David Cameron, taking charge. Photocredit: Brett Jordan http://www.flickr.com/photos/x1brett/6031660085/sizes/m/in/photostream/
The riots that have engulfed Britain over the last few days have left many reeling with shock. Beginning in Tottenham, a borough of London, apparently in reaction to the killing of a young man called Mark Duggan, they then spread, motivated by greed, to other boroughs as well as other cities in England. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, recalled Parliament especially on Thursday, telling assembled MPs “This is a time for the country to pull together.”
Cameron spoke forthrightly, conceding that there were not enough police on the streets, and that the police had treated the riots as a public order issue rather than a criminal one. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, however, claimed that the police had done the right thing.
David Cameron vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice: “And to the lawless minority, the criminals who have taken what they can get, I say this, ‘We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done,’” and he also vowed to rebuild Britain’s image before next year’s Olympic Games. Wider powers, he insisted, could be given to the police: curfews, the power to ask suspects to remove face masks, and possible restrictions to social media. He promised to restore morality to public life. A £20 million support scheme has been set up, and there will be tax breaks and deferrals for businesses that were caught up in the troubles.
The looters, meanwhile, have been receiving their sentences as the courts sit all night in emergency sessions. In Manchester, many of the youths in court have “walked away” with referral offers.
The Daily Mail was up in arms about the “middle-class” rioters: businessman’s daughter Laura Johnson, university graduate Natasha Reid, and musician Stefan Hoyle, who stole a violin. Johnson is an A* student studying at Exeter University; she’s been granted bail as long as she wears an electronic tag. Reid’s mother claims her daughter is “baffled by her criminal behaviour” – she stole a TV, but “she already has a 27-inch TV in her bedroom.” Nicolas Robinson was a 23-year-old electrical engineer student who was given six months for stealing a case of water from a Lidl supermarket. Others included an opera student and a baptist mentor. Whilst The Daily Mail was gunning for harder sentences, The Guardian, however, took the line that rough justice will be meted out, fearing also that the sentences were politically motivated.
- Winston Smith, a youth worker, writing in The Daily Mail was outraged, claiming “the criminal justice system in this country is broken.” Nothing will happen to these youths – “and what’s worse, they know it.” Whilst the adults will get their dues, children will get “the ultra-soft, kid-gloves treatment.” These “underage rioters” won’t get custodial sentences, and even if they do, they’ll spend their time watching TV. Surveillance systems are useless. The message given to youths is that they have “nothing to fear”. “There are no boundaries to their actions, with or without any supposed crackdown by David Cameron. And so they will riot again.”
- It’s not just the rioters, said Peter Oborne in The Daily Telegraph. This level of criminality is closely linked to “moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society.” There’s a culture of deceit and cheating, even among the rich. Yet we “celebrate people who live empty lives”, and idolise tax-avoiders like Sir Richard Branson and Sir Philip Green. Politicians “are just as bad.” Just look at the greediness of their expense claims, not to mention David Cameron’s hiring of the tainted Andy Coulson. “Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain.” The problems don’t just exist in inner cities. Greed extends everywhere: “It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.”
- We need more than punishment, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. We need to talk to the rioters – understand who they are, why some stood back, why some took part. The government must “commission a proper sociological analysis of the rioters and what they did to our country this week.” We shouldn’t turn our backs on them, but “take our outrage and shock as signs that something has been festering in our midst for a long time that we have neither understood nor addressed at all well.”
- Agreed, said Gavin Knight on The Daily Beast, giving an American perspective. I’ve been an embedded journalist with police in Manchester, London and Glasgow for two years – “I could tell this rage and violence had been brewing for years.” The inner cities have been riven by unemployment and hard drugs. Another factor is “intergenerational disadvantage being passed on”. Not all of these people are thugs. But even amongst the more articulate and aspirational, fights and horror is the norm. “It’s just everyday life for this lost UK generation.”