Depraved or deprived: What lies behind these riots, and why aren't they happening in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

[Solopower]

I've been reading the threads on the riots and I wondered if we needed one on the causes.

People's ideas seem to range from thinking the rioters are just opportunistic criminals to socially and culturally disadvantaged youngsters.

But why isn't there any rioting in Scotland, for example, where there are pockets of extreme social deprivation?

Zoe Williams' article on the psychology of looting is worth reading, imo:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-psychology-of-looting?CMP=twt_gu

well ok, enough about the weather, although rain is the policeman's friend, I've heard.

I think the difference is cultural.

I think the riots are an extension of a certain culture in England - it's a manifestation of a certain culture and therefore a political act. And these people are the product of society in major cities of England. And yes loads of 'educated' and professional people will join in for the buzz of it but there are many, many who are young and feel disenfranchised.

They know they are poor (it's all relative) - they have insight into their situation - and they are unlikely to ever achieve the sort of lifestyle that is dangled in front of them in music videos and on the TV.

In London and other big cities, you don't know your neighbour, people fuck you over in small ways and big, there is no sense of belonging, no community leaders and you think, why not just take what I want?

The basis for group conflict is inequality, one perceived group fighting for to show power and status against another 'group'. Smashing up/stealing another group's status objects is showing power and acquiring status.

I know this sounds liberal and wanky but I don't think just saying oh they're 'bad' is frankly good enough.

Yes I entirely agree about the EMA. There is no way a lot of young people can go to college without EMA as they will not be able to afford to get there (without resorting to a part-time job, which is very unlikely to materialist). So it will have to be part-time drug dealing or no college.

*materialise

One last thing about the weather.....if there is heavy or prolonged rain there will be no riots! I'd put money on it..

I went to college before there was any such thing as EMA, we seemed to manage OK. I don't think the EMA was ever really very much, certainly not nearly enough to live on, so if your parents couldn't afford to keep you while you went to college, you just had to get a job and go to classes in the evening. Several of my school friends did this, some through choice as they preferred having the 'grown up' lifestyle of a job and a wage of their own.

I can imagine the EMA might have been useful to some people, but there are ways of managing without it. Surely better to try than to whine and decide your life is over and you have no future and no choice but to turn to crime because the government isn't giving you extra money on top of the already free education on offer .

Jamaica, I don't think part time drug dealing or no college is the only option available to young people attending further education - there are such things as part time jobs available (or even, dare I say it, pocket money).

Norman agree it's an extension of a certain culture in England (and possibly elsewhere, couldn't say) and the whole people-fuck-you-over-no-community- living-in-London thing and it's really weird for me to be a lifelong liberal-and-champion-of-the-disadvantaged-and-maligned not to be arguing deprivation, but I'm not convinced material stuff is the issue. You can be penniless and blackbery-less and still law abiding/hard working/ upstanding wheras you can be a graphic designer/graduate/army recruit/school employee and have no conscience. It wasn't just looting, there was the arson.. of a furniture store and a betting shop.

Also whether or not someone lives in a nasty stairwells-smelling-of-urine high rise doesn't strike me as so much an issue as whether they have had their parents discipline them and teach them empathy.

Re the consumer have/have not issue, surely it's marketing/media rather than proximity to large houses with leafy gardens?

Isn't EMA on top of having your fares paid if you are on a low income though?

Ephiny I know of some genuine hard luck/breadline cases with the EMA but mostly I wonder whether people now feel entitled to it becuse it recently existed and now it's going/gone

Some teenagers who do not have well-off or supportive parents (oh yes it was me 30 years ago!!!!) had to work, rent a room and study part-time to get any qualifications. I don't remember going out and smashing everything up because someone didn't give me £30 per week to study past school-age. This is another example now of people expecting everything to be put on a place in front of them as a right, the huge sense of entitlement that people seem to have now.

P.S. I wanted to add yes it is hard now, but its always been hard (except maybe for a brief time in the 1960s and 1970s which Ken Livingstone constantly refers to as being normal). People have lost all sense of reality. Any of these guys/girls fancy being a domestic servant in the 1920s or a miner in the 1950s?

Tortu- Was this the Paddy's day riots 3 or three years ago? I remember walking through the Holylands the morning after being holed up in our house with dp and the flatmates and being completely disgusted with the disrespect they'd shown to the area and the other normal residents.

You're right about the PSNI being more efficient though- the standard formation held by police during riots is called the "Belfast Formation" . I did my work experience with the police and they said that they collected the Shankill mirror throughout the year so they could ID people using the birthday pictures at the back during July.

Ephiny... yeah cos part time jobs are really easy to come by, especially for young people who, from the employers point of view, talk like 'gangsters', especially when there are some very well educated people going for the same jobs.

Fellatio as far as I know you do not get paid it for the duration of your course. Also there is eating when you get to college etc.

Flippinada I am talking about families where there is often no food in the fridge, no money for gas and electric. As far as I have seen, the children often get given money sporadically but it is certainly not enough to eat at college for the duration of the course. And I am not just talking about families on benefits, I am talking about those who work too.

Tonks Young people see these richer people every day where I am, and are often looked down on and avoided. And shops sometimes even serve them first even though they were not first to wait. And it isn't just materialist, I think it is the materialist viewpoint 'get what you want (need to be happy) by any means necessary' which I believe is prevalent among many sections of society, but particularly young people from poor urban areas, to whom violence is already less shocking.

The 'knowing your neighbours' thing is interesting, isn't it? I know all my immediate neighbours (10 people), well enough to sit and have a drink with any or all of them in the garden. And I know probably 7 or 8 other families/couples/singletons in our (admittedly small, but in a major city) street. And I also knew everyone in our old tenement (8 flats). So there may well be something in that - possibly even architectually - if you're unfamiliar with them, tenements are designed to be a smallish set of flats (usually 6 or 8ish) around a central staircase, with several sets of these in a block. So it's very easy to get to know people.

I think boredom plays its part too, especially for the younger people involved. When I was a nipper, there were youth clubs. Even the little place I lived in had one. But they've all gone, or on their way out. And they provided not just something to do, but some form of adult leadership. I don't know about where you grew up, but IME it wasn't really 'nice' kids (for want of a better word...) that went to them, it was children from more difficult backgrounds, or whose parents didn't really give a crap, so at least they could go somewhere where someone gave a damn about them. I'm sure it's all cumulative. If you feel that nobody (parents, teachers, youth leaders, politicians etc etc) gives a fuck about you, then why should you respect them and their property?

JamaicaGeisha, your point about the press reporting is also very interesting. How many times this week have I heard the expression 'feral rats' to describe the looters?

Depraved.
They are not deprived in the way many of you think - look at the clothes they are wearing as they stand outside the shop breaking the window. They already in labels. They are communicating very adequately using Blackberry phones prior to breaking into the electrical shops. Every day they are at the bus stop in their Kickers shoes, thumbs stuck to their iPhones. They are not bored - 33 pages of holiday activities on Croydon Council's website, including driving courses and all sorts of sports activities being run by neighbourhood wardens. Charities in the borough are offering plumbing and electrical taster courses, free camping trips, kayaking trips.
What they have been deprived of is parental interest and guidance along the way and if you've been ignored by your parents for all this time, why should you have grown up respecting the word of your parents. 'Tell your children to come home' they say. These people stopped doing what their parents told them the day they started secondary school. Because they believed their parents didn't care.
Sorry, the roots of this are, in the main, to be found much closer to home than many people think. I don't know what the solution is in the medium to longer term.
I have lived along the A23 all my life, Brixton in the 70s and 80s, Streatham in the 90s, now Croydon. Unfortunately, I never made it to the leafier parts. I've worked in the education system in Lambeth and in Croydon. Good Lord I've made mistakes with the dc but I know where they are and where they're not.

architectually ? That's not even a word is it? You know what I mean.

architecturally?

Jamaica - apologies if I've read you wrong but you seem to be seeing certain kids have no option but to participate in crime if they want to go into higher education?

It may not be easy to get a job, but that doesn't make it impossible. There seems to be such a culture now of giving up before you've even tried, just whining about how no one is 'giving' you anything and you have no choice but to behave like this.

And even if you can't go to college immediately at 16, there are usually other opportunities to educate yourself a bit later in life, it doesn't mean you have 'no future'. Sometimes you have to take life as it comes and make the best of things, have a bit of patience and determination. Maybe those are old fashioned values now, that parents and teachers don't try to instill in children. I just think people could benefit from focusing on what they do have, what they can do, rather than the other way round.

Even if you can't get a job, in this country thanks to our welfare state, at least you won't starve or have to beg on the streets. It really could be a lot worse. Why can some people only see the negative side?

springlamb whilst I don't disagree with what you say in the main, there are a lot of young people with designer labels and expensive gadgets, with a very shabby house and who go to bed hungry,or get coppers together to get a 2 quid meal. It is the PRIORITY put on these status symbols that is the motivation I think.

And I think they don't go to any of the activities because they don't make any money. The young men/boys I know who are involved in criminal activity are trying to have a 'lifestyle' which is cars, jewelry, clothes, technology (material), fear from other young people, sex, excitement, belonging to a group (and the feeling is increased by going against other gangs) etc. All these come from money, money = success.

This is the first time I have seen them all unite in a joint enterprise, which is very sad really.

Springlamb - yes totally agree re parents' attention.. tho I'd suggest they *are bored despite the 33 pages of holiday activities on the council's website as part of that lack of upbringing mean they don't have the skills/motivation/zest for life make the most of such opportunities... they could stand in the middle of Eurodisney [gosh is that really the best I can think of?!] and be bored

Jamaica that's awful re the waiting to be served thing... tho were they the ones rioting and, looting and burning? The kids walking past me in the street to get to the riot action def weren't talking like gangstas

Sorry, of course I mean 'saying'.

Architecturally - and I was going to make the same point. The tenements help people to know each other. And Glasgow learnt from its mistakes of places like the Red Road flats and new blocks of flats are built along the same lines as the old tenements.

Ephiny yes I agree re that giving up/whining/negative culture.. but I guess that's part of the poverty - for want of a better phrase call I hav to it poverty of upbringing/parenting/mind

I've been finding listening to music radio really depressing recently.DD likes Kiss FM and ffs there is some shallow, sex-obsessed, jingly crap on there. If that is the sort of stuff that some children think of as aspirational there isn't much fucking hope

Tonks I know some of them definitely were. As far as I can gather, there were a huge mix of people there. But as some people seem to think it is only black people, I thought I would address my main points about black young people and their motivations.