.. it’s possible to see a connection between the young people who first gathered in frustration outside a police station in north London last Saturday, infuriated by police officers’ killing of a 29-year-old black man, and those who began rioting in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid following the self-immolation of a frustrated fruit seller last December. The common factors include high unemployment, resentment toward a prosperous and seemingly impenetrable upper class, and hatred of the police. In Britain’s case, as in some Arab countries, the trouble is further fueled by racial and ethnic tensions.
In Britain, as in the Middle East, political leaders were taken by surprise by the explosiveness of the unrest. Britain’s spread from the Tottenham police station across London and then to Birmingham and other cities in the first three nights. But people who live in some of the affected neighborhoods or work with their youth said it had been brewing for a long time, even as the country’s political parties largely ignored the problems of a troubled underclass.
This is becoming a year of rebellion by the dispossessed — first in the Arab Middle East, then in Israel and now in one of the world’s richest democracies. At a time of economic disruption, no country is immune from such upheaval.
