Well said!

I was brought up on acouncil estate, And I go back theri now and see kids with blackberry’s designer trainers, flash jewellery,that changes every week, The riots of the 80′s were caused by a mixture of some polce beign racist and poverty, But i will tell you that those riots ewren’t even riots they were looting, it was nothing todo with poevrty, some of those lloters had good jobs were in their 20′s,30′s and even 40′s, it was moments of madness for them, even the ones who didn’t have good jobs were just playing on the fact that it was an excuse,
I couoldn’t disagree more

James – YES! I’ve made similar comments on my blog.

Oasis accompanied me my teenager years and I’ve kept in touch with many of those who were/still are now being characterised as “feral criminals”.

Music, fashion, politics… the fabric of our culture has been played out for the middle ground. I hate to sound like a socialist rambler but how can I not? There seems to be nothing wrong with expressing these views; not anymore.

These flaws must be addressed but I fear they will not be.

Maryam

The rich don’t need to riot. They do their looting with the govt’s consent.

Cameron wants to ban people hiding their faces. But he was quite happy to bring Murdoch into 10 Downing street through the back door, so he was not seen. What is the difference?

Born into a council estate, growing up with five siblings on a single parent’s wage (until I was old enough to go to school and be minded by family) and was a member of what some middle class people refer to as a “feral gang”, but I called friends; but those teenagers rioting seem completely alien to me.

At school, I set fire to grass on sand dunes (and extinguished the fire in the juvenile way), dropped fireworks down chimneys and made a point of slapping classroom bullies in the face two seconds before a teacher could observe the disruption around my desk. I had great fun causing mischief and the only people who suffered in the long term were classroom bullies. Chucking rocks around held no appeal.

It’s all right to call for youth clubs and holiday activities for teenagers. But teenagers need to get up to mischief too, on their own. It is called growing up.

If society imposes rigid controls (“zero tolerance”) on teenagers, they aren’t going to work out the limits and consequences of mischief. And if they can’t learn how mischief can go wrong, teenagers are unlikely to understand crime.

Bet some though you were the bully…..

But the fact is this might have been done by idiots or by the poor the results will be the cutting of benefit for everyone and more bloody laws to make it impossible to march, between Thatcher Blair and Now Cameron the country has mess up big time

“Don’t tell me poverty and inequality had no part to play in the riots”

The diagnostics of riots can be challenging. All riots aren’t necessarily the same although they have particular characteristics in common – a frenzy, with disregard for social consequences and who gets hurt, local hotpoints with many engaged in criminality at about the same time and in the same place etc.

Why were there huge riots in Tottenham, Croydon, Clapham Junction, Manchester and Birmingham but not in Beaconsfield, Henley, Aylesbury, Newbury or in Glasgow, which has its own pervasive and persisting problems of deprivation and which has recently experienced bouts of sectarian violence?

Sure, in these riots there were certainly some uni students and graduates and drivers of expensive cars. There was also organisation with Blackberries and postings to Facebook and Twitter. Gangs were involved. Why the torching of landmark buildings such as the Allied Carpet building in Tottenham and Reeves Corner in Croydon? Why some evidence of Asians and Asian businesses being targeted?

IMO an important, underlying cause was the (documented) low educational attainment of young blacks, as compared with other ethnic minorities, and their resulting difficulty in finding legitimate work opportunities when the previous government and pundits have been warning for years that unskilled jobs are becoming scarce. New jobs have been going mainly to immigrants, mostly to immigrants from Eastern Europe. But why?

For relating rock music, try Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 hit: Dancing in the Dark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs

National unemployment rate = 7.8%
Unemployment rate in the north-east of England = 9.8%
Yet no rioting and looting in the north-east.

“Why were there huge riots in Tottenham, Croydon, Clapham Junction, Manchester and Birmingham but not in Beaconsfield, Henley, Aylesbury, Newbury or in Glasgow, which has its own pervasive and persisting problems of deprivation and which has recently experienced bouts of sectarian violence?”

Give up with this bogus line of false equivalence already. The OP is not saying poor people riot, or those in poverty riot, he’s saying that you cannot claim that poverty was not a part of what made them happen.

Why didn’t other places follow suit as Manchester and Birmingham did? Maybe because the policing was adequate in these other places to deter it, maybe “recent sectarian violence” meant that trouble makes had already had their fill, their own breaking point receding.

There are all kinds of reasons, none of which make the point about this clearly being something that has drawn from the deprived nature of the areas the rioters came from.

” There was also organisation with Blackberries and postings to Facebook and Twitter.”

Hardly expensive to do.

“Why some evidence of Asians and Asian businesses being targeted?”

Want to show us how this evidence shows all of the rioting was racially motivated, or are you setting up a straw man?

@6. Robert the crip: “Bet some though you were the bully…”

I am a great fighter when not wearing my bottle bottomed lenses. Sometimes I can see the impact point that I missed.

“National unemployment rate = 7.8%
Unemployment rate in the north-east of England = 9.8%
Yet no rioting and looting in the north-east.”

Yeah, because a single factor like employment rates isn’t enough to spark something like this. Jesus, invasion of the simpleton brigade today.

@9: “Why some evidence of Asians and Asian businesses being targeted?” – Want to show us how this evidence shows all of the rioting was racially motivated, or are you setting up a straw man?

No straw man – and I didn’t claim that “all” rioting or rioters to be racially motivated.

Consider the Birmingham murders. Looted and damaged small shops along the
London Road in Croydon, north of West Croydon station, are not high fashion and are almost all Asian owned. Those shops don’t have rich pickings

The questions about why no rioting and looting in Glasgow, the NE region – or in Beaconsfield, Henley etc are very relevant.

“Jesus, invasion of the simpleton brigade today.”
I’m much more impressed by cool analysis than by ad hominems.

It certainly is significant that the disorders were indeed very limited in their geographical distribution, to limited parts of a few large cities, although the social problems are ubiquitous. And poverty, of course, is a completely relative thing. Speaking as someone who was 7 when post-WW2 rationing came to an end, . . . well, you’ve heard it before.

More importantly, if poverty and inequality had nowt to do with, why then all the knee-jerk braying for council house evictions and benefits stoppage?

Bit of having one’s cake and eating it with both those narratives going alongside one another methinks.

11. Lee Griffin: “Yeah, because a single factor like employment rates isn’t enough to spark something like this.”

I reckon your blow off was wrong, Lee. The complete shittiness of resort towns around the UK defies description. In the off-season, unemployment runs at ridiculous rates but in the summer, so long as you are sober, you’ll get a job.

Blackpool workers won’t riot in the summer because it is when they are working ridiculous hours and earning the money that keeps them ticking over. Blackpool workers can only riot in the winter.

It is all very complicated.

@13: “although the social problems are ubiquitous. ”

Emphatically, the social problems are NOT ubiquitous. There is nothing like the scale of social problems in Beaconsfield, Henley, Aylesbury as there are in Thornton Heath in (north) Croydon – whereas South Croydon rates as being among the 100 most affluent Parliamentary constituencies in England.

Nor is the residential distribution of ethnic minorities about the same everywhere. About 40% of London residents are foreign born.

From the official ONS report on the 2001 Census:

Non-White ethnic groups are considerably more likely to live in England than in the other countries of the UK. In 2001 they made up 9 per cent of the total population in England compared with only 2 per cent in both Scotland and Wales, and less than 1 per cent in Northern Ireland.

The non-White population of the UK is concentrated in the large urban centres. Nearly half (45 per cent) lived in the London region in 2001, where they comprised 29 per cent of all residents.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=457

@13. Trofim: “Speaking as someone who was 7 when post-WW2 rationing came to an end, . . .”

Do you have good teeth then?

Whenever I hear people blaming poverty I am reminded that a century ago most people were far far poorer but London didn’t burn. Indeed, there was an ethic of self-education and self-improvement which appears to have died. Gone are the days when the poor would club together and teach themselves Shakespeare. This is fundamentally a moral and attitude problem.

Disraeli writing in 1847: London is a modern Babylon (Tancred)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli

Disraeli, who became one of our more illustrious prime ministers, was the grandson of immigrants to Britain.

It’s a pity IMO that the Conservatives closed down the Primrose League in 2004. It was originally founded to commemorate his vision of a One Nation Britain.

“I reckon your blow off was wrong, Lee”

You’ve just, by your example, said the same thing I am, so I assume you think you’re wrong too?

@17. Charlieman: “Do you have good teeth then?”

Retraction: I should never attempted to crack a joke.

Britain has been multiracial for longer than many suppose.

“Francis Barber (ca. 1735 – 1801) was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson’s death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield in Staffordshire, Johnson’s native city. After Johnson’s death in 1784, Barber did this, opening a draper’s shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also left Johnson’s books and papers, and a gold watch. In later years he had acted as Johnson’s assistant in revising his famous Dictionary and other works.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber

Johnson hated slavery. In contrast to the legal banning of the Slave Trade in 1807, slavery in Britain and the Empire wasn’t finally abolished until 1833, the year Wilberforce died.

Mary Jane Seacole (1805 – 14 May 1881), sometimes known as Mother Seacole or Mary Grant, was a Jamaican nurse best known for her involvement in the Crimean War. She set up and operated boarding houses in Panama and the Crimea to assist in her desire to treat the sick. Seacole was taught herbal remedies and folk medicine by her mother, who kept a boarding house for disabled European soldiers and sailors. . . Seacole was honoured in her lifetime, alongside Florence Nightingale, but after her death she was forgotten for almost a century. Today, she is noted for her bravery and medical skills and as “a woman who succeeded despite the racial prejudice of influential sections of Victorian society”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

“Whenever I hear people blaming poverty I am reminded that a century ago most people were far far poorer”

Poverty is not the sole cause, no-one is saying it is. But the implication that people were poor in the past and didn’t riot (which is also bollocks, but we’ll skip that), does not mean that in this instance a sense of deprivation, along sideother factors, wasn’t a primary factor.

Remember, faster cars cause more deaths, but this doesn’t mean that all deaths are caused by fast cars, nor that all fast cars cause deaths.

“Consider the Birmingham murders. Looted and damaged small shops along the
London Road in Croydon, north of West Croydon station, are not high fashion and are almost all Asian owned. Those shops don’t have rich pickings”

You’re picking an incredibly small sample to prove what point exactly?

“But the implication that people were poor in the past and didn’t riot (which is also bollocks, but we’ll skip that),”

Did they riot and torch parts of London during the Edwardian period? I’m certainly not cretinous enough to think that the poor never rioted in the past, I was focussing on a particular era.

@23 Lee: “You’re picking an incredibly small sample to prove what point exactly?”

To show – as previously posted – that there is some evidence of Asians being targeted in the riots.

It’s entirely premature to set up a public inquiry now for it will take quite a while for the courts to deal with all those arrested and charged and there are outstanding cases of murder in Birminham, Croydon and Ealing to come to trial, as well as the major arson cases. We’ll only be able to make a calmer, analytical assessment of the causes of the riots after all that is done and settled. But I shall be interested to see what that assessment is.

I still think that one of the more potent causal factors is the low educational attainment of young blacks, compared with other ethnic minorities, and the implications that has for their employment prospects in legitimate jobs. Before the riots, young blacks were disproportionately the victims of violent crime – most often as the result of black-on-black crime, which the Trident Operation was set up to deal with in 1998.

Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, a think tank has claimed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm

Work that out and you’re almost there I’d say. A million immigrants have come and got jobs in the last decade. Could Mark Duggan have not got a job in B&Q or the now burned down Sony distribution centre? Are the personnel departments of these companies all racists or something?

“When I was angry with the world back then in my council flat, I used to play the Oasis song Bring It On Down at full volume and scream lyrics like: “You’re the outcast, your the underclass, but you don’t care because your living fast”. ”

That must be why Liam Gallagher’s poncy boutique was done.

So if this was down to poverty and equality, what are we to make of the fact that it’s stopped?

So if this was down to poverty and equality, what are we to make of the fact that it’s stopped?

I’m afraid that’s not a good enough counter-point. It stopped because the police flooded the streets, and the looters realised that the chances of paying for their looting had suddenly multiplied considerably.

@26: Quote: Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, a think tank has claimed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm

Yes, true – and try this from the Runnymede Trust for a reason why:

“There is clear evidence to link family life, peer pressure and anti-school culture to disproportionate levels of Black Caribbean exclusion from school. However in a document produced by the education department called ‘Getting it, Getting it right’ they failed to focus on what they called ‘out of school causes’, and instead took the easy route of blaming Institutional racism.”
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

The following post has been deleted – why is that?

@26: Quote: “Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, a think tank has claimed. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm

True – for a reason why, try this from the Runnymede Trust:

“There is clear evidence to link family life, peer pressure and anti-school culture to disproportionate levels of Black Caribbean exclusion from school. However in a document produced by the education department called ‘Getting it, Getting it right’ they failed to focus on what they called ‘out of school causes’, and instead took the easy route of blaming Institutional racism.”
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

“When I was angry with the world back then in my council flat, I used to play the Oasis song Bring It On Down at full volume and scream lyrics like: “You’re the outcast, your the underclass, but you don’t care because your living fast”.”

No one who sings Oasis or even listens to it can consider themselves working class or anything near poor. Oasis was for middle class chumps who liked to play at being a bit ‘ard.

For incomprehensible reasons, the following post has been deleted yet again – why is that?

@26: Quote: “Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, a think tank has claimed. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm

True – for a reason why, try this from the Runnymede Trust:

“There is clear evidence to link family life, peer pressure and anti-school culture to disproportionate levels of Black Caribbean exclusion from school. However in a document produced by the education department called ‘Getting it, Getting it right’ they failed to focus on what they called ‘out of school causes’, and instead took the easy route of blaming Institutional racism.”
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

As a consequence of the repeated deletions, I’ve just signed up to join the Runnymede Trust:

Runnymede is the UK’s leading independent race equality thinktank. We generate intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain through research, network building, leading debate, and policy engagement
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/

Isn’t there a danger in using the concept of poverty in such a ubiquitous way – a label that somehow explains everything and yet nothing.

Yesterday it was consumerism’s fault.
https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/08/11/were-the-riots-a-working-class-uprising-or-inspired-by-rampant-consumerism/

Today it’s poverty – aren’t we in danger of simply drawing up a list of bad things to rationalise an event that resulted in 6 deaths and millions of pounds wort of damage, and a pattern of crime that was described by some commentators as a new type of phenomena.

@33: “Isn’t there a danger in using the concept of poverty in such a ubiquitous way – a label that somehow explains everything and yet nothing. . . Today it’s poverty ”

It plainly isn’t just poverty. There was no rioting of any significance in Glasgow or the NE Region, places widely recognised to have relatively high deprivation. Many districts in the west of London had little or no rioting and some of those certainly aren’t affluent and have “multi-cultural” local populations. We need to look at the places which didn’t have rioting and look at their ethnic chemistry.

“Aquarter of 5-15 year olds in Richmond go to private school and only 12% are born into poverty. Compare that areas like Haringey and Hackney, where four out of ten children are born into poverty, rising to almost six out of ten if you catch a bus to Tower Hamlets.”

Correlation vs cause?

Isn’t is dangerous to talk about economic determinism: is it really poverty but in fact socio-economic factors including education and job prospect.

For amazing reasons, the following post has been deleted yet again – why is that?

@26: Quote: “Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, a think tank has claimed. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm

True – for a reason why, try this from the Runnymede Trust:

“There is clear evidence to link family life, peer pressure and anti-school culture to disproportionate levels of Black Caribbean exclusion from school. However in a document produced by the education department called ‘Getting it, Getting it right’ they failed to focus on what they called ‘out of school causes’, and instead took the easy route of blaming Institutional racism.”
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

Why is a particular message of mine, with a relevant quote from the Runnymede Trust think-tank, being repeatedly deleted?

The repeated deletions have prompted me to sign up to join the Runnymede Trust:

“Runnymede is the UK’s leading independent race equality thinktank. We generate intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain through research, network building, leading debate, and policy engagement”
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/

The quote which appears to be causing the offence can be read here:
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

Why are my messages with a quote from the Runnymede Trust being deleted?

On the indisputable evidence, the discussion here is being censored.

I think we ought to be told why.

I’m again reminded of the Party’s slogan in Oceania: Ignorance is Strength

Btw one of the early directors of the Runnymede Trust was a work colleague.

Apparently, my grave offence is to quote from this link at the Runnymede Trust – an independent think-tank committed to promoting racial equality:

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/econference/black-boys-are-more-than-a-racial-statistic.html

slavery in Britain and the Empire wasn’t finally abolished until 1833

Slavery was recognised as being unlawful in England and Wales in 1772.

@40: “Slavery was recognised as being unlawful in England and Wales in 1772.”

Thanks for the correction – but slavery wasn’t unlawful in the Empire until 1833.

In America, it took a civil war to abolish slavery and even then there was a legacy of civil rights issues.

Speaking of riots and punishments, we tend to forget about the old Riot Act, only repealed in 1973, when a local authority could declare an assembly of 12 or more illegal and call out troops to disperse the crowd. With the recent authorising of water canon and plastic bullets for crowd control, I suppose we are part way there again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act

As for punishments:

“Some thirty-five thousand people were condemned to death in England and Wales between 1770 and 1830, and seven thousand were ultimately executed, the majority convicted of crimes such as burglary, horse theft, or forgery. Mostly poor trades people, these terrified men and women would suffer excruciating death before large and excited crowds.”
VAC Gatrell: The Hanging Tree – Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (Oxford UP, 1996)

A public hanging was popular entertainment. Pleading deprivation as a defence in a trial in which hanging was a possible sentence on conviction was unlikely to have much effect on the outcome although, as we can see from the quote, in most cases the death peanlty was subsequently commuted, most likely to transportation to the colonies.

@ 22:

“Britain has been multiracial for longer than many suppose.”

Well, there have been the odd members of ethnic minorities living here, but I’m not sure the number was high enough to call Britain “multiracial”.

@37: Well, there have been the odd members of ethnic minorities living here, but I’m not sure the number was high enough to call Britain “multiracial”.

London was founded by the Romans c. 43 AD. There is good archeological evidence of trade between the port of London and the Mediterranean (wine and olive oil) and of graves with the remains of people most likely of North African origin.

At the first population census in 1801, London’s population was almost 1 million, which made it the largest global city at the time by far. London needed big and thriving docks – around where Canary Wharf now stands – to feed and supply its rapidly growing population so it wouldn’t be surprising if some sailors chose to hang around after their ship left. There were no immigation controls then. Disraeli’s grand parents came to settle here from Mediterranean countries and his comment in 1845 about London being a modern Babylon seems to have been a reflection on what he saw around him.

In the course of the 19th century, Britain’s population trebled.

As mentioned before, a few years ago archeologists dug out the foundations of a substantial Roman villa in the neighbourhood where I live. The place name is Saxon, as are most hereabouts, but the local parish church is part Norman. The local manor house nearby once belonged to a Norman family, who came over with William the Conqueror. Multicultural?

Try Olaudah Equiano, one of Wilberforce’s fellow campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano

38 – I think you’ll struggle to establish much of a racial difference between Anglo-Saxons and Normans. Plus, the actual number of Norman immigrants was surprisingly low.

For all the rhetoric of ‘mongrel nation’ and so on, the actual ethnic make-up of Britain has been remarkably stable until very recently. And even that’s rather overblown – at the last census, the UK was recorded as being over 90% ‘white British’.

@44: “For all the rhetoric of ‘mongrel nation’ and so on, the actual ethnic make-up of Britain has been remarkably stable until very recently. And even that’s rather overblown – at the last census, the UK was recorded as being over 90% ‘white British’.

The most interesting recent research on our origins is tracing genealogical links through DNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_genealogy

I’ve not digested the findings but try this:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2007/06/mythsofbritishancestryrevisited/

With the report in that BBC Newsnight programme from 2008 about London that 40% of London’s population was born abroad, London is very evidently hugely multicultural:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm

“Britain has been multiracial for longer than many suppose.”

Try this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Isles-Professor-Bryan-Sykes/dp/0593056523

From La Wik,

“The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line.”

40 – Last time we had this discussion on here, I linked to the story about Cheddar Man, whose direct descendant some 9,000 years later was a history teacher living five minutes away.

Bonus points for guessing who quoted Daniel Defoe as if it were a knockdown historical argument.

41–Hey man, you won’t confuse me with your fancy scientific arguments.

There’s absolutely nothing new about having (London) MPs who belong to ethnic minorities:

Dadabhai Naoroji (4 September 1825 – 30 June 1917) was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons between 1892 and 1895. Elected for the Liberal Party in Finsbury Central at the 1892 general election, he was the first British Indian MP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadabhai_Naoroji

Shapurji Saklatvala (28 March 1874 – 16 January 1936) was a British politician of Indian Parsi heritage. He was the third Indian Member of Parliament (MP) in the Parliament of the United Kingdom after fellow Parsis Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Bhownagree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala

Ancient mitrochrondrial DNA in the female line is pretty easy to explain. Invaders kill the men and breed with the captured females. That is why most DNA in southern and eastern England is closely related to the DNA of Germans and Danes. The female DNA is more ancient.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,768706,00.html

Well, if there’s one thing we can all agree for sure from recent events…

What young people of today need more than anything is… money

Er…

No, I’ve been working for 17 years in a legal charity in Hackney and it seems to me that poverty and inequality are A1 causes. Furthermore, I’m surprised that it happened so quickly, before the cuts really kick in.

As far as I can put my finger on it this would be abolition of EMA, although I think there were 1,000 causes. In a place like Hackney, EMA means kids from poor families trying to get qualified will be less able to do so. Even the so called thick kid who will never get anywhere and knows it dies a little inside, becomes more desperate.

Sorry, I’ve seen plenty of criminals but I believe that cutting education projects causes less economic activity and more criminality.