Riots – a Footnote
So, it’s begun. The dust is settling and parliament has reassembled to discuss what to do about our rioting youth. Curfews have been suggested, expelling ‘criminal families’ from social housing, the removal of face masks and harsher sentencing powers.
And make no mistake, I’m angry about the riots. They were a feast of brutality and selfishness, an orgy of greed and lawlessness and I entirely agree that the perpetrators should be identified and the law enacted, as the law is the only thing we really have that stands between us and the random looting of everything and everyone.
But for god’s sake, please, for god’s sake, let us not have an irrational backlash. Let us not tear up the liberties that make us as a civilized country, let us not dub anyone under 25 a potential criminal, or proclaim that all who have sinned are beyond redemption. I was shocked when a petition demanding that all rioters had benefits stopped reached 100,000 signatures in matter of days – not because I don’t believe there should be justice metted out to the rioters but because it seems like such an irrational act of vengeance, a knee-jerk spasm of retribution rather than a considered policy. Are we to turn the rioters out of their homes? Where will they go then – wander the streets? Squat? Sleep and beg? Are we to cut off their benefits? How will they find food? Theft? Robbery? Muggings? There should be justice, but this seems almost a mob mentality fitting for the events that we, society as a whole, are supposed to be judging and learning from! Are we to censor facebook and twitter? I am entirely in favour of preventing people messaging their friends to incite violence, I believe facebook and twitter should be monitored for people provoking hatred and crime; but then where does it stop? Where is the line between a spontaneous incitement to protest, as happened in Tunisia and Egypt, and an incitement to riot? Who decides the difference between a legitimate gathering for political protest and a bunch of people out for trouble? Who polices this, who makes that final decision, who guards the guardians who we will now set over our speech? I know that these are difficult questions with no perfect answer, but let us not chose the most extreme answer available without pausing to stop, reflect, and think. Let us struggle with our imperfections, rather than just say ‘this must be so’ without any serious thought for the lasting consequences!
And what of the cause of violence? A welfare state, a ‘nanny’ state that allows spongers to thrive off it? A lack of father figures, soft nanny policing (without use of water cannon!) a failure of ethnic communities to integrate? These have all been suggested. No one can pretend that there was a political agenda behind the riots – it was, as established, greed and rage – but ask yourself how you get to the stage where you simply don’t care. To not care for others, for other’s property, for the things you do and the harm you may cause, and, perhaps more selfishly, for the harm that may be caused back at you. To not care that you may go to prison, to not care that you may be turned into the street, to not care that you may be hunted or hurt by the police. Will you tell me that the rioters were born with nothing to live for, and no desire to be part of the community around them? Will you tell me that there was nothing to be salvaged, and in those words forsake the duty of care owed by a community to those who have nothing, and so come to care for nothing?
Look at what these riots did. Look at their rage and their futility. And if we must learn anything, let us please learn that rage is not the answer. Let us stop, and think, and as well as punish, dear god let us question why. That is all I ask.
