The coolest, or second most cool, thing I have ever done was to see the poet-singer Gil Scott Heron in concert, at a Birmingham jazz club in ‘97. Like other cool things, it wasn’t actually as cool as I like to pretend it was in memory. I missed dinner and perhaps for that reason snapped at a waiter to ask for a meal.
He took me to a table (a good thing, because it was standing room only) and no-one came for my order. Nor did Scott-Heron sing, or recite, my favourites of his, Whitey’s on the moon, and The revolution will not be televised. Times have changed. One of the many reasons that a revolution is most unlikely is that people are far too intent on filming themselves and what’s in front of them, on their phones. So it was last month when posts on TikTok conjured up crowds on Oxford Street in London’s West End.
I downloaded TikTok especially to see ‘Oxford Street looting’ videos. One remarkable video filmed from inside a clothing store had a security officer with his back to the entrance (wide and open) trying to keep a man with a bag from leaving, while another man was pulling clothes off the nearest rail and throwing them on the floor when the guard blocked him. Oddest of all was that the unknown person (an accomplice? someone who just happened to be there?) went on filming. Otherwise I was struck by how little looting appeared to happen; so many in the crowds were young, presumably on holiday from school or college, and showing no sign of trying to loot shops. Many looked like they were there not to commit crime, but for a cheap and entertaining, and presumably cool, day out.
That is not to make light of the affair. Oxford Street is not what it was pre-covid, and the retailers do not want youths hanging around in the hope of seeing trouble by others (and, more’s the point, not doing any shopping). The videos showed police vans and horses and officers doing their best to control youths, alongside the West End’s private security patrollers (pictured, before Christmas 2021). We know from Brixton Academy in December that when irresponsible crowds gather in public, people can get hurt, and people can die. That happening on Oxford Street, a social media event, is different from the everyday, unglamorous, sometimes violent and threatening theft against retail, ‘looting’ that the Co-op has complained of.
More in the September print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
