When we look at the world today we look straight past what is right infront of our eyes and while we look to the world for their “approval” on various events and their “support” and their “obstacles” against us in most cases, have we ever stopped to think for a few moments what about their status?“Who has ever raised a voice to the voice who condemns and who has condemned yet never been condemned?”
A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian.
The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade.
A copy of the secret policy showed senior intelligence officers and ministers feared the British public could be at greater risk of a terrorist attack if Islamists became aware of its existence.
The reader may question and say these are in the “past” or this is “history”, the answer is, if this is “history” then yesterday was a part of history too. Just reading the House of Commons speech that took place on the 28th of November 2011, see All comments on Bahrain from House of Commons 28 November 2011 it is a question to raise the time taken by the House of Commons to address the Middle East and yet not address the above and below with a conclusion.
It would be suggested to the “Right Honorable” this or that to take a look at the history at home and what lessons they have yet to learn and what steps they have taken to condemn their own Government actions.
In the north of Ireland between 1970 and 2000 British military personnel were responsible for killing over 400(1) men, women and children. All of the victims were unarmed, and none posed a threat to the life of the British soldier who carried out the shooting. Among the victims are Catholic priests, elderly women, children, and even teenage girls such as Annette McGavigan age 14, who was shot in the back of the head at close range by a member of the British Army.
However, the number of illegal killings of civilians by British troops in the north of Ireland is relatively minor in comparison with the Iraqi and Afghan civilian body count(2) which certainly runs into thousands since the invasion by UK and US military forces in 2003. As of September 2011 there are currently over 200(3) claims against the British Government in relation to the illegal killings of civilians in Iraq, some of whom were tortured and killed in horrific circumstance while in British Army custody(4).
The Baha Mousa(5) and Bloody Sunday(6) Inquiries for all of their bias and shortcomings, have certainly underlined the fact that the British Army has for decades operated, and continues to operate with complete contempt for the UN charter of Human Rights(7), and appears to be totally incapable of ensuring that British troops adhere to national and international law. It is this very refusal on the part of the British Army to recognise that it has any legal and moral responsibilities to the civilian population that is at the very core of the problem.
The overwhelming majority of these human rights abuses may have been carried out by British Army NCO’s (8) and junior officer, but the culture, and in many cases the actual orders, such as the orders to collude in the murder of the human rights lawyer Patrick Finucane(9), and the order to assault and use illegal torture techniques on prisoners(10), originated from senior figures in the MoD with the sanction of such actions (if only by turning a blind-eye to it) coming from Downing Street itself. The infamous “Shoot-to-Kill” policy in the north of Ireland may have been carried out by British Army / RUC / SAS operatives but the policy itself was approved and sanctioned by the British Prime minister Margaret Thatcher(11).
The actions of Brigadier Gordon Kerr and the murderous “Force Research Unit” that operated in the north of Ireland(12) weren’t undertaken without the approval of General Everson at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre, based at Chicksands, Bedfordshire. Everson and Kerr may be as close to human vermin as one could get, but they in turn weren’t operating without the full approval of key figures in the MoD, Whitehall, and probably Downing Street.
War Crimes and Criminals
To date, some of the crimes against civilians carried out by members of the British Army include:-
• The planning, collusion, and participation in the murder of Irish, UK, and Iraqi citizens(13)
• The murder / illegal killing of unarmed men women and children (14)
• The assault, torture, and murder of civilian prisoners (15)
• The torture, mutilation and murder of captured “insurgents” (16)
• The supply of weapons, explosives, and intelligence to paramilitary “death squads” (17)
• Perjury, and the destruction / fabrication of evidence in order to protect the guilty (18).
To date, some of the crimes against civilians carried out by members of the British Army include:-
• The planning, collusion, and participation in the murder of Irish, UK, and Iraqi citizens(13)
• The murder / illegal killing of unarmed men women and children (14)
• The assault, torture, and murder of civilian prisoners (15)
• The torture, mutilation and murder of captured “insurgents” (16)
• The supply of weapons, explosives, and intelligence to paramilitary “death squads” (17)
• Perjury, and the destruction / fabrication of evidence in order to protect the guilty (18).
Blaming the junior ranks
The above crimes did not happen, and continue to happen, simply because of the actions of a few rouge elements in the lower ranks of the British Army (though the handful of actual criminal convictions that have been secured are, of course, limited to corporals and those in the lower ranks) – they happen because within the British Army and MoD there exists a deep rooted culture that refuses to recognise that the British Army should at all times operate within the confines of national and international law.
The above crimes did not happen, and continue to happen, simply because of the actions of a few rouge elements in the lower ranks of the British Army (though the handful of actual criminal convictions that have been secured are, of course, limited to corporals and those in the lower ranks) – they happen because within the British Army and MoD there exists a deep rooted culture that refuses to recognise that the British Army should at all times operate within the confines of national and international law.
It is this institutional contempt for upholding the law, and the scant and superficial manner of investigating such crimes (19), that is the very reason why such crimes not only occur, but are perpetuated. The consequences are not just the denial of justice to the victim’s family and dependants, but the denial of closure that the victim’s families find the hardest to come to terms with.
The Denial of Liability
Under UK law, the British Army has a legal duty to investigate all such crimes, yet out of the hundreds of reported killings there have only been a handful of cases that have led to criminal charges being brought against any British Army personnel.
Under UK law, the British Army has a legal duty to investigate all such crimes, yet out of the hundreds of reported killings there have only been a handful of cases that have led to criminal charges being brought against any British Army personnel.
The standard British Army response to every one of these killings has been to deny any liability, and explain away each and every one of these killings of unarmed civilians as “mistakes”, or to put them down to “combat situations” where young British soldiers are doing a difficult job, etc, etc, or simply in an attempt to justify such murders, as they did with “Bloody Sunday”, by claiming that the British military units that carried out the murders did so in self defence.
The lack of accountability
Despite the findings of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and an admission from the British Government of the British Army’s illegal killing of 14* innocent civilians who took part in a civil rights protest in Derry, the British Army still refuses to admit any liability for the Springhill or Ballymurphy massacres (20), preferring as it does to continue to explain away the shooting of unarmed men, women, children – and even a Catholic priest who was waving a white handkerchief as he sought to come to the aid of the dying – as nothing more than innocent mistakes. This is despite the fact that British Army snipers devoted two days to shooting anybody unfortunate enough to come within range. The fact is, as with Bloody Sunday, these killings of unarmed civilians were anything but mistakes – they were cold blooded murder. The survivors of Springhill and Ballymurphy know it, and so does the British Army.
Despite the findings of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and an admission from the British Government of the British Army’s illegal killing of 14* innocent civilians who took part in a civil rights protest in Derry, the British Army still refuses to admit any liability for the Springhill or Ballymurphy massacres (20), preferring as it does to continue to explain away the shooting of unarmed men, women, children – and even a Catholic priest who was waving a white handkerchief as he sought to come to the aid of the dying – as nothing more than innocent mistakes. This is despite the fact that British Army snipers devoted two days to shooting anybody unfortunate enough to come within range. The fact is, as with Bloody Sunday, these killings of unarmed civilians were anything but mistakes – they were cold blooded murder. The survivors of Springhill and Ballymurphy know it, and so does the British Army.
Heroes and Villains
For all of the flag waving jingoistic nonsense in the British media, the act of serving in the British Army – or the Armed forces of any nation – does not in itself make military personnel “heroes”. Heroism is based on individual conduct of a higher or noble purpose – sadly, when it comes to the killing of unarmed civilians there are far too many in the British Army who lack even the moral courage to speak out against these injustices, such as Father Peter Madden (21), the padre for the Queens Lancashire Regiment, who witnessed the shocking torture and abuse to Iraqi prisoners and did not have the courage to try to stop it.
For all of the flag waving jingoistic nonsense in the British media, the act of serving in the British Army – or the Armed forces of any nation – does not in itself make military personnel “heroes”. Heroism is based on individual conduct of a higher or noble purpose – sadly, when it comes to the killing of unarmed civilians there are far too many in the British Army who lack even the moral courage to speak out against these injustices, such as Father Peter Madden (21), the padre for the Queens Lancashire Regiment, who witnessed the shocking torture and abuse to Iraqi prisoners and did not have the courage to try to stop it.
The fact is moral cowardice is just one aspect of so many cases involving the killing of civilians by British Army personnel. Far too many British soldiers have been willing to withhold and fabricate evidence (22), and even lie under oath in order to ensure that their guilty colleagues are never held accountable for their crimes.
The Nuremberg Defence – I was only obeying orders.
I would argue that the very act of enlisting in the British Army (in the full knowledge that a subsequent posting to Iraq or Afghanistan would be almost inevitable) does not exempt the British Army volunteer from the accusation that their very presence as part of an occupying military force is not only immoral, but under international law it is illegal. The US and UK certainly did not obtain UN approval for the 2003 invasion, and in 2004 the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan made the position quite clear when he said “From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, the war and invasion of Iraq was illegal.” (23)
Under the UN Charter on Human Rights Article 2(4) provides: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” (24)
Article 1 also provides for the right of “self determination”, and the Charter makes it quite clear that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan have the right to oppose and resist a foreign occupying military force. It is pure hypocrisy to condemn Iraqi or Afghan nationals for using force to oppose the continued US and British military presence in their country, while honouring other “resistance” movements of the past (such as the French Resistance in WW2, or the very same Taliban in Afghanistan when they opposed the Soviet invasion of their country in 1979, or even the Irish Republican Army its struggle for self determination for the people of Ireland).
When it comes to the moral high ground one can only question who the real heroes are in such conflicts. Civilian volunteers who are willing to take up arms to defeat a foreign military force of occupation? or the military personnel of foreign states who are paid (and are better trained and armed) to maintain the occupation.
While the British Army continues to ignore its moral and legal responsibilities in regards to the killing of civilians and prisoners of war it shall continue to be a discredited military force, and in reality operate with no more moral legitimacy than the Waffen SS, or the Soviet Army who were equally guilty of war crimes.
A Whitewash Too Far
As an example of the typical British Army whitewash when it comes to investigating these crimes, the report by Brigadier Robert Aitken into the torture and death of civilian Iraqi prisoners, after two years of “investigations” produced a 38 page report that concluded that the MoD and the British Army were certainly blameless, and that the injuries and deaths of the Iraqi prisoners were attributed to nobody in particular (25).A “rotten barrel with a few good apples”
Those that claimed that the Aitken report was a typical British Army whitewash were later proved right when the same British Army investigators later admitted in court that they had colluded and coaxed witnesses, fabricated statements, and that one investigator (Captain James Rands, 1st Battalion the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment) had destroyed incriminating photographic evidence by dumping it in the English Channel. As one member of the British Military police was to say about the British Army’s investigative system – “it is not a case of a few rotten apples – it is a case of a rotten barrel with a few good apples”. (26)
As further evidence of how seriously the British Army regards the killing of civilians, and the contempt the British Army has for the British judicial system, Colonel Dudley Giles, who was found by British High Court judges to have committed perjury, of fabricating evidence, and even coercing his own investigators to lie under oath (in order to conceal the fact that British soldiers mutilated and murdered Iraqi civilian prisoners) should at the very least have been demoted or dismissed or even charged with perjury – the MoD’s response however to the British Court findings was that Col Dudley Giles should retain his rank of Deputy Provost Marshal of the Royal Military Police, and continue to be responsible for carrying out future investigations into the deaths of unarmed civilians allegedly killed by British Army personnel. (27)
Rewarding the Guilty
In only a handful of cases where the strategy of denial and cover-up has failed has it resulted in the accused facing prosecution in the British Courts – and even if the accused is found guilty the British Army refuses to regard a British Soldier who is convicted of murder or manslaughter as sufficient grounds for dismissal from the British Army. (28) The spectacle of British Army servicemen convicted of murder or manslaughter (such as Guardsman James Fisher, and Ian Wright when General Sir Roger Wheeler, who sat on the original Army Board decided to allow the two guardsmen to remain soldiers despite the murder conviction) continuing to receive their full British Army pay, and being reinstated by their regiment after serving on average just over two years imprisonment not only makes a complete mockery of justice, but simply confirms the mind-set of the British Army when it comes the value it places on the illegal killing of civilians.
In only a handful of cases where the strategy of denial and cover-up has failed has it resulted in the accused facing prosecution in the British Courts – and even if the accused is found guilty the British Army refuses to regard a British Soldier who is convicted of murder or manslaughter as sufficient grounds for dismissal from the British Army. (28) The spectacle of British Army servicemen convicted of murder or manslaughter (such as Guardsman James Fisher, and Ian Wright when General Sir Roger Wheeler, who sat on the original Army Board decided to allow the two guardsmen to remain soldiers despite the murder conviction) continuing to receive their full British Army pay, and being reinstated by their regiment after serving on average just over two years imprisonment not only makes a complete mockery of justice, but simply confirms the mind-set of the British Army when it comes the value it places on the illegal killing of civilians.
From Ballymurphy to Baghdad
This pattern of superficial investigations followed by denial of liability has been the standard British Army response to every atrocity they have been accused of committing – from the mass shooting of civilians at Amritsar in 1919, and the atrocities of the “Black and Tans” (29) in 1920-22, through to the Ballymurphy massacre and Bloody Sunday, to the hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, who were illegally killed by the British Army in the north of Ireland since 1970, and it continues today with the superficial investigations into the killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians, some of whom were hooded and manacled prisoners who died as a result of torture and beatings while in British Army “custody”.
This pattern of superficial investigations followed by denial of liability has been the standard British Army response to every atrocity they have been accused of committing – from the mass shooting of civilians at Amritsar in 1919, and the atrocities of the “Black and Tans” (29) in 1920-22, through to the Ballymurphy massacre and Bloody Sunday, to the hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, who were illegally killed by the British Army in the north of Ireland since 1970, and it continues today with the superficial investigations into the killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians, some of whom were hooded and manacled prisoners who died as a result of torture and beatings while in British Army “custody”.
A psychopathic institution
Had the British Army not been such a recidivist and psychopathic organisation, it would have responded positively to the Bloody Sunday findings by taking the initiative to support an impartial and transparent investigation into such killings. It does not do so because there is a deep rooted culture within the British Army that refuses to acknowledge that it has any legal or moral duty towards civilians – if civilians are shot, tortured to death, or abused it is simply an inevitable consequence of war, regrettable but inevitable. Such an attitude may have been the norm when the British Army was founded but in an age when our society expects, at the very minimum, that the British Army adheres to national and international law – not least the European Convention on Human Rights – the British Army’s attitude is not only socially unacceptable, but it undermines the very values that it claims to uphold, and as with similar behaviour of the psychopathic the British Army seems to not only lack the capacity for regret or remorse, but it appears to also lack the ability to learn from past mistakes.
Had the British Army not been such a recidivist and psychopathic organisation, it would have responded positively to the Bloody Sunday findings by taking the initiative to support an impartial and transparent investigation into such killings. It does not do so because there is a deep rooted culture within the British Army that refuses to acknowledge that it has any legal or moral duty towards civilians – if civilians are shot, tortured to death, or abused it is simply an inevitable consequence of war, regrettable but inevitable. Such an attitude may have been the norm when the British Army was founded but in an age when our society expects, at the very minimum, that the British Army adheres to national and international law – not least the European Convention on Human Rights – the British Army’s attitude is not only socially unacceptable, but it undermines the very values that it claims to uphold, and as with similar behaviour of the psychopathic the British Army seems to not only lack the capacity for regret or remorse, but it appears to also lack the ability to learn from past mistakes.
*Of the 27 unarmed civilians who were shot by the British Army on Bloody Sunday only 13 survived. 13 died from their injuries on the day itself while a 14th (fifty nine year old John Johnson) died from his wounds four months later.
References and Sources
1. Deaths in the north of Ireland
2. Iraq and Afghan Civilian deaths
3. UK legal claims by victims of British Army
4. Deaths in British Army custody
5. Baha Mousa Inquiry
6. Bloody Sunday Inquiry
7. UN Charter of Human Rights
8. Corporals convicted of murder and re-instated
9. FRU involvement in murder of Patrick Finucane
10. British Army torture of prisoners
11. Shoot to Kill sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher
12. Actions of the FRU
13. The planning, collusion, and participation in the murder of Irish, UK, and Iraqi citizens
14. The murder / illegal killing of unarmed men women and children
15. The assault, torture, and murder of civilian prisoners
16. The torture, mutilation and murder of captured “insurgents”
17. The supply of weapons, explosives, and intelligence to paramilitary “death squads”
18. Perjury, and the destruction / fabrication of evidence in order to protect the guilty
19. Superficial manner of investigating British Army killings
20. Sprinhill and Ballymurphy massacres
21. Father Peter Madden
22. The fabrication of evidence
23. Kofi Annan on legality of Iraq War
24. Purposes of the United Nations
25. The Aitken Report
26. A few good apples
27. Col Dudley Giles retains his job
28. Convicted British Army servicemen re-instated
29. The Black and Tans atrocities in Ireland
1. Deaths in the north of Ireland
2. Iraq and Afghan Civilian deaths
3. UK legal claims by victims of British Army
4. Deaths in British Army custody
5. Baha Mousa Inquiry
6. Bloody Sunday Inquiry
7. UN Charter of Human Rights
8. Corporals convicted of murder and re-instated
9. FRU involvement in murder of Patrick Finucane
10. British Army torture of prisoners
11. Shoot to Kill sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher
12. Actions of the FRU
13. The planning, collusion, and participation in the murder of Irish, UK, and Iraqi citizens
14. The murder / illegal killing of unarmed men women and children
15. The assault, torture, and murder of civilian prisoners
16. The torture, mutilation and murder of captured “insurgents”
17. The supply of weapons, explosives, and intelligence to paramilitary “death squads”
18. Perjury, and the destruction / fabrication of evidence in order to protect the guilty
19. Superficial manner of investigating British Army killings
20. Sprinhill and Ballymurphy massacres
21. Father Peter Madden
22. The fabrication of evidence
23. Kofi Annan on legality of Iraq War
24. Purposes of the United Nations
25. The Aitken Report
26. A few good apples
27. Col Dudley Giles retains his job
28. Convicted British Army servicemen re-instated
29. The Black and Tans atrocities in Ireland
Taken from British Army Killings
In 2005 George Monbiot wrote:
In 2005 George Monbiot wrote:
“Three recent books – Britain’s Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis – show how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise – some of them violently – against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps.Most of the remainder – over a million – were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.”
British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket”.
The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”. Elkins’s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.
These are just two examples of at least twenty such atrocities overseen and organised by the British government or British colonial settlers: they include, for example, the Tasmanian genocide, the use of collective punishment in Malaya, the bombing of villages in Oman, the dirty war in North Yemen, the evacuation of Diego Garcia. Some of them might trigger a vague, brainstem memory in a few thousand readers, but most people would have no idea what I’m talking about. Max Hastings, in the Guardian today, laments our “relative lack of interest in Stalin and Mao’s crimes.” But at least we are aware that they happened. Read more here
Global Research wrote:Britain’s Record of Crimes Against Humanity:
How many times does a practice have to be publicly outlawed before people stop pretending they didn’t know it was wrong? Suppose someone in a position of authority was being tried for murder. Would any court accept the excuse that he didn’t know it was illegal to kill someone? Yet this is precisely what has happened in the case of the British armed forces using illegal interrogation techniques.The techniques (hooding, stress positions, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation and food and drink deprivation) were banned under the Geneva conventions; by the UK parliament in 1972; again by the UK signing the Convention Against Torture (1987), and yet again when the Human Rights Act became part of UK domestic law (1998). Evidence at the Baha Mousa Inquiry showed the techniques were still being taught to troops in the 1980s and in 2002. Attempts to stop the practice of hooding were countermanded by directives from ‘higher up the chain of command’. In April 2003 hooding and other practices were banned by Lt General Brims, seen to be still in use in July 2003, clearly in use in September 2003 when Baha Mousa died, banned again by Lt Gen Sir John Reith in October 2003, and in May 2004 the order banning hooding was extended to other theatres in which UK forces were operating.
We can now step back a bit into the past of the Greatest British Empire Attrocities and despite the facts that we know Lord Macaulay addressed the British Parliament in 1835 as follows:
“I do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage…”
Lord Macaulay“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber that I do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture, and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”
Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons in 1935: “In the standard of life they have nothing to spare. The slightest fall from the present standard of life in India means slow starvation, and the actual squeezing out of life, not only of millions but of scores of millions of people, who have come into the world at your invitation and under the shield and protection of British power.”Winston Churchill to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India (1942): “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
Winston Churchill (1953) (in an egregious act of Nobel Prize-winning Holocaust Denial in which he totally wipes out any mention of the 6-7 million Indians he deliberately starved to death in 1943-1945):
“No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the peoples of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small Island.”
Here is a list of immense British atrocities in its over 2 centuries of genocidal mis-rule in India (substantially from 1757-1947) that were simply not noticed by the world:
1. 1769-1770 Bengal Famine (10 million dead).2. Other pre-20th Century famines in British India, in particular those in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1769-1770), Rajasthan, Oudh and elsewhere in northern India (1782-84), Rajasthan, Bombay, Gujarat and north-western provinces (1812-1815), north-western provinces, Punjab and Rajasthan (1837-1838), Madras, Deccan, Bihar, Bengal and particularly Orissa (1866; 3 million dead), Rajasthan and northern India (1868-1870), and throughout much of India from Hyderabad to Rajasthan and the Punjab (1899-1900; millions dying).3. 25 million Indian cholera deaths in 19 th century India due to British transmission of the disease from Bengal by rail and sea (and by sea around the world).4. 1.5 billion Indian excess deaths in the period 1757-1947 (1.8 billion excess deaths in the British-dominated Native States are included).5. 17 million Indians died in the Spanish influenza pandemic (1918-1923) out of a world total of about 50 million, this
being exacerbated by the return of hundreds of thousands Indian soldiers from WW1 and British Empire commerce.6. 1943-1945 Bengal Famine (first WW2 atrocity to be described as a “Holocaust” – by Jog in 1944; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British under Churchill see more here . (read more here )
Let’s go back to the present and see the way the police handled the London Riots…..
Between 6 and 10 August 2011, several London boroughs and districts of cities and towns across England suffered widespread rioting, looting and arson.
Following a peaceful march on 6 August 2011 in relation to the police response to the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police Service firearms officers on 4 August 2011, a riot began in Tottenham, North London.
In the following days, rioting spread to several London boroughs and districts and eventually to some other areas of England, with the most severe disturbances outside London occurring in Bristol and cities in the Midlands and North West of England. Related localised outbreaks also occurred in many smaller towns and cities in England.
The riots were characterised by rampant looting and arson attacks of unprecedented levels. As a result, British Prime Minister David Cameron returned early from his holiday in Italy and other government and opposition leaders also ended their holidays to attend to the matter. All police leave was cancelled and Parliament was recalled on 11 August to debate the situation.
As of 15 August, about 3,100 people had been arrested, of whom more than 1,000 had been charged. Arrests, charges and court proceedings continue, with courts working extended hours. There were a total 3,443 crimes across London linked to the disorder.
Five people died and at least 16 others were injured as a direct result of related violent acts. An estimated £200 million worth of property damage was incurred, and local economic activity was significantly compromised.
Police action was blamed for the initial riot, and the subsequent police reaction was criticised as being neither appropriate nor sufficiently effective. The media turned it around in a few days and the rioters were condemned… and yet to date, there is no conclusion….
The big question is, do you hold the whole BRITISH GOVERNMENT AS AN “ACTOR” or the individual as an “actor”? And while spending British Tax payers money discussing the Middle East and the rest of the world, the question raised :
“Is the House of Commons when discussing Bahrain in a better position when handling riots and terror, abuse, torture, a war crime record etc or do they justify the Middle East recent events as “peaceful” when one can say the same of Britain’s past and present when looking on the inside from out?”
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