Orderly Britain riots

Martin Henry, Contributor

Placid, civilised, developed, tolerant Britain on the outside has exploded from the inside. Or, more correctly, England has exploded. The absence of solidarity disturbances in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may be speaking volumes about ancient historical cleavages among the 'races' and countries of [Great] Britain.

Despite the veneer of stability and peacefulness, which has now been so rudely shattered, Britain is no stranger to violent internal upheavals, including civil wars and regime change by violent overthrow. The modern predilection, aided and abetted by instant media, not to take history back beyond yesterday, of course, obscures this point.

The massive influx of migrants from former colonies, which were established by characteristic British force and violence, and more recently from post-communist Eastern Europe, has introduced an additional and potent source of tension into British society.

The Economist magazine, given to deeper and broader analysis, like much of the rest of world media, devoted a sizeable chunk of last week's issue to 'Riots in Britain'. In one of its stories, the business magazine noted that: "Britain has a history of contagious rioting. From the Peasants' Revolt in the 14th century through the grain riots of the 18th, to the racial clashes in London in the 1980s and in the north in 2001, people have taken to the streets and to violence for a cause. But this upheaval is a puzzle. How it started is fairly clear; why it spread so quickly and turned into generalised looting is less so."

In fact, The Economist's lead story announced, 'Anarchy in the UK,' with subtitle, 'A bout of violent mindlessness that has shaken Britain's sense of self - and may be exportable.'

The lead story noted that alongside the response of shame by the law-abiding, "There was a jolting bafflement. The law-abiding majority suddenly saw that some of their compatriots were happy to torch cars and buildings, loot shops, and attack firemen and ambulance crews."

The story insightfully noted that, "The confidence trick at the heart of the social order was violently laid bare: it turns out that if sufficient numbers of criminals want to create havoc on the streets, they can. [For] in the absence of internal moral restraints, external ones can only do so much."

We all know what happens when confidence tricks are exposed, like when children learn that there really is no Santa Claus. There is no turning back. Or when Pandora's Box is opened, there is no stuffing back in of the Evils escaped into the world to wreak havoc.

Whither morals?

And moral restraint? Morals and moral restraint are rooted in religion. And Britain, like the rest of Europe, has become a post-Christian state, with secular humanism, consumerism, scientism, hedonism, and statism inadequate substitutes for moral foundations.

The yobs are young people committed to what The Economist calls "violent mindlessness". 'Yob' (boy spelled backwards) is such a linguistically delightful label for the violently mindless young anarchists. The yobbification of Britain and the developed, capitalist, democratic world is on in earnest. The Economist noted the export potential of the violent mindlessness. But there are homegrown varieties in morally bankrupt, satiated societies waiting to explode.

The police lost control of the streets in cities across England. But that only happened because parents and society have already lost control of children and youth who only need a trigger like the shooting by the police of Mark Duggan, a black Briton, in Tottenham, North London, to explode into mindless violence against law and order and against the society itself. Rebels without a cause.

The riot may have begun with a grievance, The Economist concedes. "But unchecked, the violence and looting spawned a sprawl of copycat episodes, a sort of lawless shopping spree punctuated by fewer and fewer references to the alleged police misdeeds. ... Contagious rioting has broken out before ... . This time, however, the complexion of the trouble is different from those earlier flare-ups. It is sheer mindlessness ... ."

As the magazine noted in its Anarchy lead, "There is clearly a cadre of young people in Britain who feel that they have little or no stake in the country's future or their own. The barriers that prevent most youngsters from running amok - an inherent sense of right and wrong; concern for their job and education prospects; shame - seem not to exist in the minds of the rioters. Britain needs to try to understand why that is so.

Sick society

Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament, recalled from summer recess which started in a laid-back Britain before the riots erupted (Cameron himself returned from holidaying in Italy to deal with the crisis), that some elements in the country were "frankly sick".

The poverty argument wears a little thin. One of my Anglo-Jamaican nephews, a resident of Tottenham where the disturbances broke out, dropped out of school and left home as a teenager to occupy his own council flat with a welfare stipend. Poverty has been redefined for Britain and the whole of the developed world and for developing countries like Jamaica. The British riots are no bread riots. They were coordinated through BlackBerry Messenger and other social media.

The riot issue of The Economist carried another story, 'Technology and disorder: The BlackBerry riots'. "As Britons ask themselves what has changed in their country that might have caused these riots," the story says, "one obvious answer stands out: technology. The digital revolution allows people to organise against the authorities - not just in the Middle East, but also in Britain."

Technology as a tool of disorder has a distinguished future and will generate more and more anti-democratic, anti-liberty responses from the embattled authorities as 9/11 has done to the United States and to the rest of the world to varying degrees.

The Economist story, 'The BlackBerry riots', asked, "Rioters used BlackBerrys against the police; can the police use them against rioters?" meaning using legal provisions to make the phone companies hand over traffic data to the police to be used for criminal prosecution. And this data could be combined with closed-circuit television data for identification of rioters. Britain, with the highest density of CCTV, is already the most watched open society in the world.

The business magazine rejoiced that "the imposition of curfews and the deployment of the army were discussed but thankfully not implemented because that sort of response [with which we are very familiar here in Jamaica] would make Britain a different place from the open, liberal country most of its citizens want it to be."

The BBC ran a very helpful story on "the competing arguments used to explain the riots". There were, interestingly, 10 of them. Once upon a time there were Ten Commandments given from Mount Sinai by God Himself. So says an ancient book of tales which few people in Britain believe today but on which the very foundations of their open society were laid governed by the rule of law and with consensual public order the norm.

The BBC 10, patching together commentators' views in other media and those of academic criminologists', were: welfare dependence, social exclusion, lack of fathers [particularly bad among Caribbean Britons), spending cuts, weak policing, racism, gangsta rap and culture, consumerism, opportunism, and technology and social networking.

PERVERTED SOCIAL ETHOS

Here are selected slices: Sir Max Hastings, in an article for the Daily Mail,focused on "a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline - tough love - which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live".

There is a culture of entitlement in the UK, says David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University and a former prison governor. "But it's not just about the underclass - it's about politicians, it's about bankers, it's about footballers. It's not just about a particular class, it permeates all levels of society."

Studies do suggest that living in areas of social deprivation could be a factor, saysMarian FitzGerald, visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent. "But the socially excluded are not always the ones who are rioting - in fact, they are often the ones who are most vulnerable to riots. We need a better-thought-out approach rather than just using social exclusion as an excuse."

According toCristina Odoneof the Daily Telegraph,the riots could be traced back to a lack of male role models: "Like the overwhelming majority of youth offenders behind bars, these gang members have one thing in common: no father at home."

CULTURE OF HATRED

Paul Routledge of the Daily Mirrorblamed "the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs".

Each of the BBC 10 has its merits as a contributing factor. But at the heart of the matter technology-armed young people, bored and jaded in an affluent materialist society and with little sense of purpose and responsibility and even less social control in an age of permissiveness and with no absolute moral centre in an age of moral relativism have run amok and are smashing their own society with what The Economist calls "violent mindlessness". It is a pathological condition: psychological, social, and, most of all, spiritual pathology.

There is more violent mind-lessness to come. And there will be an inevitable anti-democratic, anti-liberty backlash from the authorities desperately seeking to preserve social and economic order in the face of mounting chaos. Liberty, and not just in Britain, is busy working on its own destruction through permissiveness and excess.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.