I heard on twitter that the riots might be coming to my local town tonight – or was it the neighbouring town?

Now I’m sure I’m not the only person to be in this situation right now – I’m pretty sure there are rumours about riots tonight in many towns around the country – but I was moved me to take a wander into my local town – not something I do likely because, trust me, my local town is a regular shithole, and today things were different –

The town centre, while still a regular shithole, was the quietest I have ever seen it, and there was a distinct air of a moral panic – On the way into the town centre I overheard at least three conversations about riots and the same topic was all the rage in the shops I went into.

In Wilkinson’s – which was guarded by two security guys – the woman in front of me in the queue asked the check out guy if he’d seen any trouble – just a few groups of youths wandering about he replied (surprising that, in the school holidays) – she them voiced some vacuous daily mail type condemnation of the rioters and walked off. Somewhat disheartened, I paid for my bags of Haribo (seriously – I bought them with the thought of throwing them to/ at the potential rioters across police lines – teaching has taught me that teenagers have a near universal appreciation of Haribo – sometimes I worry about myself) and wandered over to the coffee shop.

I’d just ordered my usual large cappuccino to go – when the woman in front of me asked the question ‘why are they rioting’? – And then an odd thing then happened – strangers started talking to eachother – discussing politics right there – in the queue for coffee – I decided to wade in with some leftist analysis to counter some of the comments that came forth – amongst them – ‘they’re just out of control’ ‘they’re just sick’ and ‘we should block the internet’ ‘ why haven’t we got any water cannons?’ .

I was firstly able to point out the irony of asking ‘why people are rioting’ and then suggesting we shut down the internet – that being the most reliable way of getting informed analysis of ‘why people are rioting’ – they seemed to get that idea!

Secondly I was able to counter the ‘they don’t want to work arguement’ by pointing out that 1. there really are very few job opportunities in pockets of London – with over 50 applicants for every job in some places, and I even mentioned the fact that Capitalism creates wealth partly by destroying jobs – then briefly explained why – they got that too.

Finally I managed to counter an ‘I don’t believe you can blame inequality line’ by drawing on Bauman’s latest piece on the riots and consumerism and was able to convey his landmine analogy to illustrate the fact that when a society creates pockets of inequality – it’s like laying landmines – of course not all of them will be set off – but some of them inevitably will be – simplistic I know – but it got the leftist message across nicely, I thought.

So there you go folks, one unintended positive benefit of the riots is that people are actually talking to eachother – after my latest coffee-queue experience  I’m left (no really I am!) with the distinct  feeling that the riots could lead to more people asking ‘why are those kids doing it’ and at presently I think there’s a kind of anomic, vacuum of inexplicability that right wing analysis just isn’t filling to people’s satisfaction. There really is potential to move people to the left – to the left.

Then again, perhaps I’m just feeling optimistic because of all the caffeine I’ve just just shoved into my system….