We found similar findings and suggest a potential way forward.

Oasis is about life changing work with young people, families and communities in urban areas across the UK, so it is no wonder that when the riots hit; the communities we work in were affected. Croydon, Peckham, Enfield, Bristol were all victims of the riots that we saw devastate our communities a few months ago. We decided to tackle the issue head on and  asked students from across our hubs and practitioners from across the UK what they thought caused the riots that plagued our television screens over the summer. A meeting was held at the Oasis Centre at which David Cameron’s communities and victims listening panel attended and further work was done across the Oasis family before putting together a highly informative, grass roots document in response to the riots of last summer.

 
The former Chief of Police in Brixton and Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick sat and listened to young people talk about a ‘grudge with police’ because of the way they are mistreated. There was a particular resentment with the way the police went about ‘stop and search’. One suggestion form a student from Oasis Academy Enfield was ‘before the crime happens, police need to be involved in schools, youth groups and communities’. In Response to young peoples criticisms of the police Brian Paddick agreed: ‘for success, the police need a dialogue [with young people]‘. Although the police were heavily criticised on the evening the paper that Oasis Charities Parliament and Faith to Engage has put together unpacks a plethora of reasons why our cities erupted: including a genuine revolt from young people, lack of youth services, the current economic climate, and the break down of our communities. To view more of the findings as well as recommendations for how we move forward click here to view the full report.

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

1. What was the motivation for a small minority of people to take part in riots?
2. Why did the riots happen in some areas and not others?
3. How did key public services engage with communities before, during and after the riots?
4. What motivated local people to come together to take civic action to resist riots in their area or to clean up after riots had taken place?
5. How can communities be made more socially and economically resilient in the future, in order to prevent future problems?
6. What could have been done differently to prevent or manage the riots? 

Are looters stealing from local shop owners and MPs stealing from taxpayers really that different? I don’t believe they are. Both were motivated essentially by greed, both did it because they believed they could get away with it and both believed they were justified in their actions. Both were aspiring to get  more for themselves as they competed with their peers, whether it was the latest pair or trainers and big screen HD TV or the bigger duck pond and more comfortable second home.

The MPs approach may be less violent and more socially acceptable, but at the heart, viewed side by side, these events point to a much bigger problem with the values of our whole society, not just segments of it. Rich and poor, we are all driven by the powerful values of individualism and materialistic consumerism, of which looting and cheating on your expenses is the natural outcome. The simplistic solutions and simplistic reasons being given for why these acts of violence have taken place neglect to take into account the rod we have created for ourselves as a society by promoting consumerism and individualism as the pillars upon which everything else rests. To tackle the heart of the problem we must change the air we breathe, the culture we have created. This cannot be tackled by new policies, whether it is better policing, or more money for youth projects, instead we must take a deeper look at the foundations of what our society is built on, why we exist and what we are hoping to achieve. There’s more to life than a new pair of Nike trainers or a better pond for the garden the problem is we’re failing to communicate what that more is.

Dan Gover’s recent Theos report, Turbulent Priests?, charts in meticulous detail the political activity of the Archbishop of Canterbury since 1980. Since that time, incumbents have made statements on everything, from asylum and inner city deprivation, to abortion and euthanasia.

Many of these interventions were widely noticed, and cheered or jeered according to political taste. When he rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in over issues of inequality or climate change the left applauded and the right grumbled. When he spoke out about human sexuality or family breakdown the right praised and the left complained.  

Generally speaking, this should be quite encouraging, if not necessarily soothing, for Christians. The variety and volume of such reactions does seem to suggest that the gospel, for which the Archbishop is such a prominent ambassador, rudely cuts across our narrow political categories, edging us out of our political comfort zone.

But it is also a little paradoxical. One of the criticisms levelled at Christianity in theUK, by some Christians as well as atheists and secularists, is that we have an established church. This, they claim, is unfair. It is unrepresentative. It makes the church self-serving, and it weakens its prophetic role, drawing its political teeth.

This is a serious charge sheet. The self-serving accusation is the easiest to deal with. Turbulent Priests? sifts through a mountain of evidence to show that, with a few minor exceptions, the idea that archiepiscopal politics is self-serving is without basis. As far as we can tell, episcopal politics merits the same verdict.

The question of being unrepresentative is also a something of a red herring. The Church of England may not be as central to national life as it was fifty years ago, but it is still the body to which most people claim some form of affiliation, no matter how loose or informal. The very fact that bishops are so rooted in their locality, acting as focal points in a network that stretches everywhere inEnglandand connects with millions, serves to re-enforce this fact.

The issue of unfairness is more complex, and demands a careful consideration of what would constitute a fair political settlement. Some, such as Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at OxfordUniversity, have argued that the current form of establishment is about as fair as we could hope for from any political settlement. Others contend that many of the trappings of establishment, not least the automatic right of 26 Anglican bishops to assume seats in the Lords, cannot, by definition, be fair. There is clearly a debate to be had here although what is certainly not fair is to claim, as some secularists do, that fairness demands that religion must be kept wholly private.

The paradox comes in the last criticism, the idea that establishment draws the church’s political teeth. Gover’s report repeatedly shows that not only has establishment failed to blunt the church’s political critique, but it has actually given it a platform and a prominence that it would otherwise have lacked.

Most people know about the ‘famous’ examples of such political controversies: Runcie’s speech in the Falklandsthanksgiving service, the notorious Faith in the City report, the Archbishops’ warnings in the run up to and after the Second Iraq War, ‘shariagate’. Gover fills in the gaps between these spats, showing how, over the last thirty years, the Archbishop repeatedly spoke up against government thinking and often in the teeth of public opinion on a number of issues, such as urban poverty, asylum, and criminal justice. The fact that he was noticed had as much to do with who he was as what he said.

None of this is to claim that the only valuable archiepiscopal political intervention is one that condemns the powers that be. In an age of overwhelming political cynicism, speaking up for politics, politicians and the political process may be just as prophetic an act.

Rather, it is simply to say that the idea that establishment blunts the Church’s political critique is clearly wrong. Any priests can get turbulent but not every instance of turbulence makes a difference.

A contribution form Theos Think Tank

Francis Maude MP shares his thougths on the Big Society, localism and community organising. Click here to listen to the podcast. Read the Third Sector article on the evening.

Rt Hon. Francis Maude addressed a lively crowd from a wide range of charities at the Oasis Centre.

Francis Maude MP stated that there are Government plans to recruit and train 5000 community organisers, with the aim that local communities will have a structure for themselves, and one that is not dictated to by Government either national or local.

In the following question and answer session, those from local faith and community groups were given the opportunity to probe Francis Maude MP, including Chair of the evening and Charities Parliament Director Pete Brierley challenged Francis Maude MP on his own involvement in volunteering.

Also adding their thoughts on the following panel discussion was: Steve Chalke MBE (Founder of Oasis) and Dr Luke Bretherton (Senior Lecturer in Theology and Politics at King’s College London).

The Minister is set to talk specifically about the localism agenda and community organising as two government initaitives that will hand power back to the people. However as the Director of the Oasis Charities Parliament Pete Brierley points out “Broadly speaking, nobody disagrees with localism; we all agree democracy needs to be more democratic and more local. The question is can the government really follow through and provide the resources required to help people engage in shaping their local community?” Oasis Charities Parliament aims to encourage debate and innovation between voluntary groups and the government. The event will be held at the Oasis Centre, 75 Westminster Bridge Rd, Waterloo, SE1 7HS and will run from 6.30pm-8.30pm, Tue 28th June 2011. To book tickets click here or for more information email rsvp@charitiesparliament.org.uk.

In an attempt to arguably keep both the left and the right happy, Milliband criticised both those at the top and the bottom who have acted irresponsibly: bankers and their large bonuses that led to the financial crisis, and those on benefits who could be out doing an honest hard day’s work, arguing that the squeezed middle are being affected by an ‘irresponsible minority.’ Labour had not done enough to change the ‘take what you can’ attitude of the 1980s and hadn’t done enough to apply the value of responsibility consistently across society, he admitted.

In an attack on David Cameron’s Big Society, Ed went on to suggest that this will never be created by an army of volunteers, although I was disappointed that he seemed to think with libraries and Sure Start centres around the country closing, volunteer opportunities were going to be drying up… Come on Ed, people are volunteering in far more ways than that! His views on the voluntary sector certainly seemed somewhat mixed. While his speech almost implied volunteers were of little consequence, when directly questioned on this issue he stressed the importance of the voluntary sector, though argued government is often a poor partner for it. Why? Because of an inability to provide sustainable funding, leading him to champion government pledging funding for voluntary organisations for at least 3 years. Amen to that at least. He suggested the government needed to be more open to using the voluntary sector and he’d welcome more engagement. Music to Charities Parliament ears perhaps, although sadly Ed still hasn’t accepted an invitation to come and speak at a Charities Parliament event!

While the rhetoric around responsibility all sounded good and I suspect few would disagree with the idea of creating responsible citizens, I was left wondering what Milliband was really proposing would be done to make this happen. Instilling values of duty and responsibility won’t happen overnight, but can take years – surely Labour needs a long term strategy in all this?

As I pondered how charities and faith organisations can best respond, I think it’s simply this: that whatever the rhetoric and slogans of the day may be, we’re called to get on with the task in hand, serving those we’re called to serve. Of course it’s great to have the backing of politicians, to engage with them and tell them what the issues are people are facing, to call them to take action, but ultimately we know the difference our work is making, we see it daily in the lives of the people we encounter. What’s more, many of us in the work we’re doing are encouraging people to be responsible. Whether it’s working with young people and raising their aspirations, helping people get out of debt or get off the streets or helping people find work, many voluntary organisations are quietly getting on with the job of building a responsible society and encouraging responsible citizenship. We can be the ones that help make it happen.

Susannah Clark, Act Network.

Views on the Big Society

Ken Cracknell, wrote a book called ‘Towards a New Relationship – Christians and People of Other Faith’. He talks of ‘the distinctive quality of personal relationships between believing people’. I experience this myself, when Muslim colleagues, at prayer time, pray in my office and I see their devotion. For Western Christians there can be a strangeness in relating to other faiths out of our exclusivist tradition, though this is not true for all Christians. But the Bible is useful in this area!

For example, Abraham meets Melchizedek in Genesis 14, Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, ¹⁹ and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.²⁰And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. He was a priest of a different religion, of which we know nothing, he gave God (the same God) a different name, yet Abraham recognises him as a God’s servant. The most famous person of another religion in the Bible is Job. He was an Edomite (essentially an Arab), you can also read about him in the Qur’an. He is an important figure for the three faiths, without formally belonging to any of them.

Another important verse is Malachi 1¹⁰ “I wish that someone among you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not at all pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will not accept your offerings. ¹¹But my name is honoured by people of other nations from morning till night. All around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings in honour of my name. For my name is great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.

There is a similar verse in the Qur’an – 22.40 – mentioning churches and synagogues to the same effect. This is very radical, it is intended to shock, it is prophetic after all. God, through the prophet is saying I do not like your religion, your religious practices, it would be much better if you didn’t bother at all. I hope God is not saying that to us today. But, God continues, these other people, foreigners, people of other faiths, heathen even, honour my name from morning till night. All around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings. Some Bible translations seem to have a problem with this and use the eschatological language of ‘will honour’ and so on. But the text is pointing to the current situation. God’s own people are making a mockery of worship, have even betrayed the ‘true’ faith, while the heathens, people of other faiths, are truly worshipping God.

So, what kind of relationships can we have? If we take a step of faith, just as we do whenever we consciously think of our relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, just as people of other faiths do, we can see ourselves as fellow pilgrims, without, I think, deceiving ourselves. I would also pose the question, again from our Scriptures (Romans 8 ) – What relationships may result from us having God as our Father, when God is the Father of all human beings and Jesus as the firstborn among many brothers [and sisters]? Recognising that we do not own Jesus, Gandhi was inspired by him, Jewish scholars have started to reflect on Jesus as a Jewish teacher and he is revered by Muslims, who are inspired by what they read in the Qur’an – We gave Jesus, son of Mary, clear proof (of Allah’s sovereignty) and We supported him with the Holy Spirit.

Julian Bond, Director Christian Muslim Forum