Back in August last year after the riots, views on the motives and causes were hot and mostly ill-considered. It is interesting now to hear men such as Iain Duncan Smith beginning to acknowledge that the causes are much deeper rooted and less easy to fix than some of his government fellows have thought.
And good to hear it - like Heseltine before him familiarity with reality leads to a dawning realisation that in politics black and white are not the only colours. I repeat here some of what I wrote back then. There had been articles locally as well as nationally that argued the riots and looting were just plain old criminality, greed, immorality and lack of respect. They were compared to historic events in Brixton and Toxteth.
I asked then and still do:
"Why now exactly? Why in so many places? If those riots were the same then you must agree that a red-neck Tory's solution for Toxteth would commend itself surely? Michael Heseltine no less saw the immediate need to rescue a lost generation from poverty, inertia and rejection. And a fairly blue if liberal tinged Judge after Brixton saw much the same need."
But the local paper started to balance things which led me to write:
"These lead on to a more considered assessment; one which I believe includes some here and now possibilities that are new and very worrying. The riots began for a fairly traditional reason in Tottenham, much as they had in the same borough years earlier and for an amazingly similar reason - possible police over-action in the line of duty. But then come the new factors:
- Social networking spread the news faster than had ever been possible before and to a much wider audience that was blogged into awareness of what was happening.
- Gangs, and they are pretty new in the modern form, also use these vectors to communicate along with encrypted BlackBerry messaging.
- Youngsters (that's up to about 25 these days) now routinely attend events of all sorts at the drop of a tweet, email or text. They are alerted to something 'going down' and they want to be 'in it'.
- Today's economic woes mean that many of these younger people are unemployed, under-privileged, unmotivated but they are also subject to the same massive aspirational pressures of modern marketing and consumer goods as the haves. So when the news of looting spread they were all too ready to join in; even the unwise hangers on got their noses in this trough. We should note that the goods taken were very largely fashion clothes, sports good and electronics and the riots in the usual places for such lawlessness.
- New factor three is that the institutions of this country have ruined their own right to respect by their own greed and avarice. The criminal risk-taking of the bankers and financial institutions got us here and that has been well publicised and especially by bloggers and tweeters. The criminal greed and avarice of our politicians feeding furiously at the gravy train of MPs allowances eliminated their right to respect. The police, especially in London, have been shown to have taken their part in the disgraceful activities of (at least) the Murdoch media. They too have done too much of late to deserve much respect.
- All this has filled the blogosphere and twitterland with ranting and raving fit to inflame even the calmest, coolest teen or twenty.."
"So when the hyped up, aggravated, aspirational gangs and their hangers on were called to 'rave 'n' riot' they spared no one, respected no one and behaved as charged - like feral animals. (It is correct) that we need to set a new moral compass for our age. But we won't do that by being in denial that all this is our own fault. We need to work and pay if we want a new tomorrow - the emperor won't get a new suit of clothes by cutting back on the cloth."
My views have not changed much - but I am very glad to see that reality has given Duncan Smith a similar enlightenment as that enjoyed by the blond mace waver of the 80s!
