‘You’re All the Same, Lads with Bricks’: Riots and Rioters

Abstract

From the ‘urban riots’ in the early 1980s, to the combustible ‘estate riots’ in 1991, to the ‘race riots’ in northern towns such as Oldham and Burnley in 2001 and the ‘shopping riots’ that spread from London to other English cities during the summer of 2011, speculation around the causes and consequences of these riots have proved compelling starting points for several plays. This chapter examines the socially abjectifying narratives that re-surface around riots and rioters as political rhetoric and media discourse hone in on criminality, ‘mindless’ violence, dysfunctional families, poor or absent parenting, immigration and racial discord, whilst downplaying wider systemic problems. It explores how theatre has invited audiences to look beyond the media image and reductive sound-bite culture in order to better understand the genesis of these differently inflected riots and to resist, or at least complicate, the dominant cultural imaginaries of riots and rioters that persist.