Rioting Across the Century Part 2: France, 2005

In assessing the impact that rioting has, we must avoid two complimentary mistakes: one is that an over interpretation of events leads to romanticising riots as fully-fledged political intervention; secondly one must avoid under-interpreting rioters’ actions. By this I mean that even though protest often takes the active form of destruction and delinquency, the actions of rioters must not be understood as devoid of political meaning.

Despite this, one cannot help but ask oneself what sense is there in burning a furniture store and how much meaning is there in burning cars? In order to help answer these sorts of questions, we can begin to understand the causes of this month’s events by assessing previous riots – most notably the 2005 French civil unrest, which saw 3,000 arrests, 9,000 vehicles burnt and a total of €450m worth of damage within 21 days - a battle between the police and the disaffected north-African youth that tarnished the image of ‘la belle France’.

On the 27^th October 2005, in the suburban district of Clichy-sous-Bois, the accidental death of two teenagers in connection with police intervention triggered unprecedented levels of rioting throughout France. As the violence spread across the country, Prime Minister Dominique Villepin issued a state of emergency, restoring the colonial law of 1955 which granted the government unlimited power to instigate curfews, conduct stop and searches and impose house arrests on suspects.

It has been suggested that the extent of the rioting could have been restricted, were it not for the actions of the interior minister at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy. Two days after the riots began the level of destruction appeared to be slowing down. However, a day later, on the 30^th October, the violence escalated and rapidly spread across the country, after Sarkozy labelled the rioters ‘racaille’ - a derogatory term loosely translated as ‘scum’ - which led to a very public spat between Sarkozy and the minister in charge of equal opportunities, the French Moroccan Azous Begag.

The spat was just one of many incidents which provided evidence of fracture within French society. The underlying issues involved social and economic exclusion, racial discrimination, youth unemployment and the tendency of the French republic to respond to these challenges with paltry levels of investment and heavy-handed policing in the banlieuses – the marginalised suburban housing projects which accommodate the majority of the north-African citizens.

A major problem which has existed in France for decades has been the difficulty of integrating north-African ‘immigrants’ within French society. Back in 1995, the rap group NTM lyricized in one of their tracks,

“The years pass, but all remains the same
More asphalt, less space

Which makes me ask myself
How much longer will all of this last

For years everything should have already exploded, too bad our side has never been united

We've nothing to lose for we've never had anything to begin with

The bourgeoisie should tremble, the gangstas are in town
Not to party, but to burn the place down
But why, why are we waiting to set the fire”

NTM, hailing from the north-eastern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, would have to wait a decade before their fantasies became reality.

Sarkozy, when asked upon the issue of north-African ‘immigrant’ integration amongst wider society, suggested it was a “problem of identity”. However, the so called ‘immigrants’ are not immigrants at all, they are in fact French and are demanding their full French rights. They have no doubt which community they belong to.

The tumult within French society can be understood by this lack of understanding, and the riots highlight the growing disconnect between the political system and marginalised minority groups, which have in turn exacerbated the contradictions in the penalisation of poverty deployed by the French government.

Many politicians last week portrayed the violence in London as ‘mindless’, ‘aimless’, and ‘counter-productive’, a framing very much similar to the condemnation of events expressed by the French government in 2005. Could it be though, that these acts were in fact proto-political?

Gervase touched upon this in his previous post, highlighting that the rioters’ actions can be understood as a subconscious statement, a response to the failures of the political system. Indeed, many in France asked why the rioters were burning schools – institutions that they needed – but to answer this, one must understand that these are the very symbols and instruments of access to the sort of stable life that this youth was being denied. The police are the representations of a discredited state, an authority which has abused its powers. That is what is meant by a proto-political rationality: an effort to discredit the discredited state.

Suggestions that riots were ‘unproductive’ seem accurate on the surface, but paradoxically they led to tangible steps forward for French society. The riots resulted in the immediate infusion of €100m worth of government spending in the most impoverished areas of the country; they put the question of discrimination on the political map and brought about a discussion of less harsh policing in the banlieuses. Sociologist Tyler Stovall argues that the riots led to far greater success in influencing policy change than the youth voting against the government.

At the time that Sarkozy became President in 2007, a series of urban renewal plans and funding programs designed to re-integrate the banlieuses were underway. However since then, funding into these was cut by what Paul Silverstein describes as “general fiscal belt-tightening necessitated by France’s entrance into the European Monetary Union.” He goes on to argue that Sarkozy deployed the money instead to reinforce police presence in light of rising fears of terrorist attacks. The increase in police presence can only exacerbate the disaffiliation between the youth and wider society, condemning the north-African youth as racially and spatially ‘other’.

By extracting the positives from the events in 2005, one can see that it shows the capacity of the French youth to refuse to be marginalised - to not accept dead-end jobs, brutal policing as a daily experience and the lifelong social insecurity that comes with these experiences .

But this also presents the failures of the French political system as a schizophrenic state: liberal at the top, non-interventionist, seemingly unable to provide for the poorest in society, whilst paternalistic at the bottom when it comes to handling the social consequences of these policies.

- Jack O

Wacquant, Loic, 'Return Of The Repressed' http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/wacquant_pdf/RETURNOFREPRESSED-MONU.pdf (interesting case study comparison between riots in France, US and GB))

http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/ (website/blog dedicated to riots - a number of articles from various authors)

Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘The French Riots: Rebellion of the Underclass’ http://www2.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/174en.htm

Schneider, Cathy Lisa, 'Police Power and Race Riots in Paris'

Rioting Across the Century Part 1: U.S.A 1965-68

Having now experienced a small taste of a city exploding into riots firsthand, it seems a good time to take a look back at some other riots that dwarfed what has happened in England over the past week. In the first of two posts on the topic, I am going to look at the riots in American cities that occurred during the 1960s, whilst in another post soon to follow, Jack Ovens will be looking at the French riots of 2005.

Although it makes sense to draw some comparison between the two sets of riots, this is a history blog, not a politics one, so I will try to keep comments on the current events to a minimum. In addition, the historian can only fulfil his role when he is impartial; when he can seeks to understand why something has happened, and not respond to events emotionally. Having seen people destroy the neighbourhood I have lived in almost all my entire life a few days ago, I would probably question the impartiality of my own views on the London riots, and respectfully deem myself a dubious source.

Riots often come to be understood in terms of the sobriquet that is given to them. So when we think of the 1960s race riots, we naturally think that they were caused by racism. This made up part of the explanation provided by the liberal Kerner Report, commissioned by President Johnson to investigate the cause of the riots of the previous two years in 1967, which presented its findings to him the following year. The report concluded that deep seated white racism (what Stokely Carmichael would call ‘institutional racism’) manifested in racist housing laws, glass ceilings in employment and in the most outright form in police forces, was largely responsible for causing the riots.

This explanation might well explain a good deal of the rioting, particularly the pitched battles between rioters and police or the National Guard. It is also lent credence by the fact the ‘spark’ which ignited the riots was almost invariably some accusation of police brutality, which would build upon smouldering resentments against racism in the force. The situation often then deteriorated as further rumours about the heavy-handed tactics of police spread. Clearly trust of the police, an institution which was indeed blighted by endemic racism, was minimal.

Part of the issue was also frustration with a lack of positive social change – the riots were a cry for attention from a group who heard of bills being passed on Capitol Hill to deal with racism but saw no changes in their own levels of poverty in the Northern Cities. When Martin Luther King toured the streets of L.A. after the riot, one rioter told him excitedly, ‘we won’. Confused, King replied, ‘your neighbourhood is destroyed, people have been killed and you’ve lost the goodwill of the whites. How did you win?’ The young man replied, ‘because we got them to take notice of us’

But there were also elements of the riots that resembled very strongly the basic looting has occurred in the UK . If we ignore this there is a danger of romanticising the American race rioter of the 1960s. Too easily can he be morphed into a revolutionary protester against the evils of American Capitalism, the black hero finally standing up to the white oppressor. There were certainly people at the time who had this illusion, only to see it swiftly shattered. One black man, referred to in the Kerner Report as ‘E.G.’, recalled being told about the riot on 12^th street in Detroit that started on July 23, 1967, and hurrying down excitedly hoping to see a ‘true revolt’. ‘I wanted to see the people really rise up in revolt,’ said E.G., ‘When I saw the first person coming out of the store with things in his arms, I really got sick to my stomach and wanted to go home. Rebellion against the white suppressors is one thing, but one measly pair of shoes or some food completely ruins the whole concept.”

To drive home the point, let us consider the case of the ‘soul brothers’. During many of the American riots, including the Detroit one, some black shopowners would spray ‘soul brothers’ over the front of their businesses to alert the rioters that this was a shop belonging to one of their own, and should be left alone. The Kerner Report showed that in Detroit, these messages were ignored and the rioters indiscriminately looted white and ‘soul brothers’ stores alike.

Why…? And why would rioters in London destroy family–run furniture businesses where there is nothing to steal or steal armfuls of goods from ‘Poundland’ where the risk clearly outlines the benefit? Woe betide the analyst who falls back on the conclusion that this is ‘mindless’ violence and does not need to be understood. In both sets of riots, the seemingly illogical nature tells you that the looting isn’t just about money, or hitting back at whites, it’s a subconscious statement: this society has nothing invested in me and I have nothing invested in it. I owe it nothing.

With all riots, one’s ‘explanation’ depends on what question one is actually asking. How deep into the issue of why do you want to go? Do you take the line that people are responsible for their own actions, and no amount of detrimental life circumstances can justify looting and the destruction of others’ property? Or do you accept that yes, there is no excuse for such behaviour, but that does not prevent us from examining what conditions creates the mindset within people that says they owe nothing to society and can take at will? Hopefully there will come a time when historians can do the latter for the London riots, as they have done for the American riots of the 1960s, otherwise we might end up with our own equivalent of the 1994 L.A. riots somewhere down the line…

References/ Further Reading:

Banfield, 'The Unheavenly City Revisited' – Controversial analysis of riots which played extent of racism

National Advisory committee on Civil Disorders (Kerner Report) ­- exhaustive report on the riots.

Goveneor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots: Violence in the City, an End or a Beginning? – ‘McCone Report’ Unsympathetic to the rioters.

Thomas F Jackson, 'From Civil Rights to Human Rights' MLK and the Struggle for Economic Justice

Nathan Right Jr., 'Black Power and Urban Unrest'