10 August 2011
Reasons for the UK riots
Firstly, the latest footage.
Many are proud of their looting and vandalism - these girls say they're "showing the rich people we can do what we want". Why?
Ros Griffiths, who runs the Employment café in Brixton, which provides advice to jobseekers, says the violence across the capital is the result of years of tension between working-class people and the authorities.
"Young people who feel vulnerable feel that there's no jobs, there's no future, there's no prospects. They feel that nobody cares about them so they don't care.
"They've lost respect for authority because at the end of the day if it was just about what happened in Tottenham, that'd be an isolated situation. That was just a trigger," Ms Griffiths says.
A theory echoed by Professor John Pitts, a criminologist who advises several London local authorities on young people and gangs:
Prof Pitts says riots are complex events and cannot be explained away as "just thuggery".
They have to be seen against the backdrop of "growing discontents" about youth unemployment, education opportunities and income disparities.
He says most of the rioters are from poor estates who have no "stake in conformity", who have nothing to lose.
"They have no career to think about. They are not 'us'. They live out there on the margins, enraged, disappointed, capable of doing some awful things."
The best thing I've read on the insufficiency of the knee-jerk condemnation that we've been hearing so loudly is this blog post from someone living in one of the rioting areas. Why don't people seem to understand that asking why is important? Do they really think crime can be prevented without understanding its causes?
More discussions worth reading about the "growing discontents":
- conditions similar to those before the Great Depression (The Telegraph, 8 Aug)
- resentment against the police and the wealthy (The Guardian, 8 Aug)
- The poor are copying the rich by looting (Liberal Conspiracy blog, 9 Aug)
- (Added 14 Aug): Anarchy and Austerity: Why London Won't Be the Last City to Burn (The Atlantic, 10 Aug)
Meanwhile, as usual with disasters of all kinds nowadays, there are spur-of-the-moment web-apps trying to help the situation: Zavilia is crowdsourced criminal identification.
On the other side of the technology, more reasons to be careful what you say on Facebook:
1644 GMT: Two 18-year-olds are arrested in Folkestone, Kent, after Scotland Yard says a number of "inflammatory" comments were seen on Facebook in relation to rioting in London and other cities.
1436 GMT: Strathclyde Police have arrested a 16-year-old from Glasgow after a Facebook message allegedly inciting others to commit acts of disorder. Police say they're monitoring social networking sites closely and will take "decisive action" to prevent copycat violence in the Strathclyde force area.
As of 1650 GMT, Scotland Yard says 563 people have been arrested in relation to the riots, and 105 people have been charged. The youngest person arrested is 11 years old. As usual for violent protests, there will be innocent people caught up in it.
More worrying is the recent announcement from the Met that plastic bullets (a British invention for reducing fatalities) are now being given to police to use against the crowds. Thankfully nowadays riot police are much more measured in their approach - frustrating as that may be, the police are protecting life, not property, so hopefully innocent people aren't killed, as happened with plastic bullets in Northern Island.
All of the above found through the BBC's live feed (the page is currently struggling to keep up with traffic).
Update 11 August: Russel Brand agrees.
Update 14 August (Originally posted here):
I thought I'd expand on the "more discussion" link #2 above. The Guardian article said "over 333 deaths in police custody since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them" while this article from the Economist said over 400 "deaths following police contact" between 1999 and 2009. In February 2008 over 100 lawyers resigned from the advisory body for the Independent Police Complaints Commission citing favouritism towards police, indifference, extreme delays and other problems.
The arrest count is now up to 1600:
One student was given a six-month sentence for stealing a bottle of water, and BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman said tough sentences were "inevitable" given the public outrage.
The "looters are scum" crowd is numerous and very vocal. The most popular e-petition calls for rioters to lose all access to social welfare and is now over 190,000 signatures - 100,000 were required for Backbench Business Committee to consider its suitability for debate when Parliament returns in September.
But voices of reason are still being heard: "You can't arrest your way out of the problem" says US cop Bill Bratton, credited for cutting crime in LA after the 1992 riots, who will be advising British PM David Cameron next month.
48 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr summed it up:
When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty & shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up & express their anger & frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.
and 5 years later:
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Update 31 March: Eight months later, the experts agree: The riots were fuelled by a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting and suspicion of the police.
Labour MP Diane Abbott, whose Hackney constituency saw some of the fiercest rioting, said: "I welcome the emphasis the report puts on the social and economic causes of the riots. In the first 48 hours after the riots, it was right to focus on restoring order. But, since then, the prime minister has insisted on putting the riots down to "criminality, pure and simple". This report completely demolishes his kneejerk response...
"What we have seen really reflects an unspoken crisis in the country's efforts to raise educational standards in some of the inner cities. A number of communities feel they don't have any control over their own lives. They feel harassed by the police and marginalised by their job prospects - and are bombarded with reminders of lives they will, in all likelihood, never have. In the week after we have seen the top rate of tax for millionaires cut and the Conservative party hawking intimate dinners with the prime minister for £250,000 a go, I think communities like mine are absolutely sick of being told 'we're all this together', when it's absolutely clear that we're not all on it together."
