund institution into an absolutely cool and trendy couple albeit threatened by the perfection of Pippa’s buttocks in the charts of vitally important issues of debate and discussion.
Despite the lingering global crisis, we keep on raving and ranting about the latest version of this or that gadget, and the latest "must have" shoes while dedicating long features not to workers losing their jobs but to the some kind of high profile fashion blogger, proud and happy owner of too many designer bags (probably given to her for free). Somehow, you can’t really complain about society when you feed people with this crap on an everyday basis.
You must also take into account other factors: apart from people committing theft and violence, smashing windows and laughing while ransacking shops, mainly stealing gadgets, clothes and sneakers, there were also teenagers exasperated by unemployment and cuts in social spending. In a nutshell, you sort of had a lethal cocktail of juvenile delinquency, suppressed and oppressed desires, desperation, boredom and a will to start a fight with the authorities (Pasolini’s words in his 1968 poem against the students rioting and beating up the police come to mind...) just to be able to proclaim of being alive in an almost Cartesian assertion stating "I riot therefore I am".
The 2011 riots will pass to history as the most violent ones since the Brixton and Toxteth riots of 1981. Yet while the latter were caused by anger and resentment by young black people against the police, the new London riots didn’t really have much to do with the death of Mark Duggan but could be considered as driven by a mixture of different causes, from boredom to the glamorisation of the cult of violence to deprivation and frustration, to a malaise that makes you feel empty and useless because you can’t find a job (because you don’t have the qualifications to do it or because you are too qualified for that job).
Though noble, clean up sessions only help in the short term and don’t quench anger, resentment, rage and desire; to do something in the long term you will have to re-educate an entire generation of young people and possibly push their energies and power towards more creative rather than destructive purposes, while proving them that morality and punishment still exist for everybody at all levels (how many people in places of power steal and loot public money without ending in jail? Aren't they "zombies of death" in their own way? I'm Italian and in my home country politicians seem to be able to commit any kind of crime without usually ending up in jail...).
So it's back to 'London Calling': the track ends with Joe Strummer's words "I never felt so much a-like..." followed by a guitar feedback sending an S-O-S signal in Morse code. I guess the riots were a way to send out an S-O-S from a part of our society (and I can assure you that the needs, frustration and requests of London's youths are the same of youths in many other countries, Italy included). In the live versions of the song, Strummer often completed the final line, concluding "I never felt so much a-like singing the blues". I’m sure that’s how he would have ended the song if he were still alive and had to sing it now.
Images from The Guardian
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