Fleeting role reversal for the August Rioters

I didn’t riot or loot and I don’t know anyone who did. I heard about the riots because a friend told me what they read on their iPhone. I’ve lived in London pretty much my whole life but I was at a music festival until the Monday afternoon. But I know they happened for thousands of different reasons. (Those who thought the widespread and significant social unrest in a generation in Britain would have a simple or singular explanation should stop reading now.)

Everyone who participated had a slightly different motive, a different set of pre-existing opinions about the police, the government, and the economy. Everyone had a different perception of how they, as individuals, related to contemporary Britain, to contemporary London or Birmingham, or their neighbourhood. I imagine that the majority of people got a call or a text or a BlackBerry Message about “something happening”, or simply heard that something was happening close to where they were. They went out in the street and got swept up in the madness of the crowd. Just like those smart opportunistic (entrepreneurial?) people who put their money in unknown Icelandic banks or Madoff’s Ponzi scheme (perhaps coveting expensive house refurbishments or an Aga).

Its not that people had no relationships to anyone in their neighbourhoods. In fact the strength of relationships in part spread the disorder. All the evidence is that deprived neighbourhoods have strong social networks, and powerful relationships, between poor people (rather than no relationships). These networks are one of their few “assets”, as nef has argued previously. Indeed gang membership solves many identity crises in adolescents, providing a strong sense of belonging.  Poor residents lack a relationship with the business-owners who are distant shareholders in national corporate chains (see nef’s work on Clone Towns). Most perpetrators also, presumably, had a pretty poor relationship (real or imagined) with the police.

In participating, people knew largely knew their actions were illegal – though some who naively accepted stolen goods or set up failed facebook efforts to vandalise sit alongside thieves in our jails. However, if anyone had stopped to consider their participation at the time, they might have in fact calculated that the risk of being caught was lower than the reward. And most weren’t caught. Looting is hedonistic and opportunistic, and shouldn’t be conflated with acts of violence.

I know a few working-class people and none of them read this blog. From what I know I am quite certain that the anger at politicians expenses, police bribes and bankers bonuses has “trickled down” to those born into far fewer privileges. I think I share with most people in this country, uncontroversially, a sense that our prevailing national culture is and should be defined by a sense of fairness. I share a dislike for people who seek to achieve whatever they can get away with when they are gambling irresponsibly with my savings, or claiming extravagant expenses on my taxes. Did this anger fuel the disturbances? Maybe, for some it was a relevant context, and there is an important broader issue of alienation [see elsewhere on the nef blog] from the impersonal, technocratic public services on which we depend. But millions of the angry and alienated watched the mayhem safely from behind the net curtain.

When I was 15 I was arrested for kicking down a fence while drunk. Seconds after being handcuffed I realised by forthcoming UCAS application, the respect of my parents, my allowance, and perhaps my entire career was threatened. My reward was not insignificant however: I won some respect from the popular people I aspired to be friends with, as a care-free member of a tight group who enjoyed a mini-riot of a Friday night. I proved (under some pressure, or encouragement, from peers) that I wasn’t too scared to join in an illegal group activity, and several hours in a police cell were definitely a period of rapid transition from boyhood to manhood. I looked forward to school that Monday, but I learned my lesson. I had too much to lose to risk criminality.

Breaking glass, setting fires and shoplifting can be as fun and empowering as the legalised adrenaline releases of the rural and affluent: skiing, chopping wood or lighting bonfires. What the courts are punishing is not only the “ordinary” crimes, but the extraordinary circumstances in which crimes occurred: the mushroom cloud of emancipation – a sense of freedom, autonomy, self-determination – that many on the streets must have felt.

There are millions of people in Britain with little to lose. They are fully aware that in their current personal capacity, they are relatively worthless, economically, in the eyes of middle England: those running the government, the state institutions, and private companies. For young people particularly, the scrapping of Education Maintenance Allowances (EMA), local youth provision, and rising tuition fees was a strong message from the adult elite: Whatever your class or race, we can no longer afford to invest in your future.  This is relevant context, but it was relevant before the riots. What united the rioters (not looters), alongside a thousand different personal motivations and pressures, was a thrilling shared sense that their acts created a temporary role reversal in where power sits within society.