The riots in August were the most widespread public disorder in living memory. Never before had so many people in every corner of the country been so fearful of the walk home or what might wake them up in the night. The public disorder exposed the shortcomings of coalition policies. The police needed 16,000 officers on the streets of London to maintain order, precisely the number of officers that are being cut nationwide. The riots were the consequence of long term unemployment and concentrated poverty, yet the coalition are pressing on with decisions that will entrench both for yet another generation. The aftermath saw a spate of short term prison sentences being doled out for minor offences despite the justice secretary pledging to abolish them.
But far from being his downfall, Cameron looks triumphant. The seeds sown by the broken society narrative before the election were now being harvested. Cabinet members declared open season on the ‘feral underclass’ and the right-wing press duly let rip. Much of the country emerged from behind their front doors shaken, but adamant that benefits be withdrawn from those who participated. Iain Duncan Smith was hailed as a prophet and Cameron appointed himself chair of a new cabinet committee responsible for ‘turning around the lives of 100,000 families’. The flurry of activity has given the impression of a government on the front foot when it should really be licking its wounds.
Amidst the frantic battle to appear ‘on top’ of the issue, no one in Whitehall or Number 10 appears to understand the gravity of the crisis we face. The riots were an explosion of hedonism and nihilism. People with little to lose lashed out at authority and took what they wanted. The violence and the looting were driven by the sense that, for a few nights only, people could do whatever they pleased. Lives and livelihoods were treated as collateral damage in the pursuit of self-gratification. The challenge for British politics is to replace a culture in which people simply take what they want with an ethic of give and take, reciprocity, something for something.
The coalition will dismiss this as beyond the remit of any government. The one purpose of this small ‘l’ liberal government is to reduce the deficit. All else is superfluous. We have to be more ambitious. The state cannot do this alone, but nor can we get there without it. Rather than try to replace society, our vision for a future Labour government should be to reinforce society in everything that the state does. This should be the golden thread running through our attitude to families, communities, workplaces, our justice system, taxation, immigration rules and the welfare state.
We understand that whether we like it or not, we are heavily dependent on one another. We are not born free but dependent on our parents. As we grow older, a good life depends in large part on the strength of our relationships with family, friends, and strangers. It is contingent on a society characterised not just by liberty but by mutual respect and mutual responsibility. When this breaks down it takes a lot more than police officers and pot-shots at the ‘feral underclass’ to put things right.
David Lammy MP is the author of ‘Out Of The Ashes: Britain After The Riots’
Photo: Dull Hunk
David,
People warned you there would be trouble in the Summer but again they were ignored. People are warning you about other events too the question is are the unelites still locked into the deluded idea that zero pragmatic and un-applied academic experience know best?
Sigh the things that people will do to have some “aspiration” and “power” in their lives whilst the forbearing majority look on in wonder at the lack of reason and consideration for others as they accomplish their aims whilst also being socially responsible and having empathy for their neighbors that requires no law to direct
Your definition of causation is shallow there weer many cities elsewhere where the same problems were manifest but no riots lol.
“The challenge of British politics is…” No you are wrong. You cannot make people live differently in values to the way the “elite” (unelite) live. Rule of Law fella, it has to be consistent.
At the moment Labour is unable to advocate these values within itself and as a consequence it cannot represent people and create change here, because of hypocrisy. It will take Leadership here to create change and it’s fine attacking the Tories but the cancer within the Party remains.
Even at the most basic level Labour fails, it represents Nepotism and fixes and refuses no matter what the reasoning to become the tool that will prevent social upheaval and become a weapon that can forge the future a decent progressive future for the UK.
You cannot separate some vague idealistic daydream that can be manufactured by Labour in power in Parliament, as a desperate issue to how you manage yourselves as an opposition party wanting power. How you all conduct yourselves now has already defined how you will conduct yourselves should the public be silly enough to take you all seriously.
You had a chance to choose between privilege and ignorance and equality and pragmatism.
You all made that that choice.
You cannot criticism the Tories you have no legitimacy either moral or substantive in policy terms.
You decline continues and this next bi-election means nothing.
The trouble has just begun and as the the only party meant to create a narrative that merges middle class survival/aspiration with defense of the poor and a narrative for the poor to create a better and more endurable society you have all failed. I have tasted in full depth the vacuum of morality the Party currently advocates and conquered it as my weapon is democracy and freedom.
You need to learn waht that means and begin to speak as one of the people as opposed to a clerk speaking from a distance and advocating vague principles and generalities…….
Any analysis that infers that the riots took place “in every corner of the country” is likely to be wide of the mark, because they did not. This is yet another London-centric pronoucement. We did not have riots here on Tyneside, despite the fact that many of our police officers were dispatched to parts of the country where riots occurred. There needs to be some assessment why there were no riots in the North-East and Scotland. I support David’s argument in his final paragraph: being part of cohesive families, social groupings and communities matter. They affect people’s behaviour, deterring people from reckless opportunism. So funded services that strengthen cohesion, solidarity, responsibility and esprit de corps represents money well spent.
Denise has beat me to it, there’s 16,000 cuts form the hole of the country, so thats 2000, in london, and As pointed out there are police who could have come out of the office for front line during the riots but are tied to paper work, For the record blaming the cuts, or deaths in custody or duggnas death were a huge cop out,