The Angry Exile: The (inevitable) riot posts #5 - A call for arms

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday 11 August 2011

The (inevitable) riot posts #5 - A call for arms - UPDATED

Click for links:

Two thoughts occur, first of which is good on those who've woken up to the reality that the police simply cannot protect everyone in this kind of situation. They just can't. The Met has about 33,000 officers, and with Specials and PCSOs it's pushed up to about 42,000 or so, plus whatever can be spared from other forces.* Sounds like a lot but of course they can't just stop all other areas of policing or expect officers to go without sleep of food, and if neighbouring forces have serious problems of their own there may be little help available - and of course several now do. They'd be doing well to have 25,000 cops on London's streets and probably even that's a stretch. And since London has somewhere between 8 million and 14 million people depending on where you choose to stop counting you don't need the rioting, looting, scumbag proportion of its society to be even a significant minority for the police to be outnumbered. One percent of ten million outnumbers even optimistic police numbers 4 to 1, and that's before you consider the sheer size of the area that needs to be protected.

Of course the police are equipped and trained and so on, and most importantly are backed up by the state's monopoly on force, so they will eventually get the upper hand and restore order. But that's not much comfort if your home or your business or whatever building or bit of ground that's precious to you and your local community has been wrecked, burned and pillaged by marauding hordes of ferals. The choice then is a simple one: hope like hell the police happen to be around if trouble happens in your neighbourhood or at least come quickly enough to stop it, or to take responsibility for that protection yourself with whatever tools you have and whatever makeshift barriers and weapons you can devise. The police won't like it and have already ordered some to get back in their homes and leave it to them - instructions that I sincerely hope have been ignored pending restoration of the police's ability to protect innocent citizens. And clearly it's not without its risks as those few deaths of people trying to protect what's theirs show. But just living or running a business in the wrong part of the wrong town is a risk in itself at the moment, so it's hardly surprising that a number of people have decided to grab whatever they have that swings well and looks like a looter would steer clear of, and take up stations.**

And the second thought that occurs? It'd be a damn sight easier for people to protect themselves and their property if ownership of the best tools for doing so - firearms - wasn't banned for all of Britain's persistently law-abiding non-offenders, and there might have been less looting if the pricks with the bricks thought there was a fair chance there'd be someone with a loaded gun behind the glass ready to defend the place.

UPDATE - as a follow up to one of the footnotes below, from The Daily Mail article linked above (my bold):

Amarjit Singh Klair from nearby Hounslow, who helped rally the men, said: ‘We are working along side the police, they’re doing what they can but they are stretched.
‘Why shouldn’t we defend our homes, businesses and places of worship? This is our area. There’s lots of talk about it kicking off here. But we’re ready for them.’
Hooded youths could be seen scouting the area but appear to be have frightened off. Only a handful of police could be seen patrolling the area.
The Sikh community were running a military style operation to protect themselves after almost 100 rioters tried to attack the heart of the area early on Tuesday.
With few police around, elders at London’s largest Sikh temple in Havelock Road resorted to telephoning male worshippers for help.
Last night groups of Sikh men stood guard at different parts of the town, keeping in touch via their mobiles.
One man in his 20s said: ‘They caught us off guard last night but we still managed to get people together to protect the area. We saw them putting on their balaclavas preparing to jump out of three cars but we charged at them and managed to chase them off.’

Props to the Sikhs - I've always liked the ones I've met, and as a group they seem to know when to stop fucking around and start relying on themselves.

* I haven't counted the City of London police as they have less than a thousand to add and if trouble spread to their patch I could imagine they might to borrow manpower from the Met.
** It's also not surprising, or not to me anyway, that the among the first to do so were Sikhs defending their temple. They're not daft and not shy of taking responsibility for their own defence.