1773. That’s what New Orleans reminds me of. In 1773 in Cornwall, England a group of tin miners rioted. There was a scarcity of wheat in the local market. Some local grain dealers had begun shipping Cornish wheat to the London market in order to profit from the higher prices instead of selling it locally. Seven or eight hundred miners went to the local grain merchant and offered 17 shillings for 24 gallons of wheat. When they were refused, they broke down the cellar doors and took it all away without paying anything.
In 1766 the Sheriff of Gloucestershire describes a similar scene. A mob had formed “consisting of the lowest of the people such as weavers, mecanicks, labourers, prentices, and boys etc…” They went first to the gristmill where they made off with the flour and wheat. Then they went to the local market where they set and enforced a lower price for grain. Finally they went to farmers, millers and bakers selling all manner of foodstuffs at prices they set, giving the money to the owners. According to the Sheriff, they “behaved with great regularity and decency where they were not opposed, with outrage and violence where there was: but pilfered very little…”
Why does this remind me of New Orleans? Because in the examples above the common people were remembering and re-establishing a moral economy. They remembered that in times of mass hunger there were generally accepted moral principles that governed how people should behave. Prices should be fixed and the poor and hungry should be provided for. The English historian E.P. Thompson called this the “Moral Economy of the English Crowd”.
When a father wades into a pharmacy looking for looking for pop and diapers because the water is unsafe to drink and babies need to be changed regardless, is it random lawlessness or responsible parenthood? When some neighbours steal a van in order to evacuate a senior’s home the civic authorities have abandoned, is it theft or bravery? When local police break into a WalMart and set up camp, helping themselves to provisions, is it looting or setting public priorities over private ones?
Part of the reaction around the world to this disaster has to do with the apparent abandonment of moral principles by the highest authorities. Consider by contrast the reaction in Canada to the Red River flood of 1997. The rich were not rescued and the poor left to drown. The influential were not fed while strangers starved. The healthy were not carried away while the sick were left to fend for themselves. All were treated equally because flood waters have no respect for social class. In 1997 students lined up to sandbag because everyone takes their turn. German soldiers training at CFB Shilo offered engineering and transportation assistance because they had the resources and we had the need. When the people of St. Anne’s prepared their curling rink for evacuees, the fact that their neighbours were from the Roseau reserve was secondary. They were people first and different cultures second.
When the authorities down south dispatched military personnel to protect property instead of the poor, they violated some of our most deeply held moral values. If you said to yourself, “this is not how a civilized country is supposed to behave!” you were echoing a memory going back hundreds of years. Broad social purposes require leadership. If the government won’t provide it the people will.
First published in September 2005
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