Riots on the streets of London. Shops looted, cars and buildings set on fire. These are not the images of London anyone wants to see but nor are they typical. They do not represent daily life in London. What they do show is groups of mainly young people feeling they can get away with anything if they jump on the bandwagon and join in while the police are too busy elsewhere to be able to stop them. These riots on the streets of London show there is a whole generation of people who think that anything is ok if you can get away with it.
It would be easy to blame events on a disaffected youth who have poor education and job prospects. They probably do feel deprived and disappointed with the prospects for their lives in the future but that is no excuse for looting and burning your way across town.
My father went into politics as a young man because he was shocked at the deprivation and poverty. He told me of kids going to school with no shoes to wear. He told me of children dying of scarlet fever, an illness we would not worry too much about today because we have decent healthcare available to all.
The kids that are starting riots on the street of London are not deprived in anything like the same way as people of a generation or two ago. They are not looting food to feed their starving kids they are looting TV’s, electronic goods and sportswear. They are not demonstrating about a lack of basic essentials like food or basic clothing, they are having a bit of fun and grabbing the goods they feel entitled too because the opportunity to overwhelm the police suddenly appeared. They somehow have the idea that it is OK to smash their way into a shop to get a smart new LCD TV, or the latest fashionable training shoes.
These are not starving and desperate kids. They may be disappointed with their lives but looting and burning will change nothing. It may even lead to smaller funding cuts to the police and greater cuts to welfare and local development group support to make up for it. It is good for no-one and bad for all.
The start of the riots following the death of a man who police were trying to arrest may have brought people onto the streets to air their grievances and even protest but that was done in an ordered and civilised way which enabled them to express their feelings in an acceptable manner. The current wave of violence and rioting has nothing to do with any legitimate protest. It is simple violence for violence sake.
These young people are taking an opportunity to get out there and, lets face it, have a bit of fun. Who wouldn’t enjoy smashing things up and setting fire to buildings. We all enjoy a bit of destruction but the difference is that most of us would not dream of actually doing it.
There has always been an acceptance that no matter how upset you are about things, violence is not the proper way to deal with it. When my father grew up and went to school with children who had no shoes, where families had to live on very little food and live in incredibly cramped accommodation with a family living in one small room, people did not go out rioting and looting to get shoes. They may have been suffering terrible depravation and they had a real grievence but they knew it was wrong to behave in that sort of way.
Our society has changed. The more we are given the more we expect and when we don’t have a big TV or the latest trainers our young people are feeling deprived and disaffected. The consumer culture which has been encouraged because it is so good for business has in it’s wake created a pent up demand from those who cannot afford the lifestyle advertising encourages us to aspire to.
We have a celebrity culture where everyone wants and expects the best of everything and the feelings of entitlement mean that a significant proportion of people feel that if they can’t get what they want legitimately then it is OK to just take it anyway they can.
There is no excuse for the behavior we have seen on the streets of London. This is not an Arab spring or a fight for democracy. This is plain vandalism and criminality. There are legitimate concerns that should be addressed. We do need to do more to help young people have a decent future but we also need to look at why people feel a big screen TV is so important they will loot a store to get one.
Our society has become so focused on possessions while it almost ignores our need for genuine personal contentment and satisfaction with being a decent person. We have seen the Bankers ripping off the nation so they can have their mansions and fast cars. We have seen MP’s taking advantage of a very loose system of expenses and ripping off the public. We have recently discovered how some newspapers have lost all sense of reason and ignored any moral argument in favour of making money and every time we hear of yet another rip off by those in powerful positions we also hear that it is the ordinary man in the street who has to pay the price for these other people’s greed.
If you are a young person in Tottenham, Croydon or Hackney, you have no opportunity to gamble millions of other peoples money to make a fast buck, like the bankers. You can’t rip off the expenses system because there you don’t have one. You can’t make millions by tapping into peoples phones and selling lots of newspapers on the gossip you discover because you are just an ordinary person on the street. You work, or want to work but your opportunities are restricted if there are any at all. The only thing you do have is the power of numbers against a stretched police force.
There is no excuse for the rioting we have seen taking place in our streets. We do, however, have every right to expect that the outrageous excesses of those in power should cease and that fairness should rule in our society. A democratic society should be fair to all, not just the rich and powerful.
We must use the power of the law to prevent further acts of vandalism and punish those who were in many cases, I am imagine just started having a bit of fun until it all got out of hand when they got carried away with their newly discovered power. In a way they are no worse than the bankers, except they used violent means rather than pressing keys on a keyboard, but our society needs to look at itself and find out where we went so wrong and what we can do to improve it in the future.
We all depend on a basic belief in the rule of law. When significant numbers think otherwise we will all lose as society falls apart. There is something very rotten in our modern society. It is driven by greed and self interest and it is not good for society or democracy. We need to make fairness and justice our prime motivation rather than profit but those young people who start riots on the streets of London must realise this is not acceptable in any way and it will not help us reach the just and fair society we all want.
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