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Published: August 25, 2011
PROFILE

ERNESTINE LaSalle will be 97 on Sunday; she’s witnessed 22 governments, and says this one “is the worst I’ve ever lived through”.

This week Ernestine discussed how she understood the frustrations of the rioters, with childhood memories of her Scottish suffragette mother Mary Pollock and aunt Marguerite Pollock “chaining themselves to buildings”.

Born in Glasgow in 1914, and having grown up at various addresses in Camden, Ernestine attended Pitman’s College and became a shorthand typist.

“Before women’s emancipation there was nothing for them to do,” she said. “They sewed clothes, they did the housework, but there was nothing to keep the mind ticking over. They wanted to do so much more, to make a difference. They had a lot of talent, often more than the men, but they weren’t allowed to do any of that. If they did work they had a limited choice of jobs, they couldn’t find a way into the ones that brought any real power.

“In some ways it’s very much like the youngsters who went rioting. They have nothing to do – yet they want to achieve. They can’t find their way into the big professions as easily as some other kids can either.”

Ernestine did not agree with the way the rioters “looted buildings, burned things down, torched high streets, and made people homeless”. Instead she encouraged modern-day rioters to take a leaf out of the suffragettes’ book.

“In those numbers they could have made a far greater difference if they’d gone down to Parliament and chained themselves there or something. It could have happened all round the country at whatever building was relevant.”

Chaining oneself to railings now might not have worked so well, though, she said, “because I think today’s government would actually laugh at you if you did that”.

She also spoke of an “explosion” based on “racial and class tensions that go back to the Empire”.

“A lot of people will look at the TV and say ‘a lot of these kids are black’,” she added. “But that’s the white man’s doing I would say. I mean there’s a question of religious fundamentalism that’s been a big strain for a while. But the slave trade had a huge impact on generations. It impacted families, education, and it meant a lot of people had their countries partitioned and had to come over here.

“Now with the cuts it’s all exploded.

“Some of these kids will see what they perceive to be ‘foreigners’ in their areas, who were trying to protect their properties during the riots in places like Birmingham and for some of the white children their attitude is then ‘Trying to protect your property? You shouldn’t be here in the first place.’

“It’s because that’s the attitude their parents gave to them and that started, like I say, through Empire when people first started coming over here. It was never corrected.”

And Ernestine saw more trouble ahead.

She said: “I would predict a general strike just like we saw in 1926. I was 12 then. Basically, it was a combination of factors then that are very similar to now. Then there was no welfare state, now it’s being very obviously dismantled. Then unemployment was very high, it is now. And then there was the issue of the economy taking turns for the worst. I would predict it for next year, maybe autumn time, because we’ll see the effects of all these cuts far more clearly then. It will be terrible for the country because everything will come to a standstill but I think people will feel they have no choice.

“This situation has been boiling and boiling and boiling since Thatcher came into power and we have been creating this sort of situation since the days of the Empire,” she said.

“But these riots gave Cameron an excuse to say ‘You will pay for this’ to the rioters. If they had done as the suffragettes did it may have been laughed off initially, but if they’d carried on and carried on and persevered like the suffragettes did then it would have had some real impact.”

Ernestine, who was first able to vote when she was 30 years old, said: “During wartime we didn’t mind food rationing, because we all believed in the cause.

“We all understood it was absolutely necessary to defeat Hitler.

“This is not absolutely necessary. This country was in huge deficit after World War Two, but yet the Attlee government brought in the welfare state and the NHS. They are all dismantling that now and so Cameron has himself to blame for all of this.

“It’s not that the types of people have changed, it’s that the government’s intentions have changed and people are panicking because they can see that. The working classes are thinking who’s for us?

“The young and the old have no union to speak for them, so their voice is now heard through violence.

“The young are not aware that this violence will not work so they riot because they feel angry, and the old feel angry but can’t get out of their chairs to riot.”

The mother of two and grandmother of one who has lived on the Abbey Road estate, West Hampstead, for more than 25 years, said the TUC needed to take control by organising people to march in the numbers that they rioted.

She added: “…it won’t be easy, because many of them have been sent to prison now. It all reminds me of a line I heard in Downton Abbey, the programme,” said Ernestine.

“That was set before women could vote, and there was this particular line that stuck in my head. A woman was talking about who to vote for, and a man said to her ‘Oh don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. Your husband will take care of all of that’. Very similar to what’s happening now.

“The uneducated are saying ‘Things aren’t right, they’re taking these things away from us’ and they want to do something but don’t know what.

“For such a long time the elite have been telling them ‘Don’t you worry your heads about it, we know what we’re doing’. Now we are bearing the brunt of what Thatcher did. It’s all coming up and people can see it and now the working classes are seeing that they’ve been betrayed.

“It’s happening a bit like with the suffragettes, all that anger and frustrations exploding to the surface.”