Blaise Pascal once wrote that all the problems in the world stem from the inability of human beings to sit still in a chair and think for 10 minutes. Last night I learned that when the TV’s and games consoles are turned off, and time is set aside to think and discuss, this is a generation who can think.

Gathered in the auditorium a stone’s throw away from where some of the violence unfolded, were politicians, police, NGO representatives, teachers, parents, social workers, religious leaders, passive observers (like myself), and kids. Potentially some of the culprits who took part in the surreal circus on our city’s streets in August, and if not, very definitely the friends and peers of those who ran riot across various parts of London were present and prepared for lively debate. Here, our common purpose for the two hours we had, was to discuss and attempt to understand exactly what went on on those balmy August evenings when the smell of smoke from barbeques not buildings should’ve filled our nostrils. 

The evening was opened by Baroness Newlove and Mayoral hopeful Brian Paddick who laid the foundations for what became a lively, organised and impassioned dialogue to be fed into an independent commission by the Prime Minister in an attempt to make sense of the now infamous events beamed into homes across the world.

In this brief reflection, you’ll find no answer, because honestly, I came away none-the-wiser. This was a sentiment summed up nicely by a young lad who suggested, “let’s be careful to not oversimplify causes, or scapegoat a particular group, or lay the cause at the feet of the police, the kids, the bankers, or the politicians.” Wise words and as I sat there listening to kids from Enfield, Tottenham, and Croydon passionately articulate their experiences and reflections of that ominous week, I was reminded of the words of an ancient songwriter in whose Greatest Hits, to be found somewhere bang in the centre of the Christian scriptures, claimed that “from the mouths of infants you have established strength.” My only regret is that in that motley crew of attendees listed in the first paragraph, there were no editors of our national tabloids (to my knowledge) to ensure that the kids and their post-riot initiatives of cup-cakes for firecrews, support for local shop-keepers, and desire to build and not destroy society, was newsworthy enough to reach the night’s print run so that Britain could awaken  to counter perspectives on the damning descriptions of a ‘feral’ generation. Last night I learned that like Sisyphus, they feel they have been unfairly punished because the combination of our media (80% of which is owned by Mr Murdoch, who couldn’t give hack about Britain’s young people) with its ability to make sweeping generalisations based on the negative actions of a few, and the government with its cuts to youth services, have given them a rock they seem eternally bound to push up the hill of reputation.

Growing up in northern Ireland (small ‘n’ used deliberately in a bid to use politically non-partisan language for the emerging situation of my homeland), I know that our kids of East Belfast are in the premier league of rioters. Come July, they hone their skills some more and transform many of the streets of our capital city into a war-zone. It happened that I returned to Ireland the day before the riots kicked off, and so I sat at home, with the rest of the onlooking world, and watched the chaos in horror. I wondered if what I was watching was political violence? Was it action incubated in a culture of poverty and alienation? Was it retribution for the excesses of the bankers, or the greed of politicians and their fraudulent expenses? At least in Ireland I knew the rationale and reasons behind the hatred and violence which erupts in force every summer. But I was bereft of an explanation for the London episode.

Being currently unemployed I applied – and failed – to be part of the Rowntree Foundation funded LSE and Guardian commission on ‘Reading the Riots’. This would present me with the opportunity to interview some of the rioters and their families as I was eager to build a picture of the causes of the phenomenon. On hindsight, I suspect that it would be naive to think that these interviews would give me a portal into the lived reality of those culpable, and that rather than an objective take on the motivations behind their actions, I’d simply end up with a series of co-constructed accounts, and soundbyte utterances from the experts in disturbance. Last night I heard some voices claim it was about getting a few minutes of limited fame on TV (limited because of the necessity of having a covered face), or it was because they’d been so subjected to suspicious searches and ritual abuse from police for years that it was now their time to get their own back.

This leads me to suggest that a couple of months on and from the outside of the Reading the Riots collaborative research, there is no simple cause and effect. The riots are complex and, I believe, a convergence of an economic crisis and general depression when the chasm between those in the upper tiers of society, who, if we’re honest, have to take much of the blame for the crisis, and those at the other extreme is widening, making crime a sad but inevitable outcome. However, I believe that it’s incorrect to suggest that this was a riotous uprising of the poor. I have experienced poverty on a totally different level in Russia, Cambodia and other parts of our world, but it doesn’t manifest itself in this kind of disrespect for our communities and each other.

I returned to London a couple of days after it had all died down, and walked the streets surveying the damage and fall-out. It struck me that the shop on the corner of Rye Lane selling sewing machines came out unscathed, because my guess is that sewing machines can be heavy, but more significantly, they’re not a desirable item for today’s youth. Sports stores, electronics shops, clothing outlets, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, Poundland, were all victims of the anarchy. It struck me that the marketeers had hanged themselves with their own petard. The biggest corporates with the largest spend on advertising were the ones who had, before the watching media – much like on an HBO series – the best product placement on the pavements of London.

In a broken economy when young people are experiencing massive fragmentation of family and communities, it’s little wonder we’re looking at a generation with an acute fragmentation of the self. Take this broken self and expose it to slick and smart marketing spinning the message that if you are not the owner of the latest smartphone, jeans, or trainers, you have no ‘self’ worth speaking of, and catastrophe will await you. Where’s the corrective when the apparent role models in our society have gone awol or bought the message hook, line, and sinker themselves?

Out of a grieving family’s questions to the police as to the loss of a loved one, an unregulated capitalist system, bad parenting, the marginalisation of God, less than adequate schooling, soulless government, bad policing, family breakdown, mass crowd hysteria behaviours, easy communication facilitated by innovative social technologies, and so many more reasons, all converged during a few nights in August, and left a city paralysed. Victorian moralising, urban economic mapping and racism, don’t address the nuances behind the riots and I hope that the commission steers clear of arriving at a simplistic answer requiring heavy arm tactics in the direction of one group or another.

Nigerian poet, author and activist, Ben Okri, suggested that we live by the stories we tell each other. If there’s a detectable erosion of our society leading to massive aberrant social pathologies, which I think was the final synthesis of last nights conversations, then perhaps it’s high time that we started telling alternative stories; stories not founded on materialism, consumption, power, and violence, but rather stories of life, hope, togetherness, and contentment. Perhaps government should’ve taken this recess and done some soul-searching in order to find their moral compass again? Perhaps with UBS’s latest embarrassment as yet another case in point of the irresponsibility of the banks, they should undergo some corporate therapy and see if they can collectively learn how to spell a largely forgotten word – altruism. Perhaps Mr Murdoch’s recent humbling could result in a volte face for our nation’s media and rather than succumbing to the sick voyeurism they’ve created, take somewhat of an initial financial hit, and publish more good news instead. Perhaps teachers should be put under less stress to produce performance tables, allowing them to focus on consolidating the moral fibre engrained at home when the parents decide they’re going to forego selfishness in order to stay together, in the interests of nurturing an immune system against the dehumanisation of our advertising industry…and so the web of complexity goes. 

And when all is said and done, instead of craving 15 mins of fame, we might all sit still in a chair for 10 minutes. Who knows what that might instigate? Riots of light perhaps? Now put that in your BBM and send it!

 by Simon Johnston

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