I concluded that the solution was specific and quite different from conventional policy. We had to be prepared to intervene literally family by family and at an early stage, even before any criminality had occurred.

Ah, who could forget the peak of NL’s authoritarianism; the brief flirtation with eugenics.

What was it he said? “We can identify them before they’re born”.

Something along those lines, twat.

I have read the article.
Tony Blair is desperate for his legacy, for his place in history. He has it.
Together with his Cabinets of mediocrity he buried the Labour party.
My great grandparents worked enthusiastically to elect Keir Hardie to parliament and as a family we have been Labour Party members and voters ever since.
We had all resigned by 1998 and will never vote for any sort of Labour Party ever again.
They stand for authoritarianism, fascist economics, lies, deceit and overwhelming greed and self interest.
Many of those responsible are still in Westminster, some elevated to the peerage as a reward for their chronic incompetence and corruption.
No government is capable of unravelling the multi layered problems of today’s society. Action required to create a more equal society would be in direct contradiction to the self interest of politicians and their familiars in the City.
If there is change, it will be a bloody affair.

“…before all of that, Milibandian Labour needs to recognise, and reflect upon, some very straightforward truths about what New Labour got wrong.”

New Labours’ ultimate mistake was allowing Tony Blair to play president. They forgot that politics is a team game. As TB says himself

“By the end of my time as prime minister, I concluded that the solution…”

and I am sure he did. If one mans feelings tend to be turned into policy, it’s no surprise when there is a noticeable drift towards the right. Best thing Labour can do now to get away from Blairs’ `Labour’ is to build a strong cabinet without any of the yes-men that have become such a familiar sight in the Labour ranks.

‘Relatively few people actually seem to have bothered to digest what he actually says. ‘

Hard to digest anything when Blair makes you puke your ring up.

Hard to disagree with your article till you get to this:

a part of the solution MUST be to recognise that the problems we face today were caused by deliberate government action is the 1960s and 1970s, and that only be taking responsibility for these mistakes will any future Labour government be in a position to give a whole generation of disaffected young people a fresh stake in mainstream society.

You haven’t specified which policies from the 60s & 70s so haven’t said anything here Thatcher or Starkey could disagree with.

The issues are deep, the problems intractable, and there is no silver bullet, though I have suggested here that a part of the solution MUST be to recognise that the problems we face today were caused by deliberate government action is the 1960s and 1970s, and that only be taking responsibility for these mistakes will any future Labour government be in a position to give a whole generation of disaffected young people a fresh stake in mainstream society.

And which “deliberate government action is the 1960s and 1970s” are you refering to exactly? I don’t recall governments of that era vastly increasing the gulf between rich and poor, abandoning full employment and throwing the bottom 20% of society to the wolves. If memory serves me, that was done by deliberate government actions from the 1980s to the 2000s!

My problem with Cameron’s diagnosis of the cause of the riots – Broken Britain, moral decline – is that it yields no symptomatic clues as to when Britain wasn’t broken or in a state of moral decline. Just when was that wonderful era? Before brown envelopes for PQs, the monetarism of the 1980s and the winter of discontent in the 1970s, I assume.

The trouble with Blair’s diagnosis of a disaffected youth outside the mainstream is that it does ignor evidence of a wider and deeper mailaise:

- the bankers’ bonuses and mis-selling
- teen records by European standards in binge drinking and pregnancies
- the increasing mortality rate from alcohol abuse
- half the babies being born to unmarried couples along with half of marriages ending in divorce
- the UN survey reporting a higher incidence of violence in Britain than in other developed countries

Would early intervention in familes have curbed bankers’ bonuses and all that mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance?

We need better analysis and a better diagnosis IMO.

Hmm. You might want to rethink that ‘blame it on the 60s’ comment, makes you sound a little bit like Norman Tebbit.

There was an interesting article in the Grauniad about gangs in the 19th century and a theory about what solved the problem

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/21/manchesters-original-gangsters

I’m not sure why Blair thinks the momentum was lot on his pet theory. The whole early ‘social exclusion’ agenda, in particular regarding Sure Start, was based on an imported theory from the US that a child’s fate was more or less established by the age of 3 or 4 so intervention had to occur before then. This has been developed further by Graham Allen MP and his ‘Early Intervention’ strategy which as far as I know kept its momentum throughout Labour and has been picked up by the Tories, where cuts allow. I’m not sure how scientific all this really is.

The issue is that all this policy focuses on the individual and her/his close environment while avoiding the wider political and economic structural problems, for obvious reasons.

@7: “You might want to rethink that ‘blame it on the 60s’ comment, makes you sound a little bit like Norman Tebbit.”

I’ve previously posted in another thread that almost all the new wave literature and drama was published or first performed in the 1950s and the acquital in a jury trial of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which virtually ended literary censorship of obscene publications, was in 1960 with a Conservative government firmly in power through to October 1964.

Norman tebbit blamed the 60′s but wouldn’t accept poverty was to blame for crime doublinjg in the 80′s, tony Blair built his career on proving that Tebbit waswrong with the james bulger murder as proof that crime was due to poverry,
Blair admts it was wtong to demonise the underclass, fair enough, but We shouldn’t dismiss nr labour for saying that cirme doubled in the 80′s due to poverty just becuase these riots were oppurtunism nothngto do with poverty or the cuts now, just due to do with people making out they’re victims ,when they were just out for themsevles staeling T.V.s

As remarked in another thread before, there were no riots in Glasgow or the NE region, both of which have had long and deep historic problems of deprivation. Nor were there riots in Beaconsfield or Aylesbury – for other reasons. I don’t think Blair gets anywhere near diagnosing the roots of our social malaise.

I’ll go along with long-standing empirical reasearch that crime runs in families: “Crime really does run in the family, according to the findings of a 35-year-long study.” – from: Independent of 27 February 1996

But early intervention carries grave risks of both typecasting individuals regardless and of applying thoroughly dubious methods of intervention. I think we need to see evidence of early intervention, what it amounts to and how effective it has proved to be.

To those asking (quite rightly) about what I mean when I refer to ““deliberate government action is the 1960s and 1970s”, a word of explanation:

This was posted at my own site (Though Cowards Flinch) and I really didn’t expect it to be cross-posted – not normally the kind of stuff Sunny goes for. I was writing therefore for a regular readership, many of whom will recognise this as a reference (though I should have hyperlinked it in the original) to a fairly lengthy article/essay from a couple of months ago about the long-term legacy of Labour’s racist housing and employment policie in the 60′s and 70′s (there were of course Tory influences here but that is not my main concern either in that article or here).

The essay, should people wish to look, is at http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/06/01/labour-beyond-glasman-racism-truth-reconciliation/ and takes as its hook the prejudices and crude historical analysis in the key Blue Labour work to date (Politics of Paradox).

Sorry for any confusion

” the problems intractable, ”

Other nearby democracies seem to manage without riots exploding on the streets.
Enoch was right.

Paul,

Some rather strange statements in that article. For instance, this claim:

“recent immigration has been largely from Eastern Europe”

Is quite false. A8 net migration represents at its peak 1/4 of the total net flow per year for only three years in the mid 2000s. And at the year end 07, it sharply declined, going negative in September 09.

The net migration and gross migration flows are dominated by non-EU migration, and have been for at least the last decade. You can verify this by checking the publicly available time series summarised in this ONS bulletin:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mig0511.pdf

12. Observer

Other nearby democracies seem to manage without riots exploding on the streets.
Enoch was right.

“In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

No he was clearly wrong, although I’m sure you wish he was right so you could have a legitimate reason for the victimhood complexes your kind has.

Now run along back to the BNP site where you can blame all the country’s problems on the darkies with like-minded morons like yourself.

@12: “Other nearby democracies seem to manage without riots exploding on the streets.”

Compare:

“France braces for riots as protests turn violent”
Independent: 19 October 2010

“France vows to restore order after rioting in Grenoble”
BBC: 17 July 2010

“Three nights of riots in French town after 21-year-old dies in police custody”
Guardian: 10 July 2009

Amsterdam Riots continue for Sixth Day
Layhawk Blog: 21 October 2007

Arab racist sparked riot in Antwerp, say Belgians
Telegraph: 29 November 2002

Try Wikipedia on Race Riots for an extensive listing

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

This bit was quite accurate, though.

@12

Other nearby democracies seem to manage without riots exploding on the streets.
Enoch was right.

Like Greece you mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Greek_protests

Of course most of our nearby democracies didn’t have Thatcherism, and so don’t have the extreme social inequality and rampant materialism that we decided to adopt.

What Labour did was give the police carte blanch to be cunts again. Heard the one about the 333 dead in custody and not one of them standing trial. Well. here’s another 11 that came to join in the fun

http://t.co/8Ky9goY

Of course there were also riots in:

Liverpool (91.0% White, 3% Asian, 1.9% Black, according to ONS),
Bristol (86.5% White, 5.2% Asian, 3.4% Black),
Manchester (81.0% White, 9.1% Asian, 4.5% Black)

Whereas in Leicester (61.3% White, 29.6% Asian, 4.9% Black) there were no riots.

So clearly the “it was the darkies wot did it” line quickly falls apart under the most basic scrutiny.

@17: “Of course most of our nearby democracies didn’t have Thatcherism, and so don’t have the extreme social inequality and rampant materialism that we decided to adopt.”

I’m not predisposed to exonerate Thatcherism but race riots in Britain pre-date Mrs Thatcher by decades:

“The Notting Hill race riots were a series of racially-motivated riots that took place in London, England over several nights in late August and early September 1958.” Source: Wikipedia: 1958 Notting Hill Race Riots

And I suggest checking out: List of Race Riots: Wikipedia before claiming that Britain is unusual in experiencing riots.

@19: “So clearly the ‘it was the darkies wot did it’ line quickly falls apart under the most basic scrutiny.”

There were no riots in Glasgow or the NE Region but there was intensive rioting in Tottenham and Croydon. Few are suggesting that all the rioters had identical motives or have the same ethnic roots. There was plainly some opportunistic llooting going on. Tragically, five people were killed and dozens were made homeless, often losing all or most of their belongings.

Try this analysis of the rioting by Andrew Gilligan: London riots were orchestrated by outsiders
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8713298/London-riots-were-orchestrated-by-outsiders.html

@20

What makes you (and others) think these were race riots? Or for that matter had much at all to do with race?

Why is this irrelevance even being debated outside the usual far-right circles?

What he said about the anti-social/criminal behaviour being set by primary school/nursery is actually true. It’s a well researched claim that can be found in a variety of policy documents on Early Years Education to be found on the Department Of Education’s website right now.

Whether that known effect of poor parenting/disruptive upbringing can be applied to all or most of the rioters is pure speculation though.

18 of the 333 deaths in police custody only 11 were unlawful, and some Like CHris adler there was no prosecution as they’ couldn’t decide which one individual officer was repsonsible, remember teh Corporate amnslaught erlaw, amybe that will apply to police in future, even if someone dies in custody and an officer has deemed to acted unlawfully,thenit’s not always going to be a manslaughter charge that follows

18 the daily mail link you give says it was the bloke who died who called the police for assistance, the same thing happened to me with my female neighbour last night, the diffrence was she didnt die

@18

Can you imagine the sort of confidence they must have in their immunity to act like that.

26 I don’t know I heard that after Ian Tomlinson teh polce were t afraid to arrest people incase it kicked off and they were accused of assault,a the end of the day ther’s no law for a police offcer to demand someone to move on their way, you can either ask them to move or nick them, I klnow A P.C who was told by his Boss to ask someoen to move along, my mate asked the bloke who refused so he went back to his boss sadi asked him and he refused, I couldn’t see the point of arresting him so the person just blocked the traffic in the road that day,
I’m also reminded of the view P.C said after there being to many deaths in custody, well don’t arrest people who look like they’ll put up a fight or look ill.

By my back of the envelope calculations there are approx. 800,000 deaths per year in the UK and a mere 500 homicide convictions. Evidence of an even deeper conspiracy, no doubt…

As for whether or not these were “race riots”, one common explanation is that they were a reaction, at least initially, against police racism in general and the disproportionate use of stop and search against young black people in particular.

@ 28:

They might have started that way, but I’d be shocked if the majority (or even a significant minority) of the protestors were motivated by outrage at police racism. The riots were no more about race than the First World War was about Austrian-Serbian territorial disputes.

Stealing trainers certainly seems like a strange way to protest against, well, anything, but I was simply pointing out the contradiction: on the one hand, liberals like to say, oh it was because of police racism; on the other hand, that there was no racial component to the riots.

I view this as a generic, perhaps even subconscious, tactical move to prevent anyone coming to any holistic understanding of the riots whatsoever. If A is wrong, and if not A is also wrong, then that exhausts the sum total of possible explanations. You’d be better off just not thinking about it, and anyway, didn’t you know this thing has always happened in the UK, and anyway, even if it hasn’t, it wasn’t so bad, and anyway, even if it was, we deserved it.

@27

It’s going to take me a while to trawl through all your well sourced facts.

It’s what Newer labour thinks as well, does anyone really think if Labour gets back in it will be any different for god sake, Miliband has nothing to offer he bloody useless

“In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

I’m sure specialist services like this can be found on the internet.

@22: “What makes you (and others) think these were race riots? Or for that matter had much at all to do with race?”

The rioting started in Tottenham, north London, following the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police.

By consensus, Croydon, in south London, was the most damaged by the rioting and arson and one young man – a young black man – was shot dead during the course of the riots while the victim was sat in his car. By reports, there have been arrests for the murder. There is evidence of rioters being bused in and organised – see the analysis by Andrew Gilligan in the link @21 and this amateur video:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8704461/Man-dragged-off-scooter-by-mob-in-Croydon-riot.html

The shops along the road shown at the start of that video of rioting near Croydon West railway station are mostly owned by Asians. Croydon is afflicted by gangs. The town centre is well covered by CCTV cameras.

There were no riots in Glasgow or the NE Region, two places with long histories of embedded deprivation – despite Glasgow having a long history of gangs, gang warfare and sectarian violence – hence the ice-cream wars of the 1980s and recent attacks on Celtic Football Club personnel. For all that, no rioting in the recent wave.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that there was no looting in Leicester, as reported @19, because the ethnic minority migrants and their siblings settled in Leicester are mostly Asian – who tend to have extended families rather than one-parent families. Many businesses there are Asian owned. There was no social chemistry conducive to rioting.

See Wikipedia on: Lists of UK locations with large ethnic minority populations
For some reason, there are no data shown for Tottenham.

There was a 70 year old man charged the other day. I blame Churchill.

What Tony Blair’s views on riots says about New Labour | Liberal Conspiracy – superb page to take a note of