Two weeks after a wave of riots shocked the nation a debate is raging about what caused them and what we do about them. Thousands of people have been arrested and the courts are handing down tough prison sentences. They are right to do that because the looters are not just being punished for the goods they stole but for the widespread fear and panic they helped create as part of a lawless mob.
So what lay behind the riots? Was it a sudden outbreak of lawlessness that inexplicably gripped thousands of people over a few nights in August? Was it, as the prime minister says, a sign of the moral decline of the nation?
Reducing this to a simple matter of morality misses the point. I do not for one second excuse the behaviour of the looters, but there is a problem that’s been festering in parts of urban Britain for decades that successive governments have failed to address and the current government is making worse. That is a sense of disaffection from mainstream society felt by too many young people in our poorest communities.
Lambeth is like many other urban areas across Britain. On our poorest social housing estates, a majority of children are born into a household on benefits; three in five adults of working age have no job; one in two children lives in a single parent household; and there is a much higher proportion of dysfunctional families than in the population as a whole. With some of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, many teenagers are having children of their own with little experience of good parenting to draw on and no stable relationship to rely on for support. Many young people do not know adults with steady jobs and many have no experience of a stable home life with clear boundaries set for their behaviour. They feel they have no legitimate way of accessing the affluent lifestyle they see beyond the boundaries of the estate where they live, and the only people they know making plenty of money are in gangs dealing drugs. Children learn the lessons they see around them, and the lesson some children are learning is that mainstream society has little to offer them.
Many of these young people have adopted the ‘gangsta’ culture imported from cities in the United States and fed to them through films, videos and music. They seem blind to the fact that, unlike impoverished black American communities, they have access to free world-class healthcare, free and generally good state schools, a relatively generous benefits system, better social housing, a more supportive criminal justice system, a much less violent community in which to live, and for young Londoners even free public transport. But disaffection is not just about the reality of their situation, it is about how they perceive their lives compared to what they see in other communities around them. They need to be made to understand the value of what is available to them, and withdrawing elements of it from serious lawbreakers is one part of doing that.
Most of the rioters came from poor, urban areas. They got involved not because of any lack of morality in society in general, but because the higher levels of poverty and social exclusion in the communities where they live have led to them becoming alienated from society. It’s a fact seen across the world that poor people are more likely to be involved in this kind of disorder than the better off. There’s a reason the riots hit Tottenham and Brixton but not Windsor and Reigate. Of course there are exceptions. The cases of well paid professionals who got involved are there for all to see, and the vast majority of poor people are decent and law-abiding. But that does not detract from the fact that the majority of looters came from poor urban backgrounds, and this was a factor in what happened.
It’s important we identify the right causes if we want to find solutions that work. There’s not been much finger-pointing at the way the government’s targeted their cuts because no one wants to be accused of excusing the looters’ criminal behaviour. But understanding the problem is not the same as excusing it. The places that were hardest hit by rioting, places like Tottenham, Brixton, Hackney, Liverpool and Manchester, are all inner-city areas that have been singled out by the government for a disproportionate share of funding cuts. Lambeth is losing nearly one third of our total available budget, while wealthier areas like Surrey, Richmond and Berkshire are losing almost nothing.
The problems that led to the rioting date back many years before the current government was elected, but cutting funding for poorer areas on the scale the government has chosen makes it much harder to maintain programmes that tackle gang membership, reduce teenage pregnancy, get people back to work and fund positive activities for young people living in crowded estates. On top of that, the government is making direct cuts that fall most heavily on these same communities. The slashing of the education maintenance allowance affects poor young people who otherwise can’t afford to stay on in education. The government’s 23 per cent cuts in youth offending services earlier this year closed many early intervention services that prevent young people from offending because the government insists that the reduced budget must be spent instead on services that shepherd them through the court system. We’d do better to stop them getting there in the first place. Poorer people on estates, if they work at all, are more likely to be in low-paid or casual jobs at greater risk of redundancy because of cutbacks. Youth unemployment is soaring. They may not have caused the root of the problem, but this government is piling the misery on our poorest communities and should not be surprised when signs of disaffection become visible.
Violent youth gangs are a grim feature of many of London’s poorest communities. On some social housing estates in south London a majority of young people are gang members, not because they necessarily want to be but because they are coerced into joining by peer pressure including threats of violence if they refuse. Once involved, they are pressured into adopting the gang’s norms of behaviour, including taking part in violent assaults often involving knives or guns, drug dealing, and sexualised behaviour including rape. Many parents are at their wits’ end with worry, feeling unsupported and unable to prevent their children sliding into criminality that wrecks their lives as well as the community they are part of. government threats to evict parents such as these, people who have done nothing wrong themselves, would only make matters worse. The problem with gangs is not new – Lambeth published a ground-breaking report on the matter in 2008 and followed it up with a big increase in funding for services designed to break the cycle of gang violence. But government funding cuts that disproportionately target poorer areas like ours mean we now have fewer resources to carry out this work.
So what is needed to put things right? Above all, we need a national assault on poverty of every kind – not just financial poverty, but poverty of aspiration and poverty of opportunity. To be effective, this must be delivered locally, estate by estate, family by family, with the full engagement of the local community so it’s not seen as yet another top-down strategy imposed from the outside. This is what Lambeth is already doing with our limited resources, and it is why local government must be central to any solution: it is councils that have the detailed information about local communities, existing relationships with community leaders, and knowledge of local voluntary and community organisations that will be key to meeting the different needs of each community. These interventions will include help for parents who are struggling to bring up their children, support for community leaders to impose moral pressure on young people at risk of joining gangs, more positive activities for young people to keep them busy and develop new interests, after-school classes and homework clubs to improve learning, financial support to keep young people in education and higher education, training for jobs, peer mentoring, activities designed to expose young people to the opportunities available to them in one of the world’s greatest cities.
Doing this effectively will cost money, and that could come from a reversal of the government’s decision to hit poorer areas with the biggest cuts by sharing the burden fairly instead. Not doing it will cost even more because society will have to pay the price of failure – including more people living on benefits rather than in work, more people in jail rather than contributing to society, and higher levels of crime to tackle and clear up. Responsibility is a two-way street: we want people to feel more responsible to society, but we also need them to feel they are a full part of that society.
Whenever a social problem suddenly explodes there’s an urge to simplify the causes then promote simplistic solutions that miss the point. The rioting was inexcusable and lawless, but on its own inflicting tougher punishments on young law-breakers from poor backgrounds doesn’t help them learn that society has something positive to offer them. It’s more likely to entrench them in the belief that society is against them, leading to further disaffected behaviour. Evicting parents who are already struggling to bring up their children makes their task even harder and, as a consequence, their children are more likely to become repeat offenders. We must retain a sense of proportion in our response. The causes behind the riots are many and complex, but we must identify those causes honestly if we are going to solve the problems that saw Britain’s cities explode on those dreadful few nights in August.
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Steve Reed is leader of Lambeth council
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A very thoughtful and to the point article. Correct to to state that we need to tackle the poverty of aspiration and broader family issues but not use this as an excuse for those that rioted.
i agree with every word.
I am sometimes ashamed of how the Labour Party, having obtained power with a huge parliamentary majority in 1997, missed the opportunity to instill a sense of social solidarity in the British people.
What follows in this comment may seem remote from Cllr. Steve Reed’s article, but bear with me and you will see the connection.
Instead of modernising its historic collectivist approach, the Labour Party, in power, accelerated implementation of a “privatise-the-lot” philosophy and allowed itself to worship at the altar of free-market capitalism.
I hate to bring my own activity into this sort of comment, but I saw the problem many years ago. In early December 1999, I went to Brixton Town Hall to a Labour Party rally addressed by Messrs Blair, Kinnock and Fitzpatrick. It was, basically, an anti-Ken Livingstone rally. Ken had put up some mild proposals for funding the London Underground with bonds, rather than the PFI schemes then being promoted by the government.
I have had a career in what was then called merchant banking (different to the present-day investment banking) and I know a bit about finance. I realised that the speakers were “off beam” (expressed crudely, they were talking rubbish). I then got in touch with “Public Finance”, the borough treasurers’ magazine, run by CIPFA, and, at their request, wrote them an article, which they published in March 2000.
In my article, I put forward the proposition that monopoly infrastructure assets ought to be owned by the State Pension Fund, with financing generally arranged on the basis of index-linked instruments and inflation accounting. Management was a different issue. An extension of this approach would enable index-linked pensions to be available for all.
Perhaps more importantly, the people of Britain, as a whole, would own the assets in what is now often called a sovereign wealth fund. This fund would own all those monopoly infrastructure assets and each person would have a share in them that supported their future retirement income. On this basis, we would all have a financial stake in an important part of the country, instead of it being under the control of “international investors”. Other countries, such as Norway, have sovereign wealth funds, which are also very useful for financial stability purposes.
I peddled this idea very widely in the Labour Party and elsewhere, but a government hell-bent on privatisation was not to listen.
What we now have, for example, are Thames Water owned by an Australian infrastructure fund and the London Eye owned almost entirely by a Danish family trust and two private equity firms and vociferously sponsored by EdF, the French nationalised electricity company (but, admittedly, with the South Bank Centre receiving an income under 25 year lease).
I do not want this comment to become a rant and I do understand that there can be merits in international exchanges of capital. However, I do ask the question that, if the political elite of Britain has so little pride in Britain as a nation, or so little confidence in the management and entrepreneurial ability of its own people, that it allows take-overs of what amount to national treasures (and, also in fact, monopoly infrastructure assets (utility and tourism)) [Could anybody imagine that the French would sell off the Eiffel Tower?], is it a surprise that it has not busied itself about “disaffection from mainstream society felt by too many people in our poorest communities”?
I will leave it to readers to come to their own conclusions as to how much the political elite cares.
My article for Public Finance is now a historic document and I can’t find it on their website any more. However, I will email it to Progress for distribution if anybody wants .
” there is more of violence, as well as perseverance ,amongst the lowly and the wretched.A wise government,therefore,will always be cautious of provoking this description of men to opposition or resistance. ” Tacitus
could this be the reason for the London Riots : http://koolbro.tumblr.com/post/7552570728
What a pathetic article from Steve Reed. It is a typical politician’s comment of “let’s be vague but give the impression we are determined and let’s aim to appeal to ALL voters even if we contradict ourselves.” Read quickly your comments appear to make sense but on closer inspection it becomes obvious that your sentiments are somewhat vacuous.
For example, you state that the “courts are right to hand down tough prison sentences to the looters” at the beginning of your article but say, at the end, “inflicting tougher punishments doesn’t help the looters learn – it’e more likely to entrench them in the belief that society is against them. We must retain a sense of proportion in our response.” If that isn’t a clear contradiction of opinion I don’t know what is!
You repeatedly claim that ‘poverty’ is at the heart of all the rioting and looting: “it’s a fact that poor people are more likely to be involved in rioting than the better off (compare Tottenham with Windsor)”, “majority of looters come from poor urban backgrounds”, “they (the rioters) got involved because of poverty” and “to put things right we need a national assault on poverty”. This assertion is blatantly untrue. poverty was not the reason why looters in designer hoodies texted their mates on their high-tech mobiles to join in with the destruction of commercial properties. It wasn’t poverty that drove so many looters to choose to raid hi-fi shops over food stores. The physical evidence fron CCTV alone proves that poverty played no part in these events.
You also cite “disaffected youth” as a central cause of the recent troubles but yet again, displaying a shallow political (alla media) view of society, confuse ‘disagreement’ with ‘alienation’. The vast majority of youths (ie the vast majority of people) causing the mayhem were NOT expressing anger at their ‘plight in society’ but revelling in the opportunity to be destructive enhanced by the certainty of ineffectual police intervention. What you describe as “youth disaffection from mainstream society” is actually a generation (or more) of sections of our society that have alienated themseves from traditional British culture and morals. This ‘alienation’ is a natural consequence of prolonged immigration, whether Irish, Jewish, West Indian or European etc, and the solutions to eliminating the fractious divisions between racial groups is a) for ‘alien’ cultures to acknowledge the predominance of the ‘host’ society, and b) the ‘host’ culture be open to ‘foreign practices’ provided they accede to host norms – in other words, a host morality.
Steve Reed’s claim that “explaining the riots as a simple matter of morality misses the point” is really the opposite of the truth (which is complex and fundamental to the way we should address ALL the questions and answers surrounding these disturbing events).
Morality, not political electioneering, should be our approach to addressing the attitude of those who took part in the looting and destruction.
What a poor and quite personal response Micklemas. You seem more angry at any politicians than making a serious case for the argument you want to advance. Let’s talk about these issues with respect.
There is a real need for a considered debate on the riots, the implications, the causes and the possible solutions.
There is definitely not a simple answer, but there is a considerable truth and merit in Cllr Reed’s article. 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.
Of real concern is the reactionary outcry of the last few weeks. 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.
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.
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. 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.
I think that Cllr Reed’s article and the work going in Lambeth in regard to creating a ‘Cooperative Council’ make crucial contributions to the debate we need to have in the Labour Party on our future direction of travel.
Is your doctorate in ‘nonsensicality’? “We must reclaim our young people…across England from violence and despair. We need a new politics that talk(s) about a belief in things we cannot yet see but answers the horror we do see.” What utter verbal diarrhoea!
My criticisms of Steve Reed are not personal (I have no knowledge of the man) but logical. You may wish to avoid attributing blame to any particular section of society (incorrectly claiming that a whole host of disparate people that were involved in the riots means that no particular group held the ‘lion’s share’ of responsibility) but reality contradicts you. As a matter of principle I disagree with his premisses that “mainstream society has little to offer them (ie the rioters)” or “they get involved in rioting … because of poverty and social exclusion”. I think they are wrong and misrepresent the true nature of the problem.
Unlike you, Dr. D, I examine the facts and ask the relevant questions: Did the disturbances occur predominantly in inner-city areas? Yes. Was there a commonality of anti-social and destructive behaviour shown? Yes. Was there a particular age group common to all the disturbances? Yes, 14-24. Was there any ethnic/racial group predominant in the disturbances? Yes, African-Caribbean (or black). Were the majority of offenders involved in criminal activity previously known to police? Yes. Were the vast majority of looters the poorest members of our society? Absolutely not!
I think you should get off your academic backside and experience the real world of illegal bling.