The riots caught the country on the hop, but there are solutions to hand. Labour led the way, but we must make sure we steer the government in the right direction.
For those of us who lived through the 1980s the riots were a flashback to a darker time of social unrest. The government’s response to them must be two-tiered, as must ours. The first, shorter-term, aspect has to be reintroducing public order; the second identifying the causes of the unrest and introducing measured policies to punish offenders while diverting those involved on the periphery into more positive activity.
First, public order. In the wake of the disturbances there was a clear undercurrent of fear. The public need to be reassured that they can live without fear of gangs, shopkeepers need to know their livelihoods will be protected, and the police need to be confident that they can enforce public order without fear of attack.
The government addressed the immediate problem in London by getting more police on the streets. When police numbers there increased to 16,000 the rioting moved elsewhere. As ever, the best way to deter criminality is a visible policing presence. The irony of the prime minister championing the 16,000 police protecting the streets of London while pushing ahead with reckless cuts to the police service that will cost 16,000 police officers their jobs will not have been lost on the public.
Labour has consistently opposed the government’s cuts to policing. Before the election last year we stated that we would make substantial 12 per cent savings in the Home Office, allowing us to tackle some of the deficit whilst retaining the same police numbers. We know, the public know, and even Boris Johnson knows, that cutting police numbers is not part of a coherent strategy to restore public order. It is important to remind voters that this political choice by the government will render its rhetoric unrealistic.
We must also champion innovative policing that targets key perpetrators of crime. In Salford, Operation Gulf brings together the police and other agencies to track down and apprehend those responsible for serious organised crime. We now know that many serious criminals helped to orchestrate the riots – tackling those at the top will encourage those on the periphery to think twice about getting involved.
Second, the government must address the causes of the riots, including a focus on responsibility and community. That people felt no remorse about causing damage to their own communities, to the shops they use, the streets they walk on and to local jobs is incredibly disheartening. It is vital that we uncover why people felt they could riot and loot at will.
For Labour this means having some difficult conversations. We need to look at the actions of the rioters though the prism of the victims, not the offenders. As I argued at Progress annual conference earlier this year it is often strong Labour areas that suffer most from crime and antisocial behaviour – this applies to the riots too. People affected have little interest in abstract concepts of left and right on criminality – they want to see the practical application of policies based on right and wrong.
The fact that over 200,000 people have used the government’s e-petitions website to call for the withdrawal of benefits for rioters shows the level of anger amongst members of the public. And some councils are using existing powers to evict tenants found guilty of breaking the law.
However, moving people into the private rental sector – which the government has chosen not to regulate – is not a long-term solution. Indeed it risks placing offenders in a cycle of criminality. We thus need to make sure voters know that we will balance the need to punish offenders with proportionate policies that do not exacerbate problems of isolation and poverty.
On a practical level this could mean developing contracts with recipients of benefits, making clear exactly what penalties they face if they break the law. Any policy would differ depending on the severity of the crime, but being found guilty for a first offence could mean participation in a community payback scheme, a second offence the enforcement of victim surcharge schemes, and a third offence an automatic custodial sentence. A three-strike policy would also apply to those who do not receive benefits. Such an approach would bring existing schemes within the confines of a framework giving offenders advance notice of punishments and the opportunity to change their behaviour while reassuring the public that those who continually abdicate their responsibility to society will be punished.
The emerging cross-party consensus on family intervention projects is welcome. Established under Labour, these create pathways for the most dysfunctional families to mend their ways with clear penalties for those who refuse. They have been shown to work and, while the prime minister’s new support for our policy is admirable, such schemes need to be backed by resources. People that are struggling need role models, mentoring and, most importantly, the chance to work. The government must understand that, unless they create opportunities, much of their action will be futile.
What works in Lambeth will not necessarily work in Liverpool, and our response must recognise that localism will be more effective than a top-down approach. The government talks the language of localism; Labour should practise it.
Among the doom and gloom there is room for optimism. The riots showed some of the worst of Britain but also some of the best. We saw citizens across the country come together to clean up their communities. Responsible, committed people proud of where they live and determined to stand up against petty criminals – that is the true face of Britain and the one that we must build on.
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Hazel Blears is MP for Salford and a former secretary of state for communities and local government
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One Rule for one lot and one rule for another, you would have been wiser Hazel keeping shtum. You have no moral legitimacy to speak out on this topic and though you are not a rioter or a looter who broke the law, you are one of many who ensured any criminal action that you and your colleagues committed were “legal”.
The Rule of law applies to all or nobody. MPs as legislators have to be living examples of a system that works.
Can you honestly say that that is what you and your friends in either party have been Hazel?
The cretin and toerags who decided to abuse the system and break the law and steal from their colleagues are no better not worse morally than many of those in parliament who promoted the worst kinds of fears to ensure they would profit from the consequences including war.
I condemn the rioters totally but would also remind you and those politicans who have abused our democracy, used it as a platform to enrich themselves and their friends whilst leaving others to clean up the mess (the BNP etc) are in no position to talk about morality or how the Law should be altered or enforced.
Because you yourselves do not respect it and believe yourselves to be above it, and damn the consequences, which was an attitude we saw blatently unleashed on our streets.
People who abuse their positions, invent what they believe to be intelligent methods of ensuring they get rich indirectly from their jobs whilst ignoring those who elected them, without any fear of justice and with a sense of complete impunity are an utter disgrace to this country and even in policy terms the public are paying an awful price for trusting their politicians.
People do need role models but where are they going to find them Hazel?
lets be frank, you and your colleagues and the senior people within the Party are not going to start looking for moral characters now are you?
Its all about ensuring your mate or your colleagues mate gets selected and elected. Its all about ensuring beyond any kind of rational logic and sense of consequence or responsibility that whenever something goes wrong in society its everybody elses fault not those who have the power to create the necessary changes and heavon forbid we take the Fred the Shreds of the world and bring them to justice with all the bloodshed, pain and difficulty they as a collective group have brought not just upon our country but upon the world.
The public have made it clear they do not trust any of us Hazel, so I am just thanking you for that and once agian reminding you all what you have done to this country.
Will you take responsibility for your actions?
Will the public see any of the major Parties make a move to re-building trust or at least trying to live within the same laws the public does as they would in a representative democracy?
No.
What we will get is blind denial and a complete pig-headed lack of sense of reality followed by a total commitment to insane greed and ambition and damn the consequences….
Which is something we see a lot of these days……
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/riots-stoked-by-mistrust-of-politicians-says-report-2345856.html
Hazel you should read this and then go back to your Constituency and ask people if they think the Law and Mps are “on their side”, as I did over a year ago.
It pays to listen, hear and truly understand.
The ‘August Riots’ are a seminal moment in our politics. They have exposed the raw reactionary inadequacies of politicians too scared or incapable of talking seriously about the underlying causes. The Westminster bubble could not be more divorced from reality. Our MPs no longer represent us; they represent a political class, a movement of professional, apparatchik style politics.
It is not as simple as to suggest gang culture, alienation, isolation and poverty caused the riots. People also chose to act as criminals, and we must not forget the importance of self-responsibility, but we must also accept that the causes run deep in the way we have allowed our society to develop over the last twenty years.
There is good that essential schemes like Sure Start, Connexions and the minimum wage have brought to my community. Labour supported people in real need through increased Child Benefit and Working Families Tax Credit. That did make a difference to thousands of people’s lives, and we must not allow the current wave of right wing sentiment to re-write history. The fact that these essential services are being cut and withdrawn by those on millionaire cabinet row is a serious cause of concern and outrage amongst those most vulnerable who relied on them.
In our poorest urban communities money made a difference and we would be foolish to deny it. Money alone, however, cannot heal social wounds ingrained in a society that is uneasy with itself.
Why are our children disaffected, why do parents claim that their children were acting in the only way they know how? Why has our criminal justice system not only failed the victims but the perpetrators too?
This really does cut to the heart of what kind of society and country do we want to be. If we shy away from that debate because it is simply too difficult, or because the reaction of anger is so great, then we risk a generation of hate and violence. Our politics is full of cynicism, timidity, and inadequacy.
How do we respond to the lack of opportunity in our inner cities? When a 16 year old boy has no prospects, no job, no chance of owning his own home, no chance of earning more than benefits offer, no opportunity to climb out of the poverty he sees around him every day of his life?
How do we respond to the lack of care in our communities? When an 80 year old pensioner widow can no longer afford to heat her home, when she can no longer get to the shops because the bus service has been cut, when she is unwell and needs care who will pay for that care?
How do we respond to the parents trying to cope with negative equity, falling wages, and jobs in the public sector which they are told are not as valuable or professional as the private sector?
How do we respond to the banker who lost millions, caused the financial crisis, but still gets his huge bonus? How do we respond to the newspaper editor who commits a crime to get a story but has spent years moralising to the rest of us?
How do we respond to the authority of our national institutions being exposed as corrupt?
My fear is that none of our politicians are truly up to the job, because they are not prepared to listen and because they are not interested in mine or your story. The starting point for a new politics is that we need to listen to people’s stories.
If there is a child in my community who cannot read, that matters to me, even if it is not my child. If there’s a pensioner who cannot afford the care they need and has to choose between putting a meal on the table and heating the home then that matters to me, it makes my life poorer even if they are not my grandparent. If a black man is stopped and searched on the streets of Hackney without just cause, then that threatens my civil liberties too.
It is such a churlish statement to say we are all in this together; our sense of being and community is so much more than that. It is what brings us together that makes us stronger. The danger of the current language and reaction to the riots is that it divides and peddles a politics of envy and anger. It plays to our fears and hatreds, not our hopes and aspirations.
In 1997 New Labour harnessed a moment of hope that is rare in British politics. That fleeting moment of unity, of being part of something more played to the better hearts of us all. Obama harnessed it in 2008, and his approach is something we should learn from now.
Hope is not some silly notion. It is a vital ingredient in any progressive politics. We need hope now more than ever. We need a new message, a new politics that talk about a belief in things we cannot yet see, but answers the horror we do see.
We have to provide jobs for the jobless, homes for the homeless, and offer hope to the middle class and working class of our country that their lives can have optimism for the future. We must reclaim our young people in our cities across England from violence and despair.
We need to energise a new politics that speaks to the people as a whole. Tony Blair was right about one thing, we need a government that governs for all of the people. Sadly at the moment we have a government and a political class that govern only for themselves.