The Youth rebels against the police in Edinburgh, Scotland

Featured image: Struggles between the police and the youth of the proletarian neighborhood of Niddrie in Edinburgh, Scotland. Source: BBC

On the 5th of November, on the Guy Fawkes Night, around 100 youths gathered in Edinburgh’s suburb of Niddrie and attacked the police with petrol bombs, fireworks and other projectiles, forcing them to initially retreat. Eight police officers were injured. In addition, bricks were thrown at a police car in the city of Dundee. In total, 15 attacks on the police and other state institutions were reported in the week leading up to the Guy Fawkes Night. Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night is a reactionary celebration held annually in the United Kingdom with its origins in the uncovering of the ”Gunpowder Plot” which was a plot to kill the protestant king James I in 1605, and from this a celebration of the English church and king was developed. Fireworks are part of the celebrations, and also in previous years these have been used against the police by the youth.

The media called the youth ”thugs” and claimed they were merely amusing themselves with the ”unprecedented violence”. However, as the police stated in the media, the attack was coordinated and clearly targeted against the police. This shows that the struggle is not just an apolitical will to “destroy everything”. Niddrie is one of the most poorest areas in Scotland. Among its youth develops a powerful class anger against the State and its police who guards the order. This reflects the revolutionary potential of the youth of the proletarian neighborhoods, and the revolutionary situation in uneven development.

This is somehow similar to the ”Halloween riots”, which are already almost a tradition in the proletarian neighborhoods of Hamburg, Germany and other parts of the country, as the newssite Dem Volke Dienen reports. Also these riots were presented by the media as apolitical rioting of ”badly integrated” immigrant youth of the proletarian neighborhoods. In order to pacify the youth, many State institutions offered different kinds of Halloween activities to the youth, but this was rejected and once again, groups of the proletarian youth gathered and took the streets to struggle against the police. Similar events of explosions of anger and rebellion unfold around the world, as all the contradictions, also within the imperialist States, sharpen, with the old States expressing their concerns over the youth.