UK Riots - HAL's offical statement

Please note that this statement was retracted on 10/08/12 and does not reflect the opinions of myself, or Huddersfield Anarchist League.

As we're sure you're all aware, violence has broken out in the UK.
Police appear to be gunning down men on the floor and attacking children with clubs for questioning police processes. They have kidnapped hundreds of people, from London, to Northern England, and caged them for demanding answers. This is violence and you cannot hide behind words like "arrest" or "maintaining public order" to justify it. Already, news channels are talking about deploying chemical weapons, such as CS gas, controlling our movement with curfews and putting more gunmen on the streets in the style of Syria, Egypt, Bahrain or Libya in a desperate bid to force us to bottle our rage for another decade or two.

Huddersfield Anarchist League met on Monday to discuss the situation and its causes in depth and agreed to release this statement.

On Saturday the community in Tottenham gathered to demand answers about the shooting of Mark Duggan. Witnesses report that he was shot while he was defenceless on the ground and that in the Met's blundering, they even managed to shoot one of their own thugs in the process of murdering Mark Duggan. The police's response was not to admit that there was doubt about the innocence of their troops and to say that the gunmen would be on trial. Instead they declared they would leave it in the hands of the IPCC - an organisation that has failed to get a prosecution on ANY of the officers involved in the 400 deaths in police custody in the last 10 years. For the family, friends and community of Mark Duggan, this is an insult, to those who have lost a father of four from their lives.

When the people demanded answers, it was witnessed that the police replied by beating a 16 year old girl with clubs, making it very clear that they have no intention of treating the community with respect. The protesters were then presented with a choice - meet violence head on, or back down, go home and wait for the IPCC to clear the murderers of Mark Duggan. The people of Tottenham, who have been under all the same stresses, anger and more that we have here in Huddersfield, did the only thing they could and fought.

Since Saturday, the rioting has spread and become more than just the
single issue of Mr Duggan's murder. Decades of anger that has been boiling up about the numerous injustices faced by everyone in the UK. Martin Luther King said many years ago that; "'When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.'". In an age of austerity, rising prices, scarce jobs and the criminalisation of unemployment, this seems very appropriate. Such anger cannot be suppressed forever and the murder of Mr Duggan was the spark that ignited it. Many of these same issues are here in Huddersfield and are still bottled away. Do we accept that there will be riots here too, do we demand that we bottle our anger for longer, or do we actually start dealing with these issues before it's too late?

While we do not condone the attacks on small independent stores and homes, this is to be expected in the chaos that was caused by the actions of the Metropolitan Police and government. We encourage anyone who was involved in these attacks to make amends with their victims and those who were not involved, help to bring these people to justice. However, the retaliation on police and their equipment is a totally justified response to the violence they have inflicted. Corporations and government buildings that have repressed us all in different ways were also targeted which shows the understandable anger directed towards them, as they are no innocent party in the repression that goes on in our communities.

We offer our support to those who have faced down the brutality of the Metropolitan police to defend their communities from further murders. We demand the release of all those who were arrested in the process of doing this. We demand that the gunmen who murdered Mark Duggan are brought to a real trial, on real charges. We demand that those who have misplaced their direct action, make reparations with their victims.

These riots are about justice, something that the police and government cannot deliver! When the dust settles from all this, we can only hope that any fairy tales of these organisations being on the side of the British people will be gone forever and that people take a new interest in finding solutions to the many problems we face on a day to day basis.

Huddersfield Anarchist League