There's a fine piece on the riots by Mathew Syed in the Sunday Times today; it’s behind their paywall and is anyway very long - but I think its worth quoting even this extract, which is itself quite long (so apologies for that)"Walls have become something of a metaphor for our polarised world. Donald Trump wanted to build a wall on the southern border and partially achieved his objective.Theorists talk of "digital walls" on social media, denoting the echo chambers that have come to characterise an online sphere that its pioneers boasted would connect humanity but has perhaps done more than anything to divide us.Yet over the course of two heartrending but ultimately uplifting days in the beautiful seaside town of Southport, my mind kept coming back to a different wall. A small, thigh-high red brick wall flanking the intersection of St Luke's Road and Sussex Road, a rather inconspicuous part of a town which neither wished nor expected to be thrust into the national spotlight.It was here that I glimpsed something not just of the character of the people of Southport but perhaps - at their best - of Britain, too."He goes on to write about the events there in wider detail before saying"And this brings me back to that wall on the corner of Sussex Road and St Luke's Road, which encloses the yard of the mosque (which used to be a Methodist church). On Tuesday, the wall had borne the brunt of the missiles, petrol bombs and premeditated violence.I suspect the rioters wished to leave permanent scars upon the building as a grotesque memento of their handiwork. And when you looked at the pictures of the crumbling façade on Tuesday night, you supposed they had succeeded.But as I turned the corner on Wednesday, I was greeted by a sight that took my breath away: dozens of volunteers rebuilding the wall, brick by brick, a vista that I hope will live on as a cultural metaphor.I spoke to Ibrahim Hussein, the softly spoken imam who has lived in Southport for 20 years. 'We were trapped upstairs and could feel the building shaking,' he said. 'But my lasting memory will not be fear but kindness. It's a beautiful community'."A bit later, he concludes with this:"The grief here is raw but so, too, is the decency and moral courage. We are living through a dangerous period, but it is places like this that make me feel optimistic about England, about Britain. And perhaps even about humanity, too."So, a positive message to draw from overwhelmingly negative events.
Richard Carter ● 319d