London Riots

The BBC and the NY Times say that people are “puzzled” and “trying to make sense of sudden outbreak of violence” in Tottenham in early August. I’m not sure if it is “people” who are puzzled or is it the journalists writing about the events…
It seems clear that what sparked the violence was the killing of Mark Duggan, a 29 year-old black man, by police officers on Thursday, August 4. The headlines on August 7 might have well been: “Police Violence Spark Public Outrage”. Rather, the local media chose to under-report the incident, and also the reactions to it, until it became impossible to ignore the scale of what was going on.
If this had happened in China, I’m sure the headlines in the US and UK would have blared against government censorship of the local media, who was kept from reporting fully on the incident. When the same thing happens in the UK (or the US) what do you call it? Self-censorship? Are government officials actively involved in “giving a call” to media editors, asking them to “be careful not to over-react” or “blow this out of proportion”?
It’s not just the censoring that we should worry about, it’s the broader attitude of trying to ignore the seriousness of the unemployment issue, trying to sweep it all under the carpet.
Reports from London talk of people saying that “This country has changed. We’ve lost something”.
DUHH! Of course the UK has changed. Guess what? All countries have changed. All countries have lost something. Or did they have it, in the first place?
The NY Times has reported that people ask “where has common decency and respect gone?”. Well, common decency and respect was not there, in the first place, as something demonstrated to all. There was racial discrimination for centuries. There was a class distinction between “the ruling class” and “the working class”, also for centuries. These things, unfortunately, do not go away at the blink of an eye. And, in terms of culture, a decade is equal to the blink of an eye.
Blame it on the outsiders
It’s amazing how, all over the world, there is this “knee-jerk reaction” to blame outsiders for all your troubles. Foreigners are the favourite “outsiders”. It’s a tribal reaction, to blame the outsiders. The funny thing is to realize that people in cosmopolitan cities like London, New York, Paris and Berlin, are all still subject to this type of tribal behavior. “Blame the immigrants” is the reflex reaction. Ironically, the “immigrants” are blamed equally by Muammar Gaddafi for what happened in Libya, as well as by Tory leaders for what happened in London.
Even the local residents of Tottenham have said that “these people who are looting and rioting, they don’t live in this neighbourhood”.
That is one of the issues of our times: people move around. People communicate (facebook, twitter, mobile phones). It’s no use blaming the outsiders, in a global world there are no “outsiders”. You cannot cordon off neighbourhoods. Would you like to introduce Apartheid in London? I don’t think that would solve anything, it would only aggravate the problems.
The fact is that when financial disaster struck in 2008, the Labour Party was blamed for it. The irony is that the crisis was caused by speculation gone wild among investment banks, run by people who typically vote and support the Conservative Party. So the conservatives caused the financial melt-down, blamed the progressives, then got elected to run government and quickly set about to implement a series of policies that shifted the impact of the crisis away from “the ruling class” and on to “the working class”. This is not only ironic, it’s also tragic.
Unemployment has grown tremendously and is likely to continue at high levels for years, because of the policies adopted by the Tories. Reducing government spending immediately increases unemployment, as any second-rate economist will tell you. More important, still, is where are the spending cuts directed. According to the BBC, programmes to prevent crime have been cut harder than programmes to repress violence. Is this just stupidity or is there an evil mind behind all this, manipulating politicians to ensure that they make the worst possible choices in economic and social policy?
Conservatives were quick to “do unto others, before they do unto you”, so they blamed the integration policies. According to their views, the “outsiders” are simply “bad people”, and the integration policies of the past decades have failed to turn them into “good people”. The failed integration policies are blamed on Labour.
The case for real integration
Unless economic policies AND social integration policies are changed dramatically, the situation will get worse before it gets any better. The first step is to recognize how serious the situation is. The UK is not on the road to recovery. Unless policies are changed, they will continue to have an increasing negative impact on unemployment, and that will stir more social violence.
The priority of economic policies needs to shift towards job creation, even if it means increasing government debt. Creative policies are needed here. Think about Schumacher’s book “Small Is Beautiful”. We need to create millions of job opportunities for young and old. Unemployment turns millions of people into outcasts and turning to crime is just one step away, especially when figures of authority are demoralized.
Right now, the police are demoralized. They’ve shot innocent people more than once in the past three years and stood idly by while the riots spiraled out of control. The politicians are demoralized: the hacking scandal revealed more than hacking, it uncovered a web of corruption in which press officials and politicians exchanged money and bought favours from each other. The police are also involved in that web, and all parties are also guilty of trying to keep a lid on the whole thing, withholding evidence and delaying investigations. The Church has also been demoralized, most recently by accusations of pedophilia and covering up investigations about it.
David Cameron has been said to favour “a shake-up” in London police. I’m afraid it has to be more than just a “shake-up” and it has to involve other institutions as well, including Parliament, government and the Judiciary Power. The reform needs to involve private institutions too, such as media companies, and also the whole education system. We have a crisis of values, and this means the issue is broader and deeper than normally portrayed. It is still manageable, but it needs broad and deep action, not just your usual “panis et circensis” (“give them bread and entertainment, and people will behave”).
Integration policies need to change in order to foster real integration. This means gradually shaping a society which is the product of all social forces involved. It does not mean turning the UK into a Muslim society, but it also does not mean turning all Muslims into Anglicans. What it does mean is turning the UK into a pluralistic society in which the diversity of cultural backgrounds is seen as a strength, rather than as something to be avoided.
Yes, this country has lost something. It has lost the acquiescence of minorities to social abuse. Minorities have been taught the Anglo-Saxon values of egalitarianism, individualism and performance orientation. Guess what? They learned these values and adopted them! They believed the people who told them that “all people are created equal”, “freedom is an individual’s most important right” and “all people should have the same opportunities to progress at work based on performance and merit”.
Now, this country can gain something. It can gain the richness of diversity. It can realize the benefits of learning from people who are different from you. It can learn to show respect to all people, even to those who share a different religious belief, to those who come from a different ethnicity. It can renew its Anglo-Saxon values by ensuring that indeed society is egalitarian and does not privilege those who live in certain neighborhoods. It can ensure that individuals are held accountable, no matter how high in government their positions. And it can enforce the value of performance as being the criteria for progress at work, rather than sharing the same club with a government official.
The UK of the 21st Century will be perhaps more balanced in its values. It may evolve into a kind of balanced egalitarianism in which there are no longer distinctions between “the ruling class” and “the working class”, yet there is still respect for authority. It may come to value freedom of expression in balance with maintaining group harmony. And it may temper performance orientation with quality of life and caring for others, so that people get a better work-life balance. The answer to its social issues lies in looking ahead, looking towards new solutions, rather than trying to return to the past. We need to respect and understand the past, so that we can avoid repeating it. We need to create a future that is better than our past.