In one of the most deprived area in the country and social services are doing their job by attempting to remove children, presumably for their own safety, from the family home. Someone, who sees what’s happening, but has no concept of the background and the reasons why these children are being removed, posts something on the local Facebook account or texts someone. Some inoccuous comment and unfortunately this evokes a major reaction.

You’re in an area where the police and social services are hated, because this community only ever sees them when things are going wrong, when someone is going to be arrested. There is no community police officer getting to know people, no interaction with social services other than for bad reasons. Why wouldn’t this community erupt?

I’m not saying its right, but at the same time they’re already angry for having to live in a deprived area, no jobs, no shops, no community spirit. No hope or belief that things can get better. Everytime there has been some glimmer of hope from various governments, they are ignored. Nothing gets better. Houses go to rack and ruin because there’s no money to fix them, their kids are leaving school with no qualifications and no jobs, their only outlet is probably drugs, and that costs money, so thieving is on a grand scale. Everything is costing more to keep the wolf from the door and all this without any let up. They are all angry, but they have no way to vent that anger because nobody listens to them.

Well Thursday night allowed that anger to overspill onto the streets, and they thought they had a valid reason to do so. They were being rightous to their neighbour, who was about to lose their children. They didn’t know why, but they didn’t care. The police and social workers were upsetting their norm and they weren’t going to sit back and let it happen.

There were probably several protagonists pushing buttons, but when isn’t there? Now lets see what the government will do, apart from the usual rhetoric about “how this can’t be allowed to happen”, “we will find the perperaters and they will be punished”, etc, etc. No comments about how ignored these people feel, how they need jobs, how they need someone to listen to them? Nothing like that. Well, I would warn the government that this is only the beginning because people are on the edge and our government ministers have no bloody idea what these people are dealing with. I don’t condone it but I can understand it. Watch out.