It seems as though everyone always looks for the easy answers when these things happen, when there are none.
As one historian said we like to think of England as this civilised place, all royal weddings and cricket, when riots have been common place down the recent years, even more so in our history. Of course in our deep past it’s why ‘The Riot Act’ was introduced by Parliament and where ‘reading someone the riot act’ as an expression came from, as before shots could be fired, the riot act had to be read demanding dispersal of the rioting crowd.
Lets look at those who have been filmed, photographed and apprehended, predominantly young maybe, but in all there was a mixture of ages. Certainly a mixture of social classes and ethnicity. Some seemingly educated middle class people were looting and some very working class people suffered from the effects.
Some taking part, were actually quite well off, some deprived, some had active involved parents, others did not, some were politicised, others blatantly not so. So some took part in violence and no looting, some in looting but no active violence and some both. Some black, some white, some asian; there were those unfraid to show a face and those who were covered (some even wearing gloves). Some organised and set the thing in motion, others were caught up in mass hysteria of sorts and others went long for the ride, or came to it by chance.
However 3 things for me stand out for the perpetrators
1. An intense uncontrolled anger at something, perhaps authority and officialdom, this anger in its extreme from was murderous
2. The use of fire when it was not really needed other than to destroy
3. Greed, the desire to take, even when things were not needed.
And 3 things for the victims
1 The majority of those suffering were hardworking families, respectable working people and small business owners
2. People were killed who stood up tot the mob
3. Places that were destroyed (beside an attack on a police station) were shops, not the bastions of authority.
The answer lies as ever for me in community and what we understand by it. Our lives and communities whether we consider ourselves law abiding, respectable or on the fringes of crime or as law breakers, are fragmented and ill defined. Many of us do not really know each other, or for that matter care. There is little to bind us together and what does is often shared intense experience.
Most younger people are disempowered and alienated and it was ever thus. However what has changed is whilst as older more established people and perhaps parents we can envisage ourselves as members of a community defined by housing, streets, shops, and of course people….many of the young cannot. They can see a community based in technology and their ability to communicate and organise using it. So their community is anyone that will communicate via twitter, Facebook, phone messenger and text, or what ever is the rising and latest technology. It is what turns you on and tunes you in (to use an anachronistic phrase) to others even when you are not connected the the net.
David Cameron or David Milliband are as about as far removed from these people as you can get in our society and this is a major challenge because the gap between not just the rich and poor or the law abiding and the law breaking has become so wide as to be almost unbridgeable.
However, there has been a back lash, one that is based in community and national pride, that is trying to express another aspect to this divide, that we can bridge it, that not everyone has fallen and that we are willing to pick up the pieces. However the immediate knee-jerk and draconian reaction to the crimes committed may seem just right now and people must understand their responsibilities in our community and country, but we must understand our responsibility to them. Young people are not the future of this country they are the Now.
So my 3 outcomes and actions are these:
1. We hold some responsibility for allowing a situation like this to arise, of seeing gangs and drugs, anger and alienation as someone else’s problem, to be dealt with by authority or hidden in estates and brushed under the carpet.
2. Whilst the middle classes wring their hands over eco issues and green bling,the division in our society and communities is getting wider and the one division i am talking about is RESPONSIBILITY. Its a thing we always want to tell someone else that they should have, but never accept for ourselves. Like a friend who explained to me that maybe if all those parents who took their kids 5 minutes in the car to school stopped the demand on petrol and resources might not be so great that we had to go to war over oil. Yes the connection is tenuous but I understood the point he was trying to make.
3. The economic and political climate will divide use. Camerons coalition want us to all be in this together. If so they must be seen to request of the rich (through tax and coercion) that they contribute. Yes they should be tough on this kind of criminal activity but we need to know the cause also. Tony Blair may have used this phrase too often, but it still rings true, “we must be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
When Elvis sings “In the Ghetto” it might be smaltz, but lyricists have a way of getting to the truth
People, don’t you understand
the child needs a helping hand
or he’ll grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me,
are we too blind to see,
do we simply turn our heads
and look the other way
Its not our job to tell others what responsibility they should have, its to work out what our own is. The greed and alienation starts with us, and own responsibility to the community and society. Its all too reactive to come out with a broom after the event, to give money to help people and so on, we need to be doing this kind of thing in a community minded proactive way. It is only this way that we can start on a path that asks a question, not ‘how did this begin’ but ‘when are we going to make it stop’.
Ok thats easy to say, and perhaps you want to do something in your community, perhaps you have ideas, of how to organise people to build community, but don’t know where to take it. May be lines of communication are broken down so you have no idea how to reach out to your wider neighbours, a good start might be to put your idea here and then tell other about it and see whether it gets a reaction, the rioters used this technology and more to organise, why shouldn’t we.
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