(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - “The Arab Spring is certainly a big influence and the Spring itself is ultimately caused by the failures of the present economic and political system,” Shakespeare said.
“Powerful democratic forces are afoot and the USA and UK are making a big mistake in not openly backing the Spring in a consistent way. Western support for totalitarian Saudi Arabia and a fascist Bahrain is a disgrace,” he added.
Rioting continued to spread around Britain for a fourth successive night Tuesday with the UK government treating the outbreak as a matter of law and order and has so far led to more than 1,350 arrests.
“The overall context is of a collapsing financial and economic system which essentially relies on putting everybody into unrepayable debt and, in particular, does not focus on spreading productive and associated consuming capacity to everybody and which engenders huge rich-poor division,” said the professor.
“There are two other big factors in the UK - an education system which, at its best, is best in the world, but which, at its worst, is very bad and has betrayed young people who are not taught to read, write and calculate thereby giving them self-confidence and the ability to survive in an economic world which requires people to be able to read, write and calculate,” he said.
The other was “consumerism which says that people do not really exist as part of society unless they have all the latest clothing, cosmetics, gadgets etc which unemployed young people are not able to acquire legitimately.”
“The overall result is the creation of a section of society which does not believe that it is part of society and is thus now reacting violently,” he said.
Shakespeare, who is also a lawyer as well as a lecturer, believed that there were no easy answers and expected that the UK government would continue to clampdown on the unrest. “There is no immediate solution to the UK situation because the causes are too fundamental. The immediate likely result is repression,” he suggested.
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