Ashamed to be British: The London Riots

LONDON, BIRMINGHAM, LIVERPOOL, BRISTOL, LEEDS, CROYDON -- Riots spread to many English cities. Over three thousand youths and adults were arrested. The courts have been running sessions 24 hours a day to process all the accused. 

What started as a flash point in retaliation to alleged police brutality in the shooting of a young man, a story we have heard all too often before, became a changed situation within just hours as we heard from the youths themselves, and in their own words:

"it was good ... it was good fun ... 'course it is ... we're drinking a bottle of rose wine at half nine in the morning ... yeah free alcohol ... yeah it's the government's fault ... yeah ... conservatives?  I dunno ... whoever it is ... we're showing the police we can do what we want ... and definitely hopefully it will go on tonight ... yeah ... we're just showing the rich people we can do what we want"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

The general picture is that the riots spread quickly due to a few organised criminals, crowd sourcing flash mobs via Blackberry encrypted messages broadcast to every gang in the locality. Many youths simply turned up at the same time, found themselves in a 300 strong force, and took possession of the streets. They set fires, selecting targets like furniture stores which would burn quickly and fiercely, and attack fire crews that arrived, thus keeping police busy and overstretched.  Text messages would inform them to not remain too long at one location looting, before moving onto the next target. Whilst the police avoided direct confrontations, choosing instead a strategy of containment -- they have come under criticism for heavy-handed tactics in the past at political demonstrations -- but with CCTV and photographers on site, they made notes and later followed up with arrests.  Many youths claim to have merely got caught up in the moment, but police photographs show the individual returning to the same store several times to collect one bit of audio kit and bigscreen TV after another.

As dramatic pictures of Mad Max scenes were plastered over every news outlet in the country, the message to the public was a simple stoic British mantra: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

And indeed, the people did. Thankfully very few people actually died in the riots. Three young men were killed trying to defend their home, having apparently been run over by a car in a deliberate hit and run revenge attack. Their father, sensing that this might inflame racist tensions, and despite his grief and desire to mourn in private, held vigils in the street and went out to speak to the people, asking them to simply calm down and stick together. 

In some respects, the riots are not surprising. Films and TV have been featuring the "yoof" of today in dramas, comedies, and documentaries. Without being shy about their actual behaviour, also showing their human side. In dramas like Attack The Block, Misfits (UK) and, Shameless (UK), our anti-heroes aren't terribly nice people. They mug a young nurse, do gang violence, have attitude and emotional problems. Even the sudden eruption of rioting across several cities wasn't that much of a surprise in the age of social networking -- "crowd sourcing" has been around for a few years.

What has been surprising, in this age of multiple perspectives, culture clashes, and diversity, is the near unanimous public reaction. As one pensioner and owner of a small barber's shop which had been looted said,

"if I was still in the army, I'd have stuck a bayonet through them."

Integrally, how do we take a perspective on the consensus of public opinion?  We may have different core values, but the judgment of what's happened seems pretty united. The core values perhaps shift emphasis on what needs to be done to address the problem. For a slightly greener and more nuanced take than just "run them through with a a bayonet", take this comment from Sue, a social worker:

Sue, 10 August 2011

Having just watched your channel 4 news bulletin, I wish to comment. I have spent 12 years working in social work and the truth is that currently this society does not wish to fund the supports necessary to help young people to escape the poverty trap. Despite the retoric, social work services are resource led not child led and therefore children are left in families where it is clear (after assessment) that their needs are not being met. Therefore, the fact that they then lack the ability to act in a manner that is acceptable to society is not a surprise. I feel that the ordinary tapayer has no idea of the investment that it would take to help these children/young people to experience a different reality than one that consists of reminaing with drug addicted/ mentally unstable and abusive parents. Make no mistake, the current system SUPPORTS this because the budget is not there to make it better for these young people. The standards for parenting should be very clear – children need boundaries AND emotional warmth. So often children and young people do not experience this in the way that they require and parents/carers are not held to account. Fewer people would or should have children based on a criteria for ‘good enough parenting’. Children are left in abusive ‘family’ situations all the time because of funding issues and the criteria for ‘good enough parenting being set so low. How many workers do I know that have one standard for work and one for how they would see their own children treated? All of them! Because the system is warped. As long as we are focused on an economy that supports only jobs that make money rather than those that support people, we will not change this society.

There are many, many educated people who are interested in supporting and helping others in terms of parenting, support of young people, building self esteem, self resileince etc. – but what these riots clearly show is that there is a section of society that is unble to meet the needs of their children, that this has been assessed as such and yet nothing is done. There has never been such a low number of foster carers available to councils who expect them to do this job virtually unpaid. Society is not ready for the scrutiny and funding that is required to raise standards of care for our upcoming generations across the nation. Expect the consequences and don’t expect Eton educated fortunates to understand or create the answers.

Sue is perhaps most able to take a perspective on the developmental needs of these kids. Others might simply label them "criminals" but in effect, their assessment, whether from the political Left or Right is the same: something has gone very wrong at the red-amber transition. 

In one sense, this might be what Don Beck called a "superordinate goal" ie. something which is important to all or most stages on the spiral, and that therefore can help different views work together. 

A simple message from the old pensioner and ex-army man was this: you don't go out looting and setting fire to stuff just because you feel you "don't have enough" -- you sit down, you respect your parents, you work to improve yourself, you work because work is a joy in its own right -- you learn to be good.

This week we've seen even the "greenest" of commentators essentially agree with him.