British PM okays water cannons’ use

unprecedented violence, which critics say is partly due to his government’s spending cuts.
Cameron cut short his holiday to Italy to return home on Tuesday, promptly ordering 10 000 more police on to the streets of London where looters and arsonists ran riot largely unchallenged for three consecutive nights.
The action calmed the capital’s streets on Tuesday night, but fresh violence broke out in the major cities of Manchester and Birmingham.
AN RT report said, “Cameron acknowledged that something was badly wrong within the British society and that certain parts of the society ‘are not just broken, but frankly sick,’ arguing the problem lies more in a moral rather than in a political domain, blaming the lack of “proper upbringing and morals.”
He added that “phoney concerns about human rights” would not interfere in hunting the criminals down.
Parliament will return from its summer break today for an extraordinary one-day session on the crisis, when Cameron must show he is in control in the face of public outrage at the worst civil unrest since the 1980s.
Some left-wing commentators are referring to this as the prime minister’s “Katrina moment”, similar to when the failings of President George W Bush’s administration were exposed by the damage wrought by a hurricane in New Orleans in 2005.
Cameron has been under fire within his Conservative party for not being tough enough, and he hit back yesterday by announcing that police will now be able to use water cannon, which have never before been deployed in mainland Britain.
Ramping up his rhetoric yesterday, he strongly condemned the violence, saying it was the result of a lack of responsibility and morals among young people, fuelled by a welfare system that “rewards idleness”.
He left no room for claims that the riots were happening because youngsters are marginalised by unemployment, poverty and lack of opportunity, nor that they could be linked to his Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s public spending cuts.
Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour party, has not sought to make political capital out of the riots, saying there are “no excuses”, but other members of his party have been more forthright.
Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman condemned the violence, saying it could not be justified, but she also argued that “there is a sense that young people don’t think they are being listened to”
She listed policies to treble university tuition fees and abolish a grant given to teenagers to stay in school, and plans to shut job centres to save money despite high unemployment, saying ministers “should think again about that”. Ken Livingstone, the left-wing former mayor of London hoping to take back the office in next year’s elections, said: “If you’re making massive cuts, there’s always the potential for this sort of revolt against that.”
Newspapers have been cautious about making the link, and Nick Wilkie, chief executive of London Youth, a network of 400 community organisations in London, agreed that the cuts should not blamed for the unprecedented violence.
“We do not believe closing youth clubs has caused this. Blaming events on cuts risks letting violent criminals off the hook,” he said.
“Equally, the fact that there are large numbers of unemployed young people with nothing to do this summer won’t help.”
Cameron is also under fire from his own side for slashing the police budget by 20 percent by 2014-15, which will result in an estimated 34 000 jobs axed.
The current mayor of London, Conservative Boris Johnson, has demanded a rethink of the cuts following the rioting, which police chiefs admitted had left them stretched to breaking point.
“That case was always pretty frail and it has been substantially weakened. This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers,” Johnson told BBC radio.
Cameron promised yesterday that “a fightback is underway”, but commentators say his leadership will be judged on how long the riots continue.
“He has to show that he is bringing the situation under control,” said an editorial in the right-wing Daily Telegraph. “If Mr Cameron gets it wrong and the rioting is still in full spate at the weekend, he may struggle to recover.”
According to a report on RT, “In the meantime British police suffer from a shortage of law enforcement to control the situation in all cities of the country where unrest erupts and pillage begins, leaving owners of small businesses no other choice but to self-organise to protect their property.”
On Tuesday night public unrest and the following looting of small shops were registered in isolated parts of London, Birmingham, Gloucester, Liverpool, Manchester and their suburbs, with Manchester suffering its worst public unrest in 30 years.
Other riot highlights:
l Violence: less in London, more around the country
l More than 1 000 arrests strain legal system after fourth night of riots.
l Appeals for calm after Birmingham deaths.
l Residents in Winson Green warn of inter-communal violence if murder inquiry does not produce rapid results, after three men struck by car carrying suspected looters.
l Man critically ill after being attacked during Ealing riots.
l 110 arrested after rampages in Manchester and Salford
l Disbelief as looting and violence spread to Gloucester.
l Manchester businesses count cost of looting.
l Economic cost of riots ‘will harm services sector’ – AFP-guardian.co.uk-RTHerald.