a reading guide to the riots

 

Photoshop from here.

In case you're wondering what caused these riots and how to stop them happening again, then don't worry: commentators on the stupid right and the stupid left have all the answers you need. Or, you know, not. Never have so many pronounced with so much passionate intensity on a subject about which they know so little. 

At a time like this, certainty is in inverse proportion to credibility. Unless someone admits at the outset that they're puzzled by what happened in the last few days, then they're simply not serious. Whenever you come across a columnist or politician 'explaining' these riots, remember that they probably don't know what they're talking about; Max Hastings doesn't know anyone that lives on a council estate, and nor does Harriet Harman. So when they call these people "beasts" or imagine that the rioters were staging a protest against cuts in tuition fees or the bank bailouts, then they are, to put it plainly, talking out of their bottoms. I'm particularly suspicious of all commentaries that boil down to This Just Proves What I Already Believe or a string of dog-eared clichés dressed up in bad sociology. 

These riots are not inexplicable but they are unprecedented in nature and complex in causality. It's going to take a while to come up with some credible theories of what happened. In the meantime the best responses - the ones really worth reading - are coming, not from newspaper offices or Westminster, but from street-level. These are the ones that contain what is, right now, a rare and essential ingredient: first-hand knowledge of what the lives of these people are like. There is simply no substitute for that. It doesn't give you the answers, but you can't get to the answers without it.

A few examples: Camilla Batmanghelidjh (although I suspect her focus on poverty tells only part of the story). Maurice McLeod, who was a kid in Brixton when the 1981 riots happened. And this, from a youth worker who works near where I grew up in South London. It's quite long but worth the read - the penultimate paragraph in particular:

When we saw my boyfriend’s bike being stolen by two hooded monsters, we ran out to get in back. I saw the youth in their faces, and shouted ‘stop I’m a youth worker!’ After some reasoning he gave the bike back. My boyfriend walked back to re-chain to our friend’s bike, but I remained. I couldn’t just let them go without asking why? He told me ‘what man, I gave the bike back?’. I replied, ‘I don’t care about the bike. It’s just a bike. I care about you. What about you? What are you good at?’ He looked at me, his smaller friend silent the whole time. ‘What are you good at!’ I yelled. ‘Nothing’. Tears pricked my eyes. Familiar tears. The ones I leave the classroom sometimes to have in the toilet. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t say nothing.’ He had no words for me. ‘You’re better than this. You’re better than being a thief.’ He was silent. What he didn’t do was run away or get angry. He didn’t pull out whatever it was he cut the bike lock with and he didn’t jab it in me. He simply looked at me, without any answers. 

UPDATE: This is also worth reading.

UPDATE ii: This is by far the best piece of analysis I've read.

Comments

[RobH]

Agree with everything you say - except the mention of Harriet Harman. Probably not on a par with Max Hastings, given she's been MP for one of London's most deprived communities for nearly thirty years. She may occasionally speak as if she's from another world - but it's not from lack of exposure to the people she represents.

[dirk]

Ian,

When do we get the post where you express surprise that Ed was right to be pessimistic, Balls and Brown got it right and weren't scaremongering, etc. etc.?

Sent with good intentions,
D

[Marbury]

Not sure you what you mean...you mean on the economy?

[MarkB]

Oh my God, that quoted paragraph made me want to wretch. Yeah, the reason why the guy just looked up at you was because he probably thought you were a fucking pyscho for yelling at him fucked up things like, 'What are you good at!' when all he wanted was a free bike, not some third rate, weird attempt to psychoanalyse him and 'rescue' him. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

[simon]

Excellent pickings here. Thank you. Following your tweets about UKuncut this really cleaned the palette. I'd also like to second the exception of Harret Harman though, not because I hold her in any esteem (I'm ginger after all), but surgeries must be good for something, no?
A phrase that keeps coming back to me is something a worker in Wandsworth Prison said to me a month before he was fired: "These people aren't here because they lack an income, but because they lack an identity." I've always thought that was spot on, as is the question you highlight: "What are you good at?" Of course, the affordability of an identity in this climate is an issue. "MAKING NOTHING" as you termed it in your tweets on the occupation is not necessarily making nothing. "Art teacher" is not necessarily a term of abuse.
I finally faced my home today. Brixton's like a friend in hospital right now, surprisingly recognisable, and expressing a suave humour about its condition (The bills posted on the boards outside Morley's read "Please pardon our appearance while disorder continues in London".) I suppose dirk's point could be abbreviated to "THIS is a safe haven?"