The breakdown in law and order and the rioting and looting on our streets has shocked the nation and the wider world. Americans wonder how this nation of Harry Potter, Royal weddings and the Olympics could descend into chaos. David Cameron is probably right to describe this part of our broken society as a ‘sick society’. These events, excluding the initial vigil at the police station are a symptom of this broken society and are almost exclusively criminal in nature. But that does not mean that there are not social reasons underlining the problems. To get a clearer view of what has happened, I have found it useful to read the foreign media’s view of events, which often has a clearer interpretation of events than our own. US media reports that the riots are being perpetrated by a social ‘underclass’ in British society, an underclass that underlines the breakdown in social cohesion.

Such an underclass is not a new phenomena in either this century or the last or previous ones. Labour, for its part, set goals and objectives to address its causes such as child poverty and education. Policies attacked youth unemployment and provided services such as Sure Start and EMA’s and higher education was expanded. Whether Labour was able to truly address the root causes or was really just working on the symptoms is questioned by some but it tried and cared. But what is clear is that the Tory government has abandoned not just treating the symptoms but also the root causes. In February youth unemployment hit a record high of 20.5%, Sure Start projects cut with 250 centres due to close and EMA’s abolished.

The correct response to the riots, to paraphrase Tony Blair, is that we need to be tough on the rioters and tough on the causes of the riots. What makes people burn up their local high streets and loot from small businesses? Is it fundamentally a criminal mentality combined with a disconnection from their communities?

Newspapers talk too of citizen groups organised through twitter gathering together to clean up the debris in London and the other cities and this action is to be applauded. But there in those articles is the nub of the problem. Those tidying up consider themselves to be citizens with a stake in their society where as those who looted clearly didn’t.

As Ed Miliband suggests there are no simple fixes. The solution to the riots and their causes isn’t new ‘leisure centres’ and benefit payments and services, but the need for an overriding project where a sense of place, community and citizenship is built up. A real project where power is truly given away to generate real citizenship of both rights and responsibilities and see if this lost generation can be rescued and to prevent future disempowered generations emerging. It means grass roots politics and empowerment and it can be done. It was the goal of social and utopian movements through the last century, such as the Garden City movement which aimed to give people a true stake in their towns and cities to both generate and share prosperity and to tackle the evils of ignorance and poverty. It relies less on entitlement and more on empowerment. The election of a pink tide of progressive governments in South America has been achieved because they have turned the poor’s anger into ambition, exclusion into empowerment and changed people from being merely residents and subject into active citizens. But this is not a political cause but a social one, and the measure of success will be when those feeling excluded have the mentality not to riot and loot but demonstrate for change and work to better themselves. In short when they demonstrate for their communities and not loot them. Until that goal can be reached the policy must be to be tough on the rioters, but not just address the immediate symptoms but their long-term causes.

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Philip Ross was mayor of Letchworth Garden City 2008-9 and is the founder of the New Garden City Movement

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