Why did the rioting happen?

The riots that have spread across London and other cities in England over the past week have angered and shocked the whole country. Unprecedented looting and arson attacks have left high streets boarded up, buildings destroyed and the police stretched. The public are angry, and the country is united in condemning those responsible.

The debate into what may have caused this is already underway, and there are of course many differing opinions, but many in government and on the social networking sites refuse to accept that there may be underlying issues behind the trouble, believing instead that anyone who talks of this is ‘making excuses’ for the looters. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said he has 'heard enough about the background to this', seemingly uninterested in why people in his city are rioting.

This is an extremely dangerous attitude. Firstly there is a vast difference between understanding the issues behind the build up of anger that led to the riots, and defending the thugs who rioted. Very few are interested in defending the actions of those mindless idiots who looted stores, burned down buildings and attacked police, many of whom were opportunist criminals who have no idea about what they were rioting for. Secondly, understanding the underlying causes for the anger that led to it is crucial if we want to prevent it from happening again; if these underlying issues are ignored then the danger is that we’ll simply see a repeat. To coin a phrase; tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

It is difficult to see the events of the this week without looking at the current economic situation, despite some politicians trying to deny any links. Any recession disproportionately affects impoverished areas, and the riots started in some of the poorest areas of our cities. Jobs are scarce and unemployment is high (Haringey has 29 jobseekers for each vacancy, while Hackney and Lewisham has 26), and young people in particular have been hit particularly hard, with a million under 25’s across the country out of work, including nearly 250,000 16-18 year olds. With a failing economy their prospects look bleak to say the least.

It has been said by many that those looking for work should move to where the work is but, aside from the fact that there are few jobs anywhere at the moment, many of these youngsters leave school with few skills, meaning they can only really look at low paid jobs which in turn makes it more difficult to travel for work when you factor travel costs in. The scrapping of the EMA by the government means the financial incentive for youngsters to stay in education has gone, and youth services and centres have been cut, forcing youngsters out on the streets where they have nothing to do. Our inner city youth is becoming trapped in a cycle of poverty and unemployment. In media interviews with community leaders, youth workers and young people in the aftermath of the violence, most of them not involved in the violence, this issue has been consistently raised.

Many of these issues have been a problem since before the recent financial crisis. There have been issues of racial tensions, police community relations, unemployment, education, etc for decades, and successive governments have not sufficiently tackled the problems. Inner city schools in particular have failed generations of children from impoverished backgrounds, and considering education is the key in aiding social mobility in our inner city areas this is unacceptable.

When you create an atmosphere of anger and hopelessness the more extreme elements – in this case the rioters, will often turn to violence. In this sense it is no different from the problems with the far right groups. Those who cause violence on the right are the extreme elements of a much larger group of people who feel alienated and marginalised within society, and it’s true that those who rioted this weekend are the tip of the iceberg of a much larger group of disenfranchised youths who, while they chose not to riot, are just as angry.

These conditions create are ripe for gang recruitment, and many of the groups of seemingly organised violence appeared to be gang members. Gangs have been a problem for many years now in our inner cities. There are areas in which the police refuse to enter unless absolutely necessary, which leaves the gangs in control.  In these cases what is needed is for the communities, including the families of gang members, to stand up and take action against these gangs, as the people within these communities are the ones most damaged by the existence of gangs. In too many areas many within the community refuse to do this, often adopting a ‘wall of silence’ when it comes to investigations involving crimes by gang members. Some of this is down to fear of the gangs, but mostly there is no excuse.

Much has been made of the role of the family life of the rioters. Many were asking where the parents were, and why these people were allowed to be out in the middle of riot zones, often until the early hours of the morning. These are perfectly reasonable questions, particularly with the younger looters. But many right wing commentators and politicians appear to be suggesting this is the only issue, and in particular there has been a lot of criticism directed at single parent families. This is a familiar gripe of the right, and while many of the rioters will have undoubtedly grown up without a male influence, blaming this is not a solution. Living in an unhappy two parent family is as bad, if not worse, as growing up in a single parent family. The more accurate criticism is the absence of responsible parenting, not the number of parents

The fact that our country, and in particular London, was left without a leader until Tuesday morning was nothing short of a disgrace. The PM, the Deputy PM, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary, and the Mayor of London, all on holiday at the same time, took 4 days to heed the cries of the nation they are supposed to be leading. The anger that people feel towards these leaders was seen in angry scenes when Boris Johnson and Theresa May visited Clapham, and Nick Clegg when he visited Birmingham. David Cameron avoided this by keeping away from the public during his visit to Croydon. Labour leader Ed Miliband should not escape criticism, cutting his holiday short only after Cameron had. He missed a trick by not providing the leadership the country so sorely missed in Cameron’s absence, although it should be said that, unlike others, he is not actually part of the government.

Fortunately local leaders have stepped into the gap in the absence of national leadership. MP’s such as Diane Abbott in Hackney, Stella Creasy in Walthamstow, David Lammy in Tottenham and Angie Bray in Ealing have been important presences in their respective areas, providing the leadership that was lacking elsewhere.

Another organisation suffering from the lack of a leader, the Metropolitan Police’s initial response to the aftermath of the shooting of Mark Duggan was inadequate, and their refusal to answer the questions of angry residents was a mistake which only increased tension in the area. Eventually this tension exploded into violence. The reluctance to take serious action against rioters on the first night was also a mistake, although whether this would have helped contain the violence is difficult to say. However this was more of a failure of the force rather than by individual officers. It is difficult to criticise police response in subsequent nights. The sheer scale of the violence took everyone by surprise, and the police were faced with an impossible task, and in most cases they performed admirably. The police have also suffered from cuts, and this has led to a shortage of officers, in particular officers that work in the community. This has been a major factor in the deterioration in the relationship between inner city communities and the police. There has clearly been an issue of the lack of respect for the police over many years, but it’s important that this isn’t seen as a separate issue, rather an extension of the above issues.

Many argue that there shouldn’t be any political arguments made during this crisis and that everyone should sing from the same hymn sheet, but there are political issues at work here, and it’s absolutely right that our politicians should be debating this. Whilst all sides strongly condemn the rioters, the divides between the parties are becoming apparent. The Tories are attempting to paint anyone who talks about deeper economic issues as ‘riot apologisers’, and are linking the rioting to a breakdown in society. David Cameron has also come out and argued for greater responsibility from parents and communities, however he needs to understand that as well as this we need greater responsibility by our government and politicians. Meanwhile Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that ‘we must resist simple explanations, these are complex issues’. Labour MP’s represent the majority of the inner city areas that saw violence, and they are linking the riots to deeper socio-economic issues, including some of the coalition cuts, particularly cuts in youth services and in the police (as, coincidentally do many Tories, including Boris Johnson). The Lib Dem’s are, unfortunately, nowhere, bound in to the government line by their Tory partners.

It is the case though that every decision taken in the spending review was a conscious choice by the government, and there were plenty of alternatives for each choice made. Anyone who says different is flat out lying; they may have believed their approach to tackling the deficit was the best way forward but don’t let them tell you there was no choice. The decision was made by Chancellor George Osborne to cut quickly, deeply and drastically, and consequently the economic recovery has flatlined. Other options to tackle the deficit other than cuts that disproportionately affected the poor were to cut slower and less deep, and pay the deficit back over a longer time; raising taxes, particularly against the financial sector that caused the global economic crisis; or to grow our way out of recession.

This leads us to a much deeper structural problem that has contributed to all of the above issues. Our global financial system is broken. We have the balance of our society is all wrong, we need to rebuild an economy that serves the people, rather than people serving the economy. For too many years now there has been growing socio-economic divides and too much emphasis on greed within business contributing to the anger felt in inner cities. The recent global financial crisis has severely exacerbated these problems, and has affected us all. There may have been little choice but to bail the banks out, but this should have been on the provision of massive reform. And where did all the money from the banking bail out go? It disappeared into the financial merry-go-round, kept it running for a little while longer, but we certainly didn’t see any of it.

Unfortunately the banks don’t want to change. They don’t want to pay more in taxes. They don’t want more regulation. They don’t want to lend more. They don’t want to stop paying bonuses. Despite crashing the global economy, they don’t want to change one iota, and when threatened with any of the above they threaten to leave the country and move their operations to Asia. This is blackmail against the nation. Unfortunately the Tories aren’t interested in reforming the financial system; bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity bosses account for more than 50% of the funding for the Conservative party.

Our economy is completely at the mercy of the stock market and hedge funds, who make their living gambling with other people’s money. When they get it right they are the ones who reap most of the rewards, when they get it wrong we are the ones who pay most of the cost. George Osborne’s entire economic policy is geared towards placating the bond markets, at whatever cost to jobs and society. Financial problems in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland were greatly exacerbated by global credit ratings agencies lowering the credit ratings of struggling economies, pulling the rug from under them right at the point in which they were at their most vulnerable and leaving millions of citizens facing uncertain futures.

We’ve managed to create for ourselves an economy in which rising oil prices are blamed for the increase in the cost of food, yet BP and Shell can announce profits of £8 billion in just one quarter. One in which the market has valued Barclay’s boss Bob Diamond’s salary as worth that of 218 teachers. One where, as I’ve found out recently from a social worker friend, a local authority deems £600 to counsel a 14 year old victim of gang rape as excessive because of cutbacks. All in all, we’ve managed to create an economy in which we reward greed while at the same time ignoring those most in need.

The banks caused the global financial crisis. Of course it is true that governments were complicit in running up debt, but this debt was perfectly manageable until the banks crashed the economies. Governments other failures were in allowing the banking industry to dominate our economy, and in not regulating them properly. But the banks and the financial industry caused it. However, we all have to shoulder some of the responsibility for this as we’ve allowed the financial institutions to position themselves in such an influential position over our lives. Successive governments have allowed this to happen, aided by the media who have caricatured those who wish to see reform as ‘commies’, and any alternative ideas, such as the Robin Hood financial transaction tax, are dismissed as pie in the sky.

The question is whether people will decide to act. People often feel helpless in the face of such a behemoth as the global financial system, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks and months, we live in revolutionary times. We’ve seen people in the Middle East rising up against dictators, fighting for democracy; in this country we’ve seen dozens of MP’s forced out of office over the expenses scandal, and we’ve forced the closure of the News of the World due to the hacking scandal. We are still in the process of unveiling the extent of uncovering the collusion between our elites in government, the media and the police. There is no reason we cannot reform our economy if that is what we want; indeed we are the only ones that can.

I haven’t always thought like this. I’m not a revolutionary, or a socialist; I consider myself to be on the centre left of the political spectrum. I’ve always known that something was amiss but I didn’t put this down to the economic system or the society we’ve built. It has taken the events of the past few years to reshape my views. I also believe that more and more people from the centre of politics such as myself are drawing the same conclusions. There are also many who will dismiss everything in this piece, those who do not believe criminality has causes, but these wider structural issues have all been crucial in creating the conditions that led to what we saw on the streets of London and the rest of Britain. No one is born a criminal; their circumstances turn them this way, and unless we understand and tackle these problems, this will not be the last time the streets of Britain will burn.