I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we're a little fed up of the politicians using these riots as an excuse to score points off each other. The Conservatives try to make every attempt that Labour makes at explaining the root cause of the riots as a condoning of the riots. I'm thinking in particular of Diane Abbot's comments being chopped up to make it look as if she did exactly that, which she very clearly didn't - and they refused to apologise to her for it. Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, appears to be the only person who knows how and why the riots kicked off. He rightly called Boris Johnson out about his flip-flopping; Johnson agreed to the cuts in police, and has only changed his mind with the benefit of hindsight. Livingstone would never have done that.
David Cameron as can be expected seems more interested in spouting out meaningless rhetoric. He calls for firmer penalties for breaking the law, he calls for harsher police tactics and has even called in a US ‘supercop’ who - no offence to my American friends - does NOT reflect the needs of the British public diddly-squwit. Moreover the US police force are not really the ideal people to be asking on riot control, and while I have never liked to defend the British police, I can understand out police's frustration at Cameron's pointless and potentially harmful actions statements about their inability to handle the situation. It was them who ultimately put down the riots, not him. Even if they were slow to react to the situation, the best response Cameron can expect from his empty statements about the police are "pot. kettle. black."
Where was he and the rest of the cabinet when these riots were going on? On holiday! While London was literally burning, he was playing his fiddle on a beach in Italy. Many of us haven't been able to afford a holiday in years. But I don't envy them because I'm happy to go without a holiday to pay for other things I need and if I were to choose a holiday, it would be to visit my family in Scotland or Lancashire, not a fancy villa in Italy. It's the fact that Cameron, nor the rest of the cabinet, chose to come back until it became so serious that to have no come came would have been more damaging to THEM rather than us. The damage has already been done TO US.
Ed Miliband has been shaky at best. His initially reaction was to do as Cameron did and parrot the horror and disgust that all of us had. He managed to do it with a considerably greater level-headedness and calmness than Cameron did, not appears to be trying to mimic the public reaction in a bid to make us feel as if he is "one of us", but his words were ultimately as meaningless. After all who here ever denied that a lack of responsibility was what drove the rioters to commit their crimes? It was basically stating the bleeding obvious and any moron who believes what they read in the Daily Mail could have said the same thing.
In his defence Miliband, unlike Cameron, has moved on from this point and is trying now to bring us the question of what led to these riots happening. Is it to do with the cuts? Is it to do with the lack of services and welfare for young people now the coalition government have cut them to save money? Is it due to a lack of responsibility in the upper classes amongst the politicians and the bankers, who likewise gambled people's money and stole from the public purse for their own greed? Is it due to the fact that the under-class have been neglected and ignore for the past 30 years since Thatcher closed down the factories? How many of these factors have led to the production of careless, disenchanted young people who have no respect for society or law?
At least these are the questions you feel that Ed Miliband wants to ask but feel he can't at the risk of offending the middle-classes or walking into a trap by the Conservatives that any attempt to find reasons for why the riots started equals condoning the riots. Yet no one ever denied that smashing up shops was wrong - and Miliband, and the Labour MPs of affected areas, and the rest of the Labour Party need to point that out. There is no doubt that criminal activity was the primary concern of some of the rioters. The riots that took place in Manchester is particular seemed to be motivated by just that. But the initial riots in London started when a peaceful protest over the shooting of a man named Mark Duggen in Tottenham got out of hand. There is no doubt in my mind that class struggle and anger at the current government's actions at least partly contributed to the riots. Even if they didn't, the issue has risen now and will not go away no matter how many times David Cameron appeals to mindless rhetoric about tougher crime. Ed Miliband needs to embrace the question of the link between lack of opportunities and crime, and show more clearly that he is willing to address it.
Ed Miliband said there needed to be an inquiry, and their does. It is the only language that politicians seem to understand. He said he would start it if Cameron didn't - so get starting Miliband because Cameron is no closer to moving away from his rants about lawlessness and punishing the people who rioted by taking away their council houses, which is a frankly counterproductive action to take to keep people off crime. Ed Miliband needs to call on the support of the working class and under classes who did not riot. They need help organisations protesting peacefully against government sanctions that Labour have gone on record as condemning, such as the harshness of the government cuts. They need to rally these people who feel that they have previously been abandoned by all governments and made it clear that they are the party willing to work on improving society on all levels.
I wrote this comment on the Labour Party Facebook feed when Ed Miliband made his statement about responsibility:
If I were to recommend anything to Ed and the Labour Party, it would be for them to come out and confess that the under-class of British society has been ignored by them (and that their conditions have been worsened more than ever under the current government) - and this lack of opportunity, of purpose and of pride has led to development of emotionally crippled young people who lack the respect for society that most people have... because society has abandoned them and so they take pleasure in smashing up society.
Yes, yes - there is no excuse for criminality but happy people don't riot. These people take pleasure out of criminality because they have nothing else and putting them in prison is nothing more than an occupational hazard. It is time the government tackled poverty in this country and created more jobs for these young people; skilled, unskilled and professional jobs for ALL the classes, so we do not create another generation of young people with a weak work ethic. And I say that as a young person myself, fearing the prospect of not being able to find work once I leave university... imagine what it’s like for teenagers from poor families who barely got their GCSEs. Where are the jobs for them?
An attitude of conservativism, to simply lock up these people and then forget about them, will not help society overall. Those in power need to look at the lives these people lead and ask themselves "what has gone wrong and how do we fix it?"
I still think that argument is true. These poverty issues have been hoodwinked for too long and people from more privileged backgrounds have taken advantage of the majority for a long time while completely blocking out even the existence of Britain's underclass. I agree that crime should pay - but there is no denying that this type of disorder has been going on in poorer communities and ignored by the ruling elite for too long. Moreover the middle classes have not helped as there seems to be this assumption amongst some people that once you earn more than the average person does (about £20,000 a year) you are no longer of the same thinking as you were when you only earned £15,000 a year and therefore have more to gain by voting Conservative at the next election. In reality most floating voters like these, and member of the working class who also vote Conservative, are really voting for policies like anti-immigration and anti-EU than anything else, in which case most of them would probably vote UKIP under any other voting system than first-past-the-post. In some cases people just vote for the Conservative Party because people feel that Labour has "had their turn" and now it’s their turn.
It is understandable why the social question has come up following the riots. When the lower classes are caught between the whims of the centre-left Labour movement that spends money to increase services and the centre-right who cut services to save money, it is understandable also that ordinary people have grown to resent government as a whole regardless of who they are or what they do.
These riots should serve as a wake-up call to everyone that we need to look at our society and wonder why it has come to be that children think it is fun to smash up shops. Don’t be lazy and say ‘Blame the parents!’ because odds are on these parents are just as down and out and disenchanted as their kids are. Where do you think these kids got it from? And it is wrong to stereotype the whole class. When I say these riots need to make people think about where most of these kids come from, I’m talking about learning from it to try and prevent these kids from doing it again. You can’t expect to treat them rough now and think they will learn from their mistakes. David Cameron’s meaningless, empty words do nothing to help society – and will help people even less if his council house, benefits and harsher sanctions ideas (which he appears to have dreamed up as a result of looking at one of those annoying e-petitions).
Take away people’s homes and livelihood but don’t look into the problem that festers underneath it all – you are going to generate more crime than you already have. It will generate more distrust and hatred of the police, and the fear of them will lead to people reaffirming the rule that ‘you don’t grass.’
But this is all meaningless at the end of the day. Eventually people will forget about this and become angry at something else. David Cameron will decide another policy is his top priority and nothing will change – unless someone else in a high authority forces the changes to be made.
