Alright, Mitt Romney saying that corporations are people in Iowa was pretty goddamn funny, but over in Merry Old England PM Cameron said something that made me laugh out loud.
“We’re going to look at cities like Boston for inspiration on how to fight gangs”
Buh …. Wha????
Gangs in Boston … really.
Boston, like all large American cities has gangs. Boston has had gangs for about as long as there has been a Boston; in colonial days there were two main gangs working the streets of the town – The North Eng Gang and the South End Gang. Gang territory was separated by Mill Creek that ran through the city peninsula to the mill pond on the northern edge of the city. Around the time of the Boston Tea Party, the leader of the South End Gang was a cobbler in his thirties. The leader of the North End Gang was a man in his fifties. The gang members consisted of dock workers, ship builders, craft guild apprentices, school boys, servants and anyone else inclined join in the fun.
The most well-known gang related event from Boston’s colonial era was Pope Night. This event was held on November 5, which in England is known as Guy Fawkes Day. Most New England colonial communities had their version of Pope Night, but the most notorious and violent celebrations happened in Boston, where the two rival gangs would erect their versions of the Pope cart, parade through the streets of Boston with them going door to door collecting money before meeting in the center of town for a huge brawl. More than a third of Boston’s population of 16,000 inhabitants in colonial times was made up of males aged 16 and under, so there were plenty of boys and young men in the town willing to participate in the festivities. The gang that had the most members still standing after the fight won the losing gang’s cart. They would haul that cart back to their turf (Copp’s Hill for the North End gang, Boston Common for the South End gang) and burn it in a bonfire which provided heat and light for a large drunken celebration for the winning gang. It’s not hard to understand why the residents of Boston who had a place outside of the city to spend Pope Night away from the celebration and out of harm’s way did just that.
These gangs were useful during the Stamp Act protests, harassing British soldiers and people loyal to the British crown that eventually led to the Boston Massacre (Only 2 weeks before, an 11 year old boy was shot dead when a group of youths harassed a loyalist merchant outside of his shop), and it is very likely some of these gang members participated in the Boston Tea Party, although we will never know for sure because the identities of the Tea Party participants is still one of Boston’s best kept secrets.
And like the reasons that spark violent protests today, Boston in colonial times had plenty of reasons for people to become violent. The Stamp Act led to some incredibly violent riots where British government officials’ homes were looted and destroyed. The same happened in 1773 over the Tea Act. There were plenty of incidents of home grown protests too, involving merchants who sent shiploads of grain to the Caribbean instead of selling it in Boston, because they could get a better price if they shipped it out, to people rioting and destroying the local market when merchants set food prices so high people couldn’t afford to buy anything. Boston suffered through financial meltdowns, and wealth disparity that we’ve all become too familiar with today. In Boston, less than 5% of the citizens held more than half of the taxable wealth of the town. This led to some members of Boston taking matters into their own hands to deal with the currency shortage for the majority of people, which the British Government and merchants took harsh steps to stop.
Now, I am aware that PM Cameron referred to Operation Ceasefire in his statement, but I think if British officials as well as American business owners and politicians were to take a look at colonial Boston before the American Revolution, they would find a better example of what NOT to do when dealing with the current crisis. As we all know, everything they could possibly do wrong to fix the problem is happening as you read this. It seems the Brits still haven’t learned their lesson.
