{"id":935,"date":"2011-08-10T14:29:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T14:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=935"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:34","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:34","slug":"water-and-gin-a-selective-history-of-london-riots-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/08\/water-and-gin-a-selective-history-of-london-riots-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Water and Gin: A Selective History of London Riots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

You know you\u2019re in a country with a solid civil-rights tradition when, four days into a massive riot, the authorities begin to talk about using water cannon.<\/p>\n

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced today<\/strong><\/a> that \u201cwe now have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours\u2019 notice.\u201d Meanwhile, the rioting, which began in London, and had already spread to Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham, has spread even farther. Police have arrested 108 suspected rioters in Manchester and Salford, and another 90 in Nottingham. In Birmingham, three men, protecting their businesses from looters, were killed when a car drove into them.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t pretend to understand Cameron\u2019s tactical and ethical concerns as he understands them. It may be that calling in the army \u2014 a move he said he has dismissed after some consideration \u2014 would create more problems than it would solve. Nevertheless, one thing is clear to any student of history: the English riot has always been a more benign, less ambitious cousin to riots in other parts of the world. It might destroy property and claim lives, but it does not, generally, topple governments or force serious adjustments to the social order.<\/p>\n

Many of the riots that gripped London in the 18th century have an oddly modern feel to them, since they involved the perennial problems of substance abuse, government regulation (or its absence) and ethnic rivalry. In the early 18th century, eager to create a domestic market for corn, Parliament effectively de-regulated the distillation and sale of intoxicating spirits \u2014 including brandy, and especially gin. The result was a boom in the booze industry that led to a boom in crime, beggary and infant mortality. In 1721, a commission of Westminster justices declared that the proliferation of gin shops: <\/p>\n

Is the principall cause of the increase of our poor, and of all our vice and debauchery among the inferior sort of people, as well as of the felonies and other disorders committed in and about this town.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1735, a commission of Middlesex justices reported: \u201cUnhappy mothers habituate themselves to these distilled liquors, whose children are born weak and sickly, and often look shrivel\u2019d and old, as though they numbered many years. Others again give it to their children\u2026and learn them even before they can go to taste and approve this certain destroyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the Age of Reason had its crack babies.<\/p>\n

The upshot: in 1736, after many such commissions, Parliament was finally prevailed upon to restrict the spirits trade. The decision did not go over well, either with distillers or sellers, and certainly not with drinkers. These rioted constantly and reportedly murdered anyone they suspected of snitching on unlicensed gin-sellers to the magistrates. The restrictive laws became unenforceable. It wasn\u2019t until 1751, by which time the curtailment of gin -drinking had become a national crusade, that Parliament managed to pass a law with real teeth. The rioters had lost, but only after a long struggle.<\/p>\n

Ranking just after gin as a leading cause of rioting was the presence of the Irish. As M. Dorothy George notes in London in the 18th Century,<\/em> \u201cFaction fights between English and Irish seem to have been common.\u201d In 1736, at Spitalfields, one of these swelled into a pitched battle that lasted two days, defeated a company of militia, and required the mobilization of the Guards. In 1740, angered at being burned in effigy on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, \u201ca great body\u201d of Irishmen, of whom \u201cover twenty were armed with cutlasses, and thirty or forty more with sticks and bludgeons\u201d attacked the butchers of Clare Market. By the 1780s, George reports, \u201cthe sectarian feuds of the early part of the century had subsided.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of so much bad news \u2014 the wild flights and crashes of the Dow, the drop in uor national credit rating, the coming double dip \u2014 the riots currently sweeping through England have a horrible way of looking like the beginning of the end of the world. If history\u2019s any guide, they won\u2019t be. And they shouldn\u2019t signal the end of anyone\u2019s sanity. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know you\u2019re in a country with a solid civil-rights tradition when, four days into a massive riot, the authorities begin to talk about using water cannon. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced today that \u201cwe now have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours\u2019 notice.\u201d Meanwhile, the rioting, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWater and Gin: A Selective History of London Riots<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You know you're in a country with a solid civil-rights tradition when, four days into a massive riot, the authorities begin to talk about using water\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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