Responding to the riots

We’re in the third day of riots now, with few predicting that they will end anytime soon. Even cities that haven’t experienced them yet are preparing for them. On an anecdotal level, the presence of police cars and vans in Cardiff today is particularly noticeable.

That said, three days in, we still have very little understanding of their true cause. Our ignorance however is not matched by commentators. Prominent left-wingers such as Ken Livingstone are claiming they are caused by the cuts; others, like Darcus Howe, are claiming they are caused by anti-black racism. On the right, Damian Thompson blames social networking, (which in turn somehow means that UK Uncut are morally culpable), whereas Christine Odone puts the blame solely on single parent families. Brendan O'Neill knows that everybody else is wrong and blames the welfare state. Other causes espoused are muslims (somehow), as well as the lack of ice-ages in sub-saharan Africa (no, really).

We can't say how much this is caused by political issues (if at all), how much of this caused by general sociological trend or trends (and if so, which), how much is the product of local issues, how much is the result of very recent events, how much of it is maximised by media coverage (and what type) or how much it is simply criminal looting.

In short, we simply don’t know.

About the only thing we can be certain is that it is highly unlikely to be caused by One Big Thing. Declarations to the contrary – which are frequently couched in visionary-victimhood terms ‘but the establishment will strike down anyone [i.e. them] who’s brave enough to admit the truth’ – are not only baseless, but tell us nothing other than what their political agendas and prejudices are.

These riots – and our knowledge is so lacking, that it’s far from certain that that’s the correct term for them – will surely end. They will end by a mixture of sensible, effective responses by police and especially the public – the latter of which is hearteningly coming out in real force and numbers. The powers that the police have are perfectly sufficient, as the numbers of police available. After all, 5000 police officers were on hand for the Royal Wedding.

Demands to bring in the army are ludicrous, as David Allen Green pointed out. There are no grounds for thinking that they will be better informed or better trained to deal with social disturbances in urban Britain compared to the police, and far more grounds for thinking that the reverse is true.

Demands to bring more violent and martial responses, and to return to a more fear-based relationship between the police and the public,  (which is what one former Lib Dem candidate from rural Wales called for today) are also badly informed. It's not as if there were no riots in the eighties, seventies, sixties or fifties. These demands become particularly bizarre when justified on the grounds that they’re used in Northern Ireland – as if that is the sort of community-police model we wish to replicate.

Knee-jerk reactions, claiming certainty when there is ignorance, won’t help us. Let the police do their job, let the public come out in social solidarity against the rioters, and once this wave is over, let’s try to understand it properly.

In all probability, the causes won’t fit neatly into an exclusively Left/Right or traditional/modern framework, nor will the solutions to prevent such riots in future.

But whatever we lose in certainty and neatness, we will surely gain in clarity, accuracy and effectiveness.