The other point is that the riots were multi-layered, so there ARE quite possibly two entirely separate explanations. Were the people who torched the Reeves Furniture Store and threw bottles at the police, the same people who grabbed a £3.50 case of bottled water from Aldi or grabbed a plasma TV? You’d think that those with a primary motive of trying to get their hands on a new set of trainers would not be those who were trying to set the place on fire. So it’s quite possible that we have two different strands of people here – one that was so angry and disillusioned that they wanted to smash the place up, along with another who spotted an opportunity to grab some merchandise whilst PC Plod was occupied elsewhere. Are they the same type of people for the same type of reasons? Probably not, so there may be two entirely contradictory reasons – on that basis you probably need two separate polls “What were the motives of the rioters?” and “What were the motives of the looters?”

The same ignorant things were said in the aftermath of the 1981 St Paul’s and Toxteth riots. Plus ca change.

But Cameron, the PM, has already told us what caused the riots: criminals who riot because of Broken Britain and Britain’s moral decline.

It’s simple. Any fool can understand that.

What I’d like to know is why there was no rioting and looting in Glasgow, Leicester or the NE region – or in Beaconsfield, Henley and Aylesbury.

Your poll is crap. The very first question advances two propositions rolled into one. Personally, I think greed was a significant factor (the greed of the looters, not the greed of ‘bankers’) but I doubt that the status conferred by trainers was important because a lot of the stuff that was looted had zero status (booze, fags, phone chargers, etc) – so why do you enmesh the two in a single question?

As for the weighting by left and right, this is interesting only insofar as it illuminates the difference in attitudes between such self-identifiers. As a guide to public attitudes it is meaningless, as it your poll.

What the public thinks motivated the rioters is less interesting than what actually did motive the rioters. Plus I’d be inclined to think that you have to treat the motivations behind the first riot as a separate case to the riots on following nights. Lumping them all together leads to lazy analysis. Because Mark Dugan’s killing would have had a lot of bearing on the Tottenham riot, and possibly on the immediate follow ups in London, but would have had nowt to do with the Birmingham and Manchester riots.

Opinion about the riots based on what? Isn’t this an example of the contemporary problem of everyone having an opinion despite being totally ignorant of any facts?

I have read plenty of blogs in which the causes of the riots were merrily shoehorned to fit the beliefs or prejudices of the blogger. I have seen precious little proper research into the causes. I’d love to see a posting from someone who has conducted some. The best I have come across so far was http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013835n.

Guess what? Mostly there are no gangs, just groups of contemporaries from the neighborhood who hang out together. Other issues follow from the environment they find themselves in, but there seem to be few hard and fast rules: As usual, people are complex.

3. Bob B

“But Cameron, the PM, has already told us what caused the riots: criminals who riot because of Broken Britain and Britain’s moral decline.

It’s simple. Any fool can understand that.

What I’d like to know is why there was no rioting and looting in Glasgow, Leicester or the NE region – or in Beaconsfield, Henley and Aylesbury.”

Little to no black people? You’ve already openly admitted your anti-black racism during the riots and said this before, so don’t be weasel and hint at it just come out and say it.

James,

I’m not really clear why any of this matters?

Surely if you ask poorly informed people the wrong question and you’ll get a fairly useless answer?

The point must, surely, be to understand what caused the riots, and not what people who reply to pollsters think caused them. Or perhaps, more interestingly, what the riots were a symptom of?

I suppose public opinion on that question would make an interesting sidebar to that question, but the most important opinions, as far as this question is concerned, must surely be those of the people who took part in the riots? It’s the actor’s question: What was their motivation?

@ 6 Cherub

“Opinion about the riots based on what? Isn’t this an example of the contemporary problem of everyone having an opinion despite being totally ignorant of any facts.”

Interesting point, that. And we’re all at it. While pretty much everyone agrees that the rioting should be condemned, there’s any number of left-wing sources blaming capitalist culture and saying we need to address this by improving social equality, and any number of right-wing sources blaming The Decline Of Morality Among Youth Today and calling for tougher sentencing and national service.

The problem here is that people were given certain questions and not others. The one about greed specifically referred to consumer goods, but I also think that there is a broader issue of greed which people with whom I have discussed the riots have found convincing.

When well-paid MPs feel that they have the right to claim excessive expenses and fiddle them if they can, when bankers lose billions and have to get bailed out by the state and still demand huge bonuses, what example does this give other than the rich and powerful can be greedy and get away with it?

There are other factors that people find convincing.

For example, when the Murdoch press empire feels that it could systematically break the law by tapping telephones and get into corrupt relations with politicians and MPs, what example does this give other than you can break the law and expect to get away with it? (A corollory of this is, of course, try not to get caught, which in the rioters’ case would translate into ‘wear a mask or hoodie’.)

The poll talked about the rioters not having a sense of responsibility and not needing to work for things, but this did not key into the above examples of greedy MPs and bankers, and the way that the ethos of these corrupt, irresponsible and greedy people has seeped down into society.

Polls will give you the answers to the questions posed, but there are often other questions that need to be asked.

There’s a massive difference between the rioting and looting which went on.

The rioters were criminal? Is that what waiting for four hours for a police officer to speak to the family is called? The poll’s a nonsense.

@ 10 Dr Paul

“For example, when the Murdoch press empire feels that it could systematically break the law by tapping telephones and get into corrupt relations with politicians and MPs, what example does this give other than you can break the law and expect to get away with it?”

I agree that there’s something amusing about watching MPs who exploited their expenses and newspapers that that broke the law to spy into people’s private lives getting on their high horse about the greed and irresponsbility of the rioters. But these are ultimately separate events. I don’t think any of the looters went out thinking “I can steal trainers and get away with it just like those MPs”.

Re Chaise G: It’s not a case of someone sitting in Tottenham thinking that MPs are on the fiddle and then going out an half-inching a pair of trainers or a telly from the high street shops; rather it’s a much more mediated process whereby a broad atmosphere arises in which news of MPs’ guzzling expenses or outrightly fiddling them, or the Murdoch press getting telephones tapped, or the hoo-ha over bankers’ bonuses seeps down into society. There is an ethos of irresponsibility, greed, corruption and outright criminality that is adhered to in rich and powerful circles — although they would deny it — and it oozes down like slime down a derelict wall into all walks of life. No doubt few of those nicking trainers and tellies read newspapers or avidly watch the news, but the zeitgeist can reach them indirectly and infect them all the same.

2 I’ve always argue that Thathcer was wrong to say that crime DIDN’T rise in the 80′s due to Poverty tripling, and the fact that Ken clarke said crime fell in the mid 90′s not due to Michael Howards Prison works ,but the fact that his handling of the economy mean there was low unemployment ,proved thahtcer Wrong, Similar Boris Johnson saying that teh reason crime has risen more in outer london than inner london, Isn’t due to him cutting Police in Outer london and emplying them in inner London, But due to the poverty from the Credit crisis,

From a hisotirical view, I alway felt the view that the Toxteth riots of 81′etc were casued by sheer criminality were wrong( I say that as i was to young to recall them at the time), So it’s only a guess, but seeing the recent riots I feel tehy were caused by criminality ,not povertry, so I couldn’t say for sure whether the 81′ riots were caused by poverty and not criminality ,afterall.

What caused the Riot/Demonstration earlier this year outside and inside Conservative HQ ?

What caused the demonstration/riot in central London later in the year ?

What caused the recent Riots that spread like wild fire to other parts of the country ?

Do you think that there is a pattern emerging here ?

Maybe the pollsters questions were not thorough enough but thats open to argument. In addition to this, no one has done an in depth questionaire for the rioters to answer.

David Cameron would point the finger at criminality because crimes were committed but the real truth for him would be hard to swallow because the worst riots in British History have happened whilst he has been PrimeMinister for fifteen short months. I dont suppose that is a BIG clue !

@7: “You’ve already openly admitted your anti-black racism during the riots and said this before, so don’t be weasel and hint at it just come out and say it.”

More personal abuse masquerading as a contribution to the debate?

Any dispassionate analysis of the geographical distribution of the riots needs to explain how the rioting, which started in Tottenham in north London, moved on to Croydon in south London, about 15 or so miles away, where, by police accounts, rioters were bused in.

Reportedly, Croydon suffered the greatest losses from arson and looting. One young black man was killed there – he was shot in the head while sat in a car. By the news, there have been arrests for the murder. Btw the centre of Croydon is well covered by CCTV cameras and we have this amateur video of rioting near West Croydon railway station – most of the shops around there are Asian owned:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8704461/Man-dragged-off-scooter-by-mob-in-Croydon-riot.html

Many localities in London experienced little or no rioting and looting – such as Tooting. And we do need to figure out why there was no rioting in Glasgow and the NE Region, places with long histories of deprivation, or Leicester, where near on half the population belongs to ethnic minorities.

Why is this analysis “racist”?

@3

“But Cameron, the PM, has already told us what caused the riots: criminals who riot because of Broken Britain and Britain’s moral decline”

Moral decline, “Broken Britain”. Mate, you’re a walking talking cliché.

“It’s simple. Any fool can understand that”.

Au contraire, only those looking for easy answers would say that. The trouble with some folk is that they seek easy solutions to complicated problems. Life and society aren’t as simple as that.

“What I’d like to know is why there was no rioting and looting in Glasgow, Leicester or the NE region – or in Beaconsfield, Henley and Aylesbury”

Henley? Beaconsfield? Are you having a laugh?

@16
“Why is this analysis “racist””?

It’s simplistic. Are you cognizant of the ‘ethnic’ composition of the rioters or are you uploading your info from the Telegraph and the Daily Mail? Well, I see that you’ve posted up a link from the Torygraph, so I think the answer to that question is “yes”.

@17: “Are you having a laugh?”

For reasons often posted, IMO Cameron’s analysis of the riot is plainly infantile and silly.

I’d like to know when it was that Britain wasn’t “broken” and in moral decline. As for the riots being caused by “criminals who riot”, that is an empty tautology

@18: “Are you cognizant of the ‘ethnic’ composition of the rioters or are you uploading your info from the Telegraph and the Daily Mail?”

I’m more dependent on what I read online – my regular paper is the FT. We need to fathom out why the rioting occurred in a few particular places – as mentioned @16 – although not others.

Those questions stand regardless of the Mail and Telegraph. Analysis of those arrested rioting or looting and brought to court has shown that some travelled long distances to get to where they were arrested. There are some reports of expensive cars being used to take away loot so I doubt that the rioters can be lumped into one simple category.

However, it does seem significant to me that the rioting tended to be concentrated in a few particular places in London, Birmingham and Manchester while Glasgow, the NE region and Leicester were left unscathed, along with rural areas. I suspect the footage from Croydon’s CCTV cameras could be informative along with the police reports of rioters being bused in there. Croydon has had a long-standing problem with gangs – there are videos on YouTube.

@19 If you really need to ask why rural areas didn’t suffer from riots then there is little point in attempting to educate you.

@20: “@19 If you really need to ask why rural areas didn’t suffer from riots then there is little point in attempting to educate you.”

Predictably, more ad hominem abuse but without analysis or informative links.

By the 2001 Census, verging on half of the ethnic minorities in Britain live in London.

By that 2008 BBC Newsnight programme on London, 40% of London residents were born abroad.

My guess is that those were factors in the riots. Check out this new ONS report on the 2001 Census:
http://mighealth.net/uk/index.php/Statistics_on_Current_Populations_and_Social_and_Demographic_features

@21 The word you’re looking for in regards to the lack of rioting in rural areas begins with an N and ends in umbers. It is really that simple, which is why anyone bothering to ask why there were no riots in Stalmine or similar can also be considered such.

@22: “@21 The word you’re looking for in regards to the lack of rioting in rural areas begins with an N and ends in umbers. It is really that simple, which is why anyone bothering to ask why there were no riots in Stalmine or similar can also be considered such.”

Yeah – the number of ethnic minority settlers in small towns like Beaconsfield, Henley, and Aylesbuty as percentages of local populations is very small – unlike London boroughs such as Tottenham and Croydon. But that only leads us back to why no rioting in Glasgow and the NE Region, places with long histories of deprivation, or in Leicester, where near on half the population belongs to ethnic minorities?

“But that only leads us back to why no rioting in Glasgow and the NE Region, places with long histories of deprivation, or in Leicester …” @23

Sounds like a reasonable question, Bob.

Why are many here trying so hard to dodge it?

@19
“For reasons often posted, IMO Cameron’s analysis of the riot is plainly infantile and silly.

I’d like to know when it was that Britain wasn’t “broken” and in moral decline. As for the riots being caused by “criminals who riot”, that is an empty tautology”

You seem confused. First you tell us that “Cameron’s analysis of the riot is plainly infantile and silly”, then you repeat the “Broken Britain and moral decline” canard. if you look back over history, the “moral decline” excuse has been used as a response to social changes and media-instigated moral panics. As for “Broken Britain” that was concocted by Policy Exchange and others in an effort to convince the public to demand their own oppression/repression.

“I’m more dependent on what I read online – my regular paper is the FT. We need to fathom out why the rioting occurred in a few particular places – as mentioned @16 – although not others”

So you read everything from that source and accept it as fait accompli? You would benefit from developing some critical thinking skills. it seems to me that you’re not really interested in understanding the riots beyond the “Broken Britain” and moral decline narratives.

“However, it does seem significant to me that the rioting tended to be concentrated in a few particular places in London, Birmingham and Manchester while Glasgow, the NE region and Leicester were left unscathed, along with rural areas”.

Red herrings. Furthermore, you wouldn’t expect riots to take place in rural areas.

@21

“By that 2008 BBC Newsnight programme on London, 40% of London residents were born abroad”

Er, meaning what exactly? How is this relevant to the discussion? Are you trying to tell us something? Whatever it is, it looks like a hidden discourse.

@24: “Why are many here trying so hard to dodge it?”

The question is perhaps especially challenging since Glasgow has a long history of gangs and gang warfare – the razor gangs of the 1930s and then the homicidal ice-cream wars of the 1980s – and Glasgow was the recent location for violent sectarian strife targeted on the Celtic Football Club.

The NE region has a history of political corruption – remember the Poulson scandal of the early 1970s?

But neither had rioting in August in spite of their long respective histories of deprivation and relatively high unemployment rates.

@26: “Er, meaning what exactly? How is this relevant to the discussion? Are you trying to tell us something? Whatever it is, it looks like a hidden discourse.”

Try watching the BBC Newsnight programme on London:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm

Social cohesion becomes challenging in a place as large as London when 40% of the resident population was born abroad and over 200 languages are in everyday use.

Rioting and looting is indeed a criminal act but it’s premature to assert that it was criminal intent which was responsible for the riots. No doubt there was an element of criminal intent but it would be interesting to find out how many rioters and looters who are charged had any previous convictions or cautions.
IMO, looking at the race/ethnicity of the population without addressing ‘class’ will tell us very little.

Yeah – the number of ethnic minority settlers in small towns like Beaconsfield, Henley, and Aylesbuty as percentages of local populations is very small – unlike London boroughs such as Tottenham and Croydon.

I actually just meant numbers of people in general, but cheers for making your racism blatant!

@30: “I actually just meant numbers of people in general, but cheers for making your racism blatant!”

Just what is “blatantly” racist in looking at the ethnic mix of districts – when the official population Census of 2001 did just that – and seeing if that mix links with the incidence of August riots. That is a very obvious issue for social analysis.

As repeatedly mentioned, Leicester has a near on majority of ethnic minorities in its population and there were no riots there. I’m looking for explanations as to why rioting which started in Tottenham, in north London, moved on to Croydon, in south London, about 15 miles away.

When I focus on that, I’m called “racist” – which looks as though some find the question very embarrassing.

@28

“Try watching the BBC Newsnight programme on London:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm”

That’ll be the same Newsnight that made an arse of itself by inviting the likes of MacKenzie and Starkey on to give us their ‘expert’ opinions? Please.

“Social cohesion becomes challenging in a place as large as London when 40% of the resident population was born abroad and over 200 languages are in everyday use”

I think you need to come clean. There is a discourse here that you are trying hard to conceal but which you aren’t being entirely forthright about. What do you mean by “social cohesion” anyway? Do you mean it in the Douglas Murray sense or what?

@31

“When I focus on that, I’m called “racist” – which looks as though some find the question very embarrassing”

You’re playing the victim too. Perhaps it’s because you repeat/regurgitate the same language as a certain organisation or party perhaps? Here’s an example

“Social cohesion becomes challenging in a place as large as London when 40% of the resident population was born abroad and over 200 languages are in everyday use”

I don’t think there’s much unpacking to be done here. It’s pretty obvious where this comes from.

I’m looking for explanations as to why rioting which started in Tottenham, in north London, moved on to Croydon, in south London, about 15 miles away.

Presumably because Croydon also falls under the Met’s jurisdiction, and at the time stories of Mark Dugan begin pulled out of a cab and roadside executed by a shot to the face, and of a sixteen year old girl being beaten the shit out of by riot coppers at the peaceful vigil for Mark. (It’s no good saying “AH! But those stories were exaggerated!” Since those rioting didn’t know that at the time, given their already low opinion of the fuzz they didn’t regard each incident as being out of character for the Met.)

Add warm weather and repeated demonstrations as to the limits of the police to prevent lawbreaking and you have the perfect recipe for those with an axe to grind against coppers/society to copycat. As to why Scotland and Wales managed to escape riots, well, perhaps conditions there were not conductive to rioting. Think ‘Fire-Triangle’.

Moving slightly OT, I can’t rembember the poll tax riots of the 1990s being depicted as a sign of ‘broken Britain’. I don’t reacall Beaconsfield being an area associated with the riots but certainly Windsor and Maidenhead were.
I wonder why the difference in semantics? btw, that’s a rhetorical question.

Maybe those areas/cities that experienced the demonstrations/riots were more effected by David Cameron’s policies then people realise.

The shooting of one man was the spark that ignited these demonstrations/riots that brought peoples anger to the surface.

Why was it that earlier this year there was a demonstration/riot inside and outside of Conservative HQ ?

Why was it later in the year we experienced another demonstration/riot in Central London ?

Why was it that we experienced another riot/demonstration the worst in British history under David Camerons short fifteen months as priminister ?

It would appear that people have become angry under David Camerons short time in Government and people without a voice that are not listened to Demonstrate/riot to express how unhappy they are and to be heard.

I think that it is highly probable that the areas/cities that experienced the riots were the areas that people are really suffering.

@32: “That’ll be the same Newsnight that made an arse of itself by inviting the likes of MacKenzie and Starkey on to give us their ‘expert’ opinions? Please.”

Please, try hard not to be entirely silly and naive.

I’ve not got TV so I didn’t watch the programme but I’ll bet the whole point was to give Starkey an airing knowing full-well that he would be “controversial” because he is predictably controversial about any subject as that guarantees repeat business for him.

The BBC Newsnight programme on London went out in 2008 with Mark Easton reporting – and he is hardly renown for Conservative views.

You are manifestly incapable of dealing with analysis on its merits without engaging in ad hominem abuse as though that settles the issues in discussion.

@32: “What do you mean by ‘social cohesion’ anyway? Do you mean it in the Douglas Murray sense or what?”

Who is Douglas Murray? What does social cohesion mean? Convergence of social values with an expectation that others very likely share many of the same values and will behave accordingly.

Part of it is trust – as Francis Fukuyama puts it: “people who do not trust one another will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated and enforced, sometimes by coercive means. . . .Widespread distrust in a society . . . imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay.” [Francis Fukuyama: Trust (Penguin Books, 1996). p. 27]

A connected issue is how come Britain pioneered industrialisation – and built an empire making Britain the superpower of the 19th century?

@ 36:

“Maybe those areas/cities that experienced the demonstrations/riots were more effected by David Cameron’s policies then people realise.”

Or maybe the riots weren’t David Cameron’s fault.

@34: “Presumably because Croydon also falls under the Met’s jurisdiction”

All London boroughs come under the Met’s jurisdiction but many had little or no rioting in August – such as Tooting – while others, such as Tottenham in north London and Croydon in south London, some 15 miles apart, were badly affected with dozens of people made homeless by arson attacks.

I’m simply asking why were some boroughs badly affected by rioting, looting and arson while others were hardly affected, if at all. Why on earth that question is deemed a “racist” question is beyond me. As best I can tell, some find the question deeply embarrassing – and that is very revealing.

@34 etc., With respect to Mark Duggan, I feel that we ought at least to get his name right. It is Duggan, double “g”.

As it happens, Mr Duggan was the nephew of one of Britain’s most famous gangsters. Coincidence?

@40 I was copying it from the OP

@36: “I think that it is highly probable that the areas/cities that experienced the riots were the areas that people are really suffering.”

Not so. There were no August riots in Glasgow or the NE region, places with long histories of deprivation and relatively high unemployment rates. And try this:

“South Yorkshire Police have confirmed there was no disorder in the county overnight following reports of rioting and looting in other cities.”
http://www.dinningtontoday.co.uk/news/local-news/south_yorkshire_police_assure_all_is_calm_in_county_1_3663847

@41 so, it seems that Liberal Conspiracy is no better than the Daily Wail, once renamed Labourgraph, BBC Newsnight or any of the other news sources that buddyhell tries to dismiss.

Where exactly does buddyhell think people “ought” to get their news from if none of the above?

@43 Shouldn’t that be “no better than the Grauniad”?

That’s a very ambiguous sentence Cylux.

Please clarify.

37 ‘How come Britain pioneered industrialization’
Britain was the first to industrialize because most of its’ potentional competitors were embroiled in revolution. After the 1815 settlement, Britain introduced The Corn Law to ensure that the rest of Europe were still hampered.
42
No riots in South Yorkshire, there were no riots or looting there during the miners’ strike when hundreds of families literally had to forage for berries, wood and rabbits if they were lucky.
Why – because most folk belonged to a community in which they believed gave them a stake in society and a politcal force which fought for their interests, in the case of the miners, it was the union. And, of course, unions were at their strongest in the N.E. during the 70s. I doubt if Beaconsfield ever had a large population of union members either then or now.
But in South Yorkshire, there is still a strong belief that the labour party will fight for their interests, despite the 13years of Tony Blair. I have little experience of Tottenham and Croydon but I would guess that for many working-class people, and that includes black and ethnic working-class people, they feel that there is no significant political force fighting for their interests.
Disenfranchisement is a word that gets overused but a few astute individuals have identified it as a major cause of the riots and I don’t think that they are far wrong.

@45 It’s the Guardian that’s famous for piss-poor spelling and grammar, not the Mail, BBC or Telegraph.

35. althought the Poll tax riot was esajerated by the Tory pres sto create symapthy for thatcher and some of it was down to anarchists, some down to decent people feeling that the police were beign heavy handed, that “riot” was more about defence and creating damage of police properrty than looting.

@64; steveb: “After the 1815 settlement, Britain introduced The Corn Law to ensure that the rest of Europe were still hampered.”

I’m hardly a defender of the motivation for the Corn Laws by the landed interests who prevailed in Parliament, especially in the Lords, but we ought to note that 1815 coincided with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which relaxed war-time restrictions on sea trade. We ought to note too that the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 had little impact on corn prices until the 1870s when falling sea freight rates, resulting from the new iron clad ships with steam engines, meant cereals grown in North America could be shipped in. Btw Britain’s population in the 1801 census was only 10.5 millions – France’s was twice that.

The causes of Britain’s pioneering industrial revolution are still debated by academics and we can’t re-run history now in a laboratory experiment to establish which factors were crucial. A more interesting issue is whether there can be too much trust and social cohesion.

I visited Japan several times in the early 1980s when Japan’s economy was on a roll of success. One Japanese explanation for their success at the time that was often made to me in conversations was that “Japan has a homogeneous society”. Nakasone, after he had retired as Japan’s PM, made the same claim during a tour of America in 1986, when uproar ensued given the heterogeneity of American audiences.

Jump forward to 1992, the collapse of Japan’s boom and a banking crisis. A major element in the last was billions in “non-performing bank loans” which had been advanced on the basis of mutual trust in the context of Japan’s prevailing model for non-adversarial business relationships – a model which was much pushed by some British economists in the run-up to the 1992 election (I can name a few). Arguably, Japanese banks would have been better served by exercising less trust and more due diligence.

49
Most academics agree that it was the agricultural revolution which drove the industrial revolution, in particularly the availability of ‘free labour’ enabling the growth of, well, industries. Our social revolution (really an evolution) was slow (it took approx 100 years) whereas France, for example, underwent a political revolution and a quick and chaotic social change as a result, in the midst of several wars. We were some 50 years ahead, and I would suspect the population of France in 1801 reflected, to some extent, its’ recent Catholic past.
As far as your comments about Japan go, I accept your greater knowledge and experience, perhaps a culture of trust within banking is rather naive in a capitalist system.

@47 of course it is. All these media sources are inaccurate and biased in one way or another. None of them can claim to have the monopoly on being correct and neutral, which is why it’s so important not to be locked in to just the media who are like yourself, and that you agree with, but to see a wide range of sources and viewpoints to evaluate and cross-reference them one against another.

@50: “Most academics agree that it was the agricultural revolution which drove the industrial revolution, in particularly the availability of ‘free labour’ enabling the growth of, well, industries.”

The prior agricultural revolution was a necessary but not sufficient condition for Britain’s industrial revolution. It enabled the industrial revolution but it didn’t account for the crucial technical innovations – such as steam engines and in textile machinery – and the means by which those were developed, financed and applied in factories or the development in transport systems from toll roads to canals to railways. One of many debates is about how small banks financed widely distributed business development.. Britain was on a learning curve where there was no precedent to learn from and when there was no guiding direction from the government, as there was with later industrialisations in France and Germany. The factory acts to protect children and women from gross exploitation arose from an early recognition in Parliament that self-regulation is not dependable.

Bob B @ 42

You dont honestly believe that if a Demonstration/Riot that orignated in London and then spread to other areas/cities throughout the country should have actually happened in every large town or city within England do you ?

Until the Pollsters question the Demonstrators/Rioters in those areas that the rioting took place we will not get a clear picture behind the reasons why they chose to riot.

The fact that the first Demonstration/riot that took place at Conservative HQ was the first alarm.

The fact that the second Demonstration/Riot later in the year involving students and the young directed at Government Policies was another alarm.

The August Demonstrations/riots that were ignited due to a young man being shot by the Police and spreading to other parts of the country under David Camerons short fifteen months as PrimeMinister show that there is wide spread Anger/Unhappiness.

If you cannot see that the Government is part of the problem you must have your head so far up your rectum that you can see out of your mouth.

@53: “You dont honestly believe that if a Demonstration/Riot that orignated in London and then spread to other areas/cities throughout the country should have actually happened in every large town or city within England do you ?”

No – but the critical question is why did the August rioting spread to some parts of London but not to many other parts and why to Birmingham and Manchester but not to many other towns, cities and regions, some of which have long distinctive histories of deprivation and relatively high unemployment rates, and not to Leicester, where ethnic minorities, mostly Asian, comprise almost half the population?

The facts of where rioting did not develop seem to effectively discount deprivation and the general presence of “ethnic minorities” as principal factors causing the rioting. Why did rioting starting in Tottenham, north London, migrate to Croydon in south London, some 15 miles away and how come police reports that rioters were bused into Croydon?

I become deeply suspicious when it is deemed racist to even suggest transparently obvious questions like this.

52
The massive technological innovations of the 19th century were probably, in part, facilitated by the industrial revolution but the industrial revolution could not have occured without the agricultural revolution creating large numbers of surplus labour. But this is where confusion starts to occur, the technological changes were the consequences of the industrial revolution, not the cause. However, it was technological changes which caused the agricultural revolution.
You are quite right, there was no precedent, but we were fairly lucky in that there were no outside forces impeding our progress, our political and social changes occured at different times and were more evolutionary than revolutionary.
The Factory Act wasn’t really a friend of the working-class although it may have appealed to middle-class sentiments.

@55: Steveb

It’s certainly credible to say that the market pressures created by the course of industrialisation promoted innovations in textile machinery but Watt’s steam engine preceded most suggested starting dates for the industrial revolution.

The ideological significance of the long succession of factory acts is that those statutes reflected a growing recognition by Parliament that self-regulation could lead to unacceptable social consequences, that free-market capitalism could not be allowed to prevail unchecked. Sadly, many haven’t yet grasped this.

I really like the spin:

Wonderful Notting Hill Carnival, only 214 arrests and one stabbing reported

OK I’ll play along.

Bob B you tell us in your opinion

“why did the August rioting spread to some parts of London but not to many other parts and why to Birmingham and Manchester but not to many other towns, cities and regions, some of which have long distinctive histories of deprivation and relatively high unemployment rates, and not to Leicester, where ethnic minorities, mostly Asian, comprise almost half the population?”

I’m sure you’ve got a theory, so share it with us.

@58 If you get a direct answer to that question, I’ll be shocked. Tenner down any reply you get features a google-mined link though.

My professional background was in the “social sciences” so I instinctively look for hypotheses to account for observed social phenomena.

It seems pretty clear that histories of deprivation and “ethnic minorities” in general as causal factors simply don’t fit with the observed facts. Early on in another thread, I suggested that we needed to look into areas and places which didn’t experience rioting and to ask why not?

OTOH prior evidence of prominent and persistent local criminal gangs does fit and there is such evidence in respect of both Tottenham and Croydon. The criminal and family links of Mark Duggan, the man shot by the Police in Tottenham, have already been mentioned. Try this on YouTube regarding Croydon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkYAnLtAm40

Why did the Met Police find it necessary to set up the Trident Operation in 1998 specifically to investigate black-on-black killings? In early August there was a small routine news report, separate from reports about the rioting – in London, so far this year, ten young people have been stabbed to death. The victims weren’t all black but most were.

News update on 30 August:

David Cameron has chaired the first meeting of the social policy review launched in the wake of the riots earlier this month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/30/uk-riots-david-cameron-policy-review

OTOH prior evidence of prominent and persistent local criminal gangs does fit and there is such evidence in respect of both Tottenham and Croydon. The criminal and family links of Mark Duggan, the man shot by the Police in Tottenham, have already been mentioned. Try this on YouTube regarding Croydon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkYAnLtAm40

Why did the Met Police find it necessary to set up the Trident Operation in 1998 specifically to investigate black-on-black killings? In early August there was a small routine news report, separate from reports about the rioting – in London, so far this year, ten young people have been stabbed to death. The victims weren’t all black but most were.

7. Rob32

“Little to no black people? You’ve already openly admitted your anti-black racism during the riots and said this before, so don’t be weasel and hint at it just come out and say it.”

So after all your evasion and red herrings you finally admit it.

@62: “So after all your evasion and red herrings you finally admit it.”

Another infantile remark.

I look at the evidence dispassionately. I didn’t invent the Met Police Trident Operation in 1998 or its stated purpose, the sad reported extent of black-on-black killings or the continuing evidence of ethnic gangs in Croydon and Tottenham.

If there is an alternative hypothesis to account for how the rioting in Tottenham, in north London, migrated to Croydon, in south London, 15 or so miles away, then let’s have it.

There was no rioting in many places – such as Glasgow and the NE region, with their long histories of deprivation, or in Leicester, where near on a majority of the population belongs to ethnic minorities. There was little or no rioting in most parts of London. It’s just plain silly to describe analysis of the facts as “racist” just because some find the facts unpalatable. Any rational accounting for the riots needs to recognise the facts of the situation. Flinging about accusations of “racist” does not amount to analysis.

A further media report on Cameron’s social policy review meeting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14724627

Btw for contrast see this Wikipedia entry for a hugely popular BBCTV2 drama series broadcast in 1996: “Our Friends in the North”, which credibly related to real events, including embedded local political corruption in northern places during the early 1970s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Friends_in_the_North

No one went over the top claiming the BBC was “racist” because all the thoroughly nasty characters in that popular series were white northerners.

@64 The majority of rioters in manchester were White northerners too.

I fail to see what you’re angling at, you keep focusing on one aspect – deprivation, but that is the infantile analysis. You need more than deprivation as I said above – think fire triangle, for a fire to start/continue you need all of three things; fuel, oxygen and heat – take away a single one of those and a fire cannot burn.
I would expect riots to be more prevalent in areas of deprivation sat right next to areas of ostentatious wealth, for example. Perhaps a general disaffection with our political leaders also played a part, tales of doom and gloom for me, with expenses claims and billion pound bonuses for thee can’t really inspire the greatest level of confidence in the social order of the land. With that in mind I cannot envisage Scottish riots kicking off so soon after the buoyant SNP gains, setting out a positive vision for Scotland as opposed to our ‘feel the pain bitch’ narrative we got going this side of the border, hence why you can take Glasgow off your list.
I could go on, but trying to pin the blame on gangs ain’t gonna wash, they took advantage of the riots without a doubt, but ultimate cause? Too many bodies joining in for that to stack up.

@65: “I fail to see what you’re angling at, you keep focusing on one aspect – deprivation, but that is the infantile analysis. ”

As repeatedly suggested, there are places with histories of deprivation where there was NO rioting – such as Glasgow and the NE region – as well as places like Leicester, where near on a majority of the local population belongs to ethnic minorities. That seems to effectively rule out deprivation and ethnic minorities in general as necessary factors in the riots.

OTOH both Tottenham and Croydon have sad histories of violent ethnic gangs and we need to explain how rioting migrated from Tottenham to Croydon, some 15 miles away across the Thames, when there was little or no rioting in many other parts of London, some adjoining Tottenham or Croydon.

Quite why it is deemed racist to point out these well-documented differences is beyond me. I suspect some want to suppress reasoned discussion.

Yea, can’t be anything to do with deprivation. No.

@65: “I fail to see what you’re angling at, you keep focusing on one aspect – deprivation, but that is the infantile analysis. ”

As repeatedly suggested, there are places with histories of deprivation where there was NO rioting – such as Glasgow and the NE region – as well as places like Leicester, where near on a majority of the local population belongs to ethnic minorities.

As repeatedly suggested, deprivation is perhaps but one factor.

Think about it in terms of risk: deprivation increases the risk, perception of lack of police presence increases the risk, success stories over social and mainstream media increase the risk…

@67: “Yea, can’t be anything to do with deprivation. No.”

But if the rioting related to deprivation then why rioting in some deprived communities and not others and what are the causes of deprivation which lead to rioting in some cases but not others?

One thing that occurs to me in response to Bob B’s (in my opinion) reasonable question is that the riots were distributed according to the power law–also known as the Pareto distribution–since riots and looting have obvious scale efficiencies.

This is of course not particularly original. The power law is one of the most common distributions in the social realm. But there it is. The riots were going to erupt somewhere. They were a function of some particular grievances, and a stochastic element. Then, wherever they erupted, this drew in other rioters, looters, criminals, chancers and all the rest, to that particular location, and therefore out of locations where the riots and looting might otherwise have happened.

@69 – The power-keg deprived London communities kicked off. Elsewhere, the copycats got squished by police presence, in many cases before it got underway.

Scotland, as has been explained to you, is undergoing a very different political headwind at the moment, and isn’t a powder keg.

@71: “Scotland, as has been explained to you, is undergoing a very different political headwind at the moment, and isn’t a powder keg.”

That’s demonstrable rubbish. Consider this:

Celtic letter bombs: David Cameron condemns ‘appalling’ sectarianism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/21/celtic-letter-bombs-david-cameron

“Police arrested 32 people – six for sectarian offences – during an Orange parade through Glasgow.”
BBC website report on 2 July 2011

Try this from the BBC on whether gangs were to blame for the riots in early August:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14540796

@72 – You’re comparing long-standing sectarian conflicts, which have very different actors, with the London riots.

…

No, I have better things to do than debate loons.

@72 You must be taking the piss now, you just compared apples to oranges there ffs.

Bob: How should the riots be distributed across London? It seems to me that a power law (or similar) distribution is an intuitively obvious answer.

Vimothy: I don’t think statistical modelling is of much help in this context. Many London boroughs experienced little or no rioting and looting. A more effective empirical predictor IMO is a prior local history of violent ethnic gangs – but then I get accused of being racist for suggesting that.

Possibly a more fruitful line of analysis is why such ethnic gangs develop. There was a recent IPPR report saying that the unemployment rate at about 40% among black youth is about twice the rate among white youth, which is about 20%.

This ethnic unemployment rate differential isn’t new. It shows up for 2004 – well before the recent financial crisis and recession – in a chapter in Social Trends 36 for 2006: “The different experiences of the united kingdom’s ethnic and religious populations”: Unemployment rates of men by ethnic group in 2004: Figure A.4 on page 6
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/social-trends-rd/social-trends/no–36–2006-edition/index.html

What the chart there shows is that the highest unemployment rates among ethnic groups were for Black Caribbean and then Black African men. The obvious question becomes why are black Caribbean and African men so disadvantaged compared with other ethnic groups? Could that relate to educational attainment?

Btw the ONS has refashioned its website so that old links to resources – and the Google search engine – no longer work: I joke not. If I were given to paranoia, I would be deeply suspicious. It has become much more difficult to locate references and I’ve an uneasy feeling that is not accidental.

On comparing apples and pears, I agree that the Scots were possibly diverted from joining in the recent rioting and looting, which started in Tottenham, by their prior and continuing local dispute over the outcome of the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland in 1690 between two rival claimants to the English throne. The regular annual Orange Order demonstrations in Glasgow are formidable to behold.

Bob,

I don’t think statistical modelling is of much help in this context.

That seems like a very odd statement to make, not last because you directly contradict it in the very same paragraph:

A more effective empirical predictor IMO is a prior local history of violent ethnic gangs

Both claims cannot be true. Either statistics is useful or, if it is not, you can’t talk about measuring and modelling quantities.

But perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by power law distribution. We can model any random variable in terms of a probabilistic distribution. Since “where the riots occurred” is an (ex ante) random variable, then it makes sense to talk about its distribution. And since your original question was about its distribution, again, it seems odd for you to then go on to claim that it makes no sense to talk about its distribution.

So I think that you could legitimately rephrase your question as “why were the riots distributed according to a power law and not some other distribution”? In other words, why did the violence cluster in only a few places? The answer to which is in my opinion that there are obvious scale efficiencies to rioting and looting, and so it makes sense for everyone who wants to riot to go to wherever a riot is already happening, rather than organise themselves in some smooth Gaussian distribution.

Think of rioters smashing up some high street. If all the rioters spread themselves evenly throughout London, then they are too dissipated to do much damage and intimidate and brutalise the non-rioting population. However, if they concentrate their force in fewer places across the city, then they can more easily smash up an entire high street, burn residences, and rob and beat people with impunity. From a strictly strategic point of view, the latter makes a lot more sense to me. Thus, if I were to predict the actions of a rational collective actor who wanted to terrorise the populace of London, I would say outbreaks of violence will cluster (military thinkers often talk about “swarming” as an important insurgent tactic) around basically randomly occurring initiating events.

79.

But that explanation doesn’t blame black people which is the only kind of theory he is intrested in.