this is soccer hooligan country.
this is yobs'n bovver.
bit o' argy-bargy, innit ?
but its a start...........

I’d suggest we analyse the riots using a two-fold analysis, one that bears in mind both the agency of the individual and the context in which the individual and action emerges.

Taking the first, one certainly arrives at the conclusion that the acts of the rioters were wrong. They were criminal acts against private property and against individuals who bore them no grievance. Accepting the social contract as the expression of the people’s will to be bound by law – for the sake of liberty and peace – one can accept that these acts represent the violation of that contract.

Moving to the second position, that of context, we are forced to analyze things from a completely different perspective. Now, looking at things from this position does not absolve people of their individual responsibilty, but it does provide a window on ‘why’ certain behaviours become normalised and acceptable. In terms of contextual analysis, we can say that all of the areas where rioting broke out are on the poverty line – the Guardian’s datablog convincingly makes the case that there is a strong link between poverty and crime in regard to the riots (Mapping the Riots with Poverty, Guardian: 10 August 2011). So we ask the question: where does this poverty come from? Does it have anything to do with austerity cuts to benefits? Does it have anything to do with the increasing gap between rich and power caused by a rabid neoliberalism? Does it have any relation to the trillions of pounds handed to banks – with no strings attached – in 2008 and beyond? Does it have anything to do with the increase in VAT, ofen regarded as a tax on the poor?

Shifting gears, we are then forced to ask some broader cultural questions. We might ask whether such children have grown up in a culture of violence. We might inquire as to whether they are the victims of a culture built entirely around a profit motive? We might go even further and ask – for that is all we may do – whether the community from which such individuals emerge feels represented by the current political class; whether they feel they have a stake in society or not? More specific to the immediate context, we need to ask whether the death of Mark Duggan and the police assault on a 16 year old girl (two known causes of the riots) triggered this violence? This requires that we analyse the deplorable relation between the Met and black communities in London.

Finally, we need to ask whether these events were forewarned. Did we not know that something of this scale was bound to break out, especially as the gap between rich and poor in the UK is among the greatest in the western world? Did we not know that by closing down youth clubs, that a general state of lawlessness might emerge? Did we not secretly know that for every pound printed into existence and for every bailout handed over to the City of London, that the poorest in our society would be hit with higher inflation and cuts to public services? Did we really think that such measures would lead to calm and not violence?

There is a far greater chance that we will arrive at a ‘series’ of causes behind the riots and that such causes can, in part, be analysed in relation to the cuts agenda being imposed by the present Tory government. This does not absolve people from acts of criminality, nor does it absolve the law from punishing individuals in a commensurate manner to the crimes they have committed. But it does provide us with a wider view and context to an otherwise inexplicable event. The acts of individuals are not uncaused. They do not take place in some sort of vacuum. Rather, they are usually the result of environmental, psychological, social and economic factors. To displace any of these in the hope of constructing a single homology of events is to misunderstand the complex relation between individuals and the dense social milieu from which individual actions emerge.

If I remember correctly the Met made a lot of arrests about a month ago claiming they were rounding up drug dealers intent on supplying drugs at the Notting Hill Carnival.

They may indeed have had drugs, but how could they have all been planning to sell them at Notting Hill? carnival. As I have great doubts they told the police, it could mean they were making it up.

Surely our Met wouldn't make things up to give the poor a reason to riot at carnival? Surely they wouldn´t shoot an unarmed man? Surely a bunch of them wouldn't kick a sixteen-year old black girl lying in the street?

That sort of behaviour might cause a riot, and who would want that?

Drivel

A dreadful one sided piece of creative writing.

One sided, bias and often factually incorrect.

Amazed the New Statesmen allowed this to be published.

Tom Poynton, I rarely have any use for Pilger. He's a creepy posuer who demades to be seen as the new Jeremiah. But he's got a point here. The poor can see the rich rob the whole society with impunity, heck they get appause and honnors for their paracitism. The police refuse to make even a pretence of fairness. As bad as it can be on this side of the pond, you guys in the "Mother Country" are dealing with a society and a social hierarchy (which is spite of some respectable social programs we lack over here) is about ritually abusing the poor and the workers. The young people who live in comunities were the jobs left two generations ago are on the bottom of a brutal social pyramid, and everyone abuses them in order to feel better about their misery.

Explosions are the resault of fustration mixed with total contempt. Expect more.