What societal problems have the London riots exposed?

One of the defining characteristics of globalization is its tendency to produce winners and losers by polarizing, economically, socially and politically, within and between nations.

The appearence of severe inequalities – in incomes, opportunities, and future prospects – after decades of generally narrowingun gaps, has been one of the most worrisome consequences. The triumph of neoliberalism has social democracy on the run most everywhere, and not least in Canada.

For the past several years I have spent  about a month a year teaching at the London Academy of Diplomacy. During those very pleasant interludes, it has struck me that London has become a world city primus inter pares, a cosmopolitan global crossroads and network node for business, finance, culture and education.

There is really no place quite like it, and these features make the rioting there and in other UK cities all the more disturbing.

For those who are in a position to benefit from it’s status as a world city,  London presents vast possibilities and is a wonderful place to live and work.

For those stuck on the bottom, disenfranchised and alienated, with little to lose and less to look forward to, desperate measures hold considerable appeal. On the surface it may appear as thuggery and criminality, but those were not merchant bankers or international financiers in the streets.

It was mainly the underclass, and at a more profound level, the violence may also be interpreted as a response to growing distributive injustice and a failure of political vision.

In combination with the market meltdown, near complete political dysfunction in the USA, and the extreme vulnerability of the highly centralized systems upon which globalization depends,  we are entering uncharted territory.

We may also be sitting on a powderkeg, with the disturbances in the UK symptomatic only of the fuse igniting.

If that observation is even close to the mark, then things may actually get worse, and possibly very much so.

Something has to give.

A radical course correction seems essential… if it is not already too late.

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Theories and agendas abound. A crisis over values is exposed at long last. This ain’t Tahrir Square about rights, or Athens about welfare cuts, or, thank God, Watts about race. It’s about anti-authority organized gangs igniting mindless mobs grabbing what they can while they can because the din of materialistic pleasure and self-gratification drowns out any other noise in British media and urban streets. Yes, there is alienation but it is a sense of alienation from the bally-hooed entitlements of the instantly rich and famous in a celebrity-driven culture, where dumbed-down TV is handed over to insane “reality” shows, and preposterous pay-offs handed to nobodies in high and low finance.

So, this was the rioters’ own “reality” show, empty and destructive. The UK needs positive role-models that are real (not Kate and Will), and institutions – parliament, the Police, banks, media, – need to heal their degraded selves, and regain credibility before “community” can trump crimes of instant opportunity. When people trash their own neighbourhoods, it’s either deep anger or something much more shallow. This is the latter,  but good folk from the ‘hoods are pushing back. The easy talk now is for a crack-down, but the deeper issue is cultural, includinig about parenting, and public schools as much as it is about law and order or jobs.

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The London and now more widespread riots in England have displayed a major problem in the western world over the past thirty years or so…the slow disappearance of low-skill jobs in our society resulting in no hope for those in that category, declining relative income (however defined) compared to others in the society in which they live, fewer social programs for training, less expenditure on public goods (parks, schools, security, etc.), and in the British context a lingering social stratification which further constrains prospects of upward mobility even in the best of circumstances.

Desperate people do desperate things; the herd instinct for humans is still alive and well—social groupings can easily get out-of-control, especially with the social media able to provide information and focus—behavioural practices generally accepted in our society count for very little in these circumstances.

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The riots in London and other UK cities, although shocking, tell us little or nothing about that country’s social problems.  To be sure, those problems are serious and are becoming more severe is this period of economic hardship.  But urban riots are not primarily about protesting social conditions.

In an influential 1970 book about urban problems in the U.S., The Unheavenly City, the political scientist Edward Banfield wrote a chapter on “Rioting for Fun and Profit.”  His point, demonstrated with ample evidence, was that the people setting fires and looting stores in urban riots were not the ones who were deeply concerned about racial injustice.  They were mostly people, especially young males, who liked setting fires and looting stores.  A racially charged event, such as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, was for them mainly a signal. It told them that there would be large crowds in the streets, and that it would be a good time to have some fun raising hell, and maybe even to bring home a new TV.

The London riots are significant, however, in a very different way:  They have illustrated how much social networking technologies are facilitating and amplifying the signaling effect of any riot-relevant event.  The rapid spread of rioting is nothing more than the negative side of the same spontaneous organizing capability that suddenly made it possible to bring down authoritarian governments in the Middle East.  For both good and ill, it is getting much easier for scattered groups of like-minded individuals to coordinate action.

Governments will have to learn to monitor the organizing and move swiftly to arrive in force before the mobs.

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There clearly are “societal problems”. We know most of them well – the growing gap between rich and poor, a lack of economic opportunity for youth and immigrants failure to integrate. But there is something more, something we know less about. That is the readiness of too many of today’s male youth to engage in violent destruction as a thrill and the sense of entitlement of people that it is OK to steal electronic goodies and clothing. Many of these are not the poor and oppressed – indeed they co-ordinate activity on their BlackBerrys and wear, and steal more, high end sneakers. Prime Minister David Cameron is right to take a tough line on criminality. Somebody also tell me why people are charged within hours in London, but not in Vancouver. Finally I have sympathy for the police – they are damned if they don’t and damned if they do. Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking!

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For all the sound and fury, the mayhem was remarkably inarticulate.  I’m not sure that it can even be explained by unemployment and deprivation so much as boredom and a desire to get a piece of the action.  To call it a Jacquerie would be to suggest political overtones that seem utterly missing.  As a display of the human capacity to act without regard for consequences, for oneself or others, it was more like the recent Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver.  Perhaps the most disturbing revelation was how quick the authorities were to express their fear of the social media that were so recently celebrated in the Arab Spring.

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You might call them the Blackberry hooligans given their dependence on the super safe encryption services of the Canadian-made mobile phone. From Georgian times–portrayed in Hogarth’s prints of that era–to the 20th century–George Orwell wrote about them–to the present, hooliganism has been part of British culture. Todays riots are fueled by unprecedently high unemployment rates among British youth (40 percent by some estimates), and deep rooted racial tensions, which it only took a match to ignite. The scale of the violence and mayhem have rocked Britain to the core and also become a political football in the coalition politics of David Cameron’s embattled Conservative-led government. It has taken a firm hand to stop the rioting and looting. But it will take a lot more than that to address the roots of this problem.

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