Shortsightedness in David Cameron and Tony Blair riots analysis

Commenting in the Sunday Express, David Cameron put forward his analysis of the riots that took place earlier this month. The Prime Minister asserted that the country was suffering from a moral collapse, caused by a “decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, [and] a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.” In contrast, Tony Blair rejected this argument, claiming that the rioters and looters ‘aren’t symptomatic of society at large’. In his Observer article, whilst acknowledging social deprivation and income inequalities as factors, Blair blames England’s recent turmoil on a small number of “dysfunctional families, operating on completely different terms from the rest of society.”

So who are we to believe? Is it broken Britain or is it broken families? The simple answer is neither. Despite taking rather different standpoints, both analysis fail in one major respect. Myopia.

On the one hand, the Prime Minister talks about a moral decline, yet makes little effort to clarify what this means. Are sections of society more to blame than others (bankers, MP’s, journalists, Police, the youth) or are we all equally responsible? As for the causes of this national declivity, Cameron would have us believe the welfare state and a “twisting and misrepresenting of human rights” are the problem. Equally problematic is the Prime Minister’s language.

Whilst attacking the “thuggery” of the rioters, Cameron invokes a similarly aggressive and uncompromising tone, with phrases like “concerted fightback”, “reclaim our society” and “scoring a clear line between right and wrong.” He rounds this off with a clear invocation to British patriotic sentiment, stating that “British people have fought and died for people’s rights to freedom and dignity but they did not fight so that people did not have to take full responsibility for their actions.”

This myopic, ‘broken Britain’ account ignores the detail, overlooks many of the issues that ordinary people regard as important and constructs a narrative around an enfeebled nation crippled be some sort of cultural malady. One could be forgiven for thinking that the Prime Minister has missed the point entirely

Tony Blair, on the other hand, claims that the real root cause of the riots was not a “moral breakdown”, but familial breakdown, producing a minority of “alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behavior,” adding that they pose a “specific problem that requires deeply specific solutions.”

Though I agree with Blair that we need to look at and address specific problems, I cannot accept that the complexity of issues that gave rise to the riots can be reduced to a single determining factor. Such reductionism attempts to isolate the riots as an aberration of England’s otherwise unblemished and harmonious society where a small group of ‘bad’ families and individuals become the scapegoat for Britain’s potentially damaged ‘reputation abroad’.

Families don’t suddenly become dysfunctional in a vacuum. A whole myriad of personal and social issues have to exist before the degree of alienation and exclusion we are seeing can arise. Both Cameron and Blair fail to recognise that the riots were caused neither by a crisis of morality, nor a crisis of family, but by a range of complex contributing factors that can only be grasped with a nuanced and measured analysis. Myopia will get us nowhere.

The question is how do we overcome the simplistic and shortsighted explanations that are dominating the current debate? The first thing we need to do is extend the dialogue between communities and the rarefied corridors of Westminster. A public inquiry will go some way to achieving this and Ed Miliband is right in calling for one. We cannot begin to understand a human action unless we grasp its subjective meaning, what it means for those who performed it. Therefore, some attempt at understanding what motivated the rioters is far better than simply characterizing them as ‘sick’ and mindless. Secondly, it might come as a surprise to some, but those communities directly affected by the riots have a voice and an opinion. Their experiences are crucial to understanding why the riots happened and must be taken into account when policies are being drafted. Finally, we need to acknowledge that we cannot simply arrest our way out of this.

There is a whole web of interconnecting and systemic issues that need addressing. Youth unemployment, though hotly disputed, is around 20%. The scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) will likely worsen the situation. The latest poverty figures suggest that one fifth of the UK populations are affected, with two out of every five ethnic minorities living in a low-income household. Young black men are disproportionately stopped and searched and are four times more likely to be in prison than their white counterparts. This process of criminalization needs urgent attention.

If these facts were not sobering enough, in 2010, the National Equality Panel released a report stating that Britain suffers from deep seated and systematic inequalities, concluding “Economic advantage and disadvantage reinforce themselves across the life cycle, and often on to the next generation”, adding that “whatever the reasons for people’s positions in the rankings of different outcomes, the sheer degree of inequality makes it impossible to create as cohesive a society as they would like.” Admittedly, individuals must take responsibility for their actions and in overstating the systemic determinants one merely denies these young men and women their agency.

This would be wrong. But the problems we face are complex and interconnected and require first and foremost a serious and joined-up analysis that considers a plurality of experience and perspective. Settling for anything less would be to let our politicians off the hook.

Mathieu Milbourne