London riots and the return of fascist chic

Like many people, I've found the aftermath of the London riots a little hard to stomach. The tragedy of these events is enormous: youth have attacked their own neighborhoods causing needless carnage and death. Some of those hurt the most by their actions are those who were struggling with local businesses. The reactions to the riots are polarizing citizens between those who feel that the rioters were in control of their own actions and therefore should be punished harshly, and those who feel that the riots can be explained by the underlying social conditions. Although the latter position is an understandable reaction from people at the receiving end of these riots, it does absolutely nothing to prevent them happening in the first place.

While this debate is being ideologically divided in parliaments into a debate of individual equality versus social responsibility (or no more spending versus more state spending) - a polarization that is being reflected in the ideological bent of reportage - riots are a complex social phenomenon that have occured for hundreds of years and in more recent times, studied thoroughly. These studies are worth looking at because academic debates tend to be a bit less polemical. This is because strongly argued thesis positions tend to overlook contradictory arguments and weaken the strength of the argument, something that is frowned upon within that mode of discourse. To be sure, academic debates around riots are structured by the inevitable perspectivism that comes from the way one is socialized (evident in many of the earlier discussions of racial riots in the US, for example), but the underlying premise is very much like criminology in its disregard for a rigid system of characterisation in favour of finding explanations that work. Moreover, such criticism that dilute the debates within academic systems to one opinion inevitably overlook the competing models that are integrated within analyses, which are generally included in the literature review section of one's work as a university requirement. If your work doesn't pass peer review, which is usually anonymous, and involves at least two experts going through and finding your weaknesses in argument and research, your work won't get published. So the bottom line is that anyone who dismisses this research without actually contesting the points or arguments one by one is doing a great disservice to the general public and to the people who don't want riots.

Anyone that doubts the use of investigating the cause and context of riots and believes that it is simply the left wing absolving people of their agency in contributing ought to look at the vast body of work and government reports on controlling riots in prison. Prison riot literature deals with the problems that circulate around the containment of individuals in controlled and restricted environments. For example, much of the government and scholarly literature looks at how certain elements combine to give early warning signals of the possibility for riots. Most theorists include the following elements: a) a breakdown or perceived weakness in authority; b) worsening conditions for inmates; c) an inciting incident (see for example Goldstone and Uzeem, 2002). The lunacy of ignoring work into the social conditions giving rise to riots then in popular and political opinion is evidenced by the fact that the taxpayer's money already goes to its prevention, and this includes research into less aggressive policing models that allow for crowd control.

Riots are by definition mass phenomena. This means that there are likely social causes to their preconditions. In the case of the London riots, the shooting of Mark Duggan was an obvious factor. The viral video of police beating a teen girl in the peaceful protest against his shooting was also an ancillary factor, a fact that has been largely ignored by the media. The poverty, deprivation and overcrowding of people, as well as the history of racial discrimination (which many position as historical, but is an ongoing factor) are also elements in the preconditions. That these preconditions have been highlighted in many government reports both in the UK and abroad means that the government had prior warning, not least the warnings that had been given about closing the youth clubs over possible riots.

For those who are in the priviledged few, who think that equality applies to all in the eyes of the law, think again. We know it does not from social outcomes. For those who complain that the social services got better before the talk of cuts, look at the research on how riots are strongly related to unemployment levels (Olzak and Shanahan, 1996; Myers, 1997), a factor which exacerbates the number and escalation of these riots. We also know that riots are sometimes accompanied by an increase in conditions (Olzak and Shanahan, 1996) that gives people greater awareness of the problems that they face. This is not to say that we should keep people oppressed, as the bulk of evidence suggests that this is also a precursor of riots.

The disproportionate punishments that are being handed out to youth are dangerous and drag attention away from the role of good statesmanship in managing one's people. The people advocating this are in a bubble where they ignore or oppress the urgent pressing issues that must be addressed. It is quite simply irresponsible to say that people who are deprived should understand and protest in middle class ways. What is needed is a removal of emotive ideas of morality, and a look at what IS. This is a situation that will be made worse by evicting tenants out of estates and by sentencing youth who advocated riots on Facebook to four year prison terms. One thing is for sure: if riots are a mass activity, the vitriolic calls for violence back and harsh punishments are also a mass reaction. However, the latter response is the infinitely more dangerous of the two, even if it is a socially appropriate one. Not only do they erode everyone's civil liberties and rights, they promote the preconditions for even worse events through cognitive dissonance in the complete inability to understand another group's reaction. Clamping down on riots does not necessarily do anything to stop them; as I highlighted to someone on Facebook who was claiming that Russians did not riot and the youth, immigrants and lower classes should be controlled, we have seen numerous examples of riots in societies which have less of a sense of 'entitlement' (to echo many commentators' situating of the causes), including riots in Moscow earlier this year and Thailand last year. Getting tough does not work, getting smart is the only weapon that we have.