Strong in the Face of Adversity

It's been a hard few days for the people of London and the people of the UK. With less than a year to go until the 2012 Olympics, and with representatives from countries across the world here for Olympic heats, the nation that has been put on display is not a friendly, open and tolerant nation, but one supposedly filled with mindless, opportunistic thugs.

I don't think any person who has see the news or read the newspapers in the last few days is  ever going to forget this image. I know I won't



Reeves Furniture Store, a shop that has been in buisness for over a hundred and fifty years being burned to the ground, live on the nightly news. And now of course the violence has spread out of the capital to this countries other major cities. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool all experiencing acts of copy cat violence.

But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is the good that has come out of this.

Call it The Big Society, call it Community Spirit, call it The British Spirit, but the British have never been a people to lie dowin the face of adversity. When faced with trouble, we simply roll up our sleeves and keep going, pulling together and helping one other.

It's been that way since long before I was born, the Blitz spirit being a prime example from the Second World War. We are a country for whom the phrase "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" could have been invented. And the UK Riots haven't changed that.

The media has often pointed out over the last three days how it is modern social networking site such as Twitter and Facebook that have allowed the rioters and looters to organize themselves. But yesterday morning as the country reeled in the wake of a third night of violence I awoke to discover that a group of people had decided the time had come to both do something about the rioting and to take back our social networks. I awoke to the glorious hash tag #riotcleanup.

Across London and across the country people were fighting the rioters. Not with sticks or stones or violence, but with brooms, cups of tea and peace. People were donning the rubber gloves and going out to clean up their communities. Going out to show the rioters that no matter what they did, they couldn't frighten people away. They couldn't dampen the British Spirit.

The Riot Clean Up website says that "This is not about the riots. This is about the clean up - Londoners who care, coming together to engender a sense of community,"  and BBC Journalist Michael Hirst said that at Clapham Junction station there was "Sunshine, high spirits, lots of joking and a community vibe,"  as three hundred to four hundred volunteers took part in the clean up operation.

This is the London, this is the United Kingdom that I wish the global community could see. Not the riots and the arson and the violence. But the Community Spirit that such action prompts in people.


The Riot Wombles of Central London. This is what being British means.

I have read quotes by people over the last few days saying that the violence and rioting has made them ashamed to be British. And it is shameful. But after seeing images like the one above, after seeing the Police being cheered by onlookers in Clapham Junction, I'm not ashamed.

In fact, I've never been more proud to be British.