London burns

'You lose your son, I can't describe to anyone what it feels like to lose your son' were the remarks of a shell-shocked father. His son was killed by a car along with two other Pakistani-Britons in the Winson Green area of Birmingham. They were said to be a part of a group of British Asians protecting their area from looters after attending prayers at a mosque. The speed of events, their geographical distance, the ferocity of the violence and the depth of the depravity have badly bruised Britain.
North London's Tottenham quarter turned into a war zone last Saturday, spreading later to other parts of the city. The trouble started two days earlier on Thursday when the police stopped a minicab and shot to death its occupant, a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, infuriating the area's predominant immigrant population. Things spun out of control after a teenaged girl threw a rock at the police who beat her up. Some 200 youths ran amok smashing windows, looting shops, attacking police officers, and tearing down everything in their way. Since then the rioting has spread like a contagion to other towns/cities and continues as these lines are written. Although, the police regretted the shooting, and the victim's family called for calm while demanding answers, no one seemed to be listening. Tottenham has been the scene of violent riots back in the 1980s; there have been other instances, in the past, of violence between South Asian immigrants and skinheads. Still, people said they had never seen any thing like this before.
It is a sign of the times. On the face of it, what triggered the mob's fury was the feeling that the police acted recklessly because of the colour of Duggan's skin. The police claimed it fired the fatal shots after being fired at. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said a 'non-police' firearm was found at the scene of Duggan's death, which seems to endorse the police's version. But Duggan has become a symbol of so much that the immigrant communities see as wrong with the way they are treated. Many live in ghettoised communities where unemployment and crime is part of the common experience. Lately, things have gotten from bad to worse because of the way the Tory-led coalition government is trying to grapple with the ongoing financial crisis. It has put into place several austerity measures, which include cuts on social services. That has put a lot of economic stress on the already stressed communities.
The system, as a local resident aptly put it, "is cracking and it's starting to show." Britain and other Western nations are unlikely to regain the levels of prosperity they enjoyed for so long that allowed them to provide special benefits to the under-privileged sections of society. Yet leaving them on their own will exacerbate social tensions, like the ones that were waiting to explode in Tottenham. Racists and xenophobes, of course, will use such situations to whip up anti-immigrant sentiments, creating unnecessary conflicts.
It is in their own interest, therefore, that British government and its Western partners find ways to create conditions whereby the disadvantaged sections of the immigrant populations have easier access to better education and employment opportunities, so that not only they improve their own lives but also become productive members of their adopted countries. A murder inquiry has been launched following the death of three Pakistani-Britons and one man has been arrested in this connection. One hope is that justice will be done and their killers in particular will see the consequences of their actions.