Riot About Now

As the dust of our recent 'civil disturbance' settles I wonder whether it's time to start asking why some people got very upset with the way things were and why they needed to take to the streets in a fit of anger.

Well, I don't think anyone knows. What really amazes me is how news channels and papers always want to find a 'quick fix' or an 'easy cause'. "The 'rioting' was caused by gangs", they say. And they can say this with certainty because there were plenty of gangs out on the streets, smashing and grabbing, shouting and punching, and, probably most importantly swearing at the authorities. "Fuck da police!", the gangs wrote on a wall in 10 foot high graffiti as a camera shot pictures for the BBC news at 10. "It must be them".

Well, actually yes and no. Nothing this complex has such an easy cause. It's like trying to predict the weather in a couple of week's time by using the ideal gas equation (this would be a grossly oversimplified model for the climate and one which, I think most people would see as such). What about the influence of international media in the middle east, reporting the triumphs and celebrations of those fighting in Libya, Egypt and Syria? What about the axing of youth spending? How about raising tuition fees so that students from poorer backgrounds (and many from relatively better off backgrounds) decide, instead, that there is no future for them?

Perhaps also, many people were fed up of living in a society where 'they' are different to 'us'. David Starkey may have made a fool out of himself on newsnight, but what I find more worrying than the Grandparent-like racism is his distinction between 'us' and 'them'. I think finding a quick fix that belittles a subsection of society into thinking they are inferior to 'the rest of us' is only going to cause more fires and looted shops in the future. Psychologists have done (ethically questionable) experiments into what happens when people are either 'naughty prisoners' or 'justified prison guards'. The results did not go well and 'prisoners' opposed their 'captors', developed psychosomatic rashes and went through nervous breakdowns. "We are right, they are dangerous and wrong" will help nobody.

Of course there's no single reason why a small group of people decided to wreck a very few number of shops and buildings. They say (actually I'm not sure who 'they' are, but they do) that in most accidents where there is a loss of human life, there have been around seven seemingly unconnected events that have culminated in tragedy. I don't know what the seven events were that lead to the 'August Riots', but I'd love to find out what happened. Trying to fix just one of these seven causes will not stop a similar accident happening in the future and we can only hope that treating all young people with mutual respect, while giving them genuine opportunity, will ease the scale of events to come.