Now that some time has passed, it is time to rethink thoughts about the riots in the UK. Everyone (including me) reacted very quickly in the wake of the riots in London and elsewhere with their immediate reactions. Not always with impressive results, and indeed even those who had a reasonable point to make would probably agree that the situation is more complex than at first supposed.
Was It Really That Bad ?
Well of course it was to those who were actually caught up in the riots, but sometimes we get the impression (especially amongst the more … excitable foreign bloggers) that the rioting was worse than it actually was. For instance the London riots involved 22 districts out of a total of 326 districts, or in other words only 6.7% of London by area was involved in the rioting. And that’s an exaggeration – for instance my brother lives in Enfield which saw two nights of rioting, but hardly saw a thing other than the Sony warehouse burning in the distance.
Or by population, the police estimate that up to 3,000 people will be charged with various offences relating to the riots. Let us assume that only 1/5 of the people involved in the riots will ever be charged with anything – that adds up to a total number of rioters of 15,000. Given the population of London is 12.58 million, only 0.11% of the population was rioting. Even if I’m out by a factor of 10 (so there were really 150,000 rioters), that would still be only 1.1% of the population were rioting.
Even if you assume all those 15,000 rioters were from Croyden (a place with some of the most serious riots), a place with a population of around 330,000 people, we find that 15,000 out of 330,000 gives a percentage of 4.5% – so even when we over inflate the figures for rioters ridiculously, we still get a tiny proportion who actually took part.
So what we saw recently, was the result of a tiny proportion of the population. Even amongst young people, the majority were appalled at what they were seeing and what is less commonly reported is that the volunteers who turned out to cleanup the mess caused by the rioters included even more young people than took part in the riots.
One of the other things that doesn’t get so well reported is that the rioters were not all young people – there were more “mature” adults in the mix as well. It also wasn’t particularly racial either – all “races” were involved in the rioting.
So what about the underlying causes for the riots ?
No Excuses: They Were All Just Criminal Thugs
Well, there’s no arguing with the fact that the rioters were criminal thugs … or at least the worst ones were. But just disregarding underlying causes is the action of the feeble-minded. Why were these criminals rioting this year and not last year ? Or the year before ?
There is some underlying reason why the riots occurred this year and not in other years. Whatever underlying causes turned these people into rioters should be examined to see if there’s a viable method of stopping that from happening – whilst they may be rioters this year, even without riots they are likely to be creating trouble of some kind at any point in time. Theft, burglary, assault, etc.
Police Brutality
The riots started with what began as a peaceful protest into the shooting by police of someone called Mark Duggan. If there had not been a shooting, there probably would not have been a peaceful protest about the shooting. Which in turn would not have descended into rioting, which in turn would not have caused what we could call “copy-cat” riots elsewhere.
So in a sense the “police brutality” in shooting Mark Duggan did cause the rioting, but the later riots were not in support of Mark Duggan at all – they were simply acquisitive and destructive riots. It could have been any cause triggering them – a protest at the killing of anyone, a demonstration against student fees, protests against the globalisation culture, etc.
Whereas there may be a problem relating to the shooting of Mark Duggan, and we can regard that as the trigger for the later riots, in no way can the shooting be described as the cause of the riots.
Economy
This is my favourite underlying cause as I have made the point before.
In summary, the rioters are to some extent economically disadvantaged but that is not why they rioted. The poor (unless they are exceptionally so), can put up with their situation if they see there is hope of improvement. For the young, this means seeing opportunities for improvement – that they can get a job, can pursue self-improvement through education, etc. If they do not have hope, this leads to frustration with their situation exacerbated when they see others improving their lot.
Not all of the “hopeless” riot of course, so again there are other reasons as to why the rioters were made into rioters.
Parental Failure
This is of course the favourite excuse for the “family values” politicians … frequently coming up with this without checking any of the evidence. And they usually get a dig in at “failed” families too – single parent families.
Maybe it’s true that all of the rioters came from single parent families where the remaining parent has poor parenting skills. Although I have not seen any evidence of this … one or two examples that may have come to light do not make a trend. Even if it is poor parenting contributing to the riots, the answer to this problem is not going to be simple.
One of the most obvious answers is to provide “alternative” families … young people below a certain age (say 16) are always grouping together to form a pseudo-family of sorts whether they need one or not. If we’re worried about gangs and gang culture, we need to provide alternative groups for young people to join; if they are not joining the ones that already exist then there is something wrong with the ones that exist.
Gun Control
Probably one of the most bizarre and offbeat claims was that the UK’s gun control laws helped kick off the riots … which is patently ridiculous. After all the US (with somewhat more lax gun control than the UK) has had riots itself, and gun control didn’t seem to stop the looting then.
Besides which there is an assumption that the shopkeepers whose shops were looted were present and able to defend their property … if only they had had guns! Well it turns out that most shopkeepers were not present, and some shopkeepers did protect their property, and without the assistance of guns.
So the presence of someone prepared to face down the rioters, sometimes stops those rioters. Whether or not guns are available.
Where’s The Enquiry ?
One of the most bizarre reactions to the riots has been to pointedly refuse to hold a public inquiry into what is going on. No matter how “wise” someone is, they cannot know all of the answers to the riots. Or if they do, why were they not able to stop them in the first place ? I have fairly strong opinions as to why these riots started, but I would love for an inquiry to get to the bottom of the causes.
Apart from anything else, it would be a great opportunity to say “I told you so”.
But more importantly, it would be an opportunity to get to the root causes of the problems with evidence to those causes. The riots are a symptom of an underlying problem, or far more likely a number of underlying problems all combining into the riots. These underlying problems undoubtedly have other outcomes than the riots.
Fixing the underlying problems will not only make future riots less likely, but will also improve our society in other ways.