If you are of voting age in the UK (18 years or older), the chances are that you will be able to remember the 2011 Riots, which are sometimes referred to as the London Riots too.
During a period of 5 days and nights that August, many people took to the streets in different places and engaged in civil unrest.
You didn’t have to be there or in the middle of a riot, or anywhere near a shop being looted or burned to the ground, to be shocked, concerned or frightened by what you could see was going on.
It doesn’t seem normal or rational for people to behave this way. But we all need to understand that when fear and desperation leads beyond frustration to anger, and people no longer believe they have anything else to lose, there is no logic, no form of words and no out-of-the-moment promise that can be made to them, that will make the desire they have to act irrationally or without care, go away.
If people in the area you live begin to engage in any form of civil unrest, or you yourself feel desperate enough to join any group of people which has taken to the streets, please think about the point that we have all already collectively reached, and what we can all do together constructively without damaging anything or the relationships that we have with anyone, who or that can become part of the new system we can build from what we must now replace.
You may see policemen, paramedics, firefighters, soldiers and public sector representatives as representatives of the system. But they are real people behind their badges or uniform. People just the same as you and I.
We do not need to destroy anything or hurt anyone else to achieve change and to create a new system. We only have to withdraw our collective consent from the one that we must replace.
Nobody has to continue working for the existing system. But it will help us all if those who have public responsibility continue to fulfil the genuine purposes of their roles, and help and protect all others, whilst sense begins to be made of what we all need to do to ensure that above everything, each and every one of us is safe, has shelter and the things we need, and has access to enough of the basic essentials with the priority always given to basic foods.
Adam Tugwell 