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Originally Posted by Amy

...This rioting is rooted in deeper social and economic problems affecting the country. A large proportion of the country's youth feel (Correctly) that they have no real future prospects, after this current government (As with the previous conservative government in the 1980s) has stripped social programmes of funding, slowed economic growth to almost nothing with massive sweeping budget cuts, and has cut off higher education to all but the richest of the population.

When you have one of the highest economic disparities between rich and poor in most of europe (though still NOWHERE near as bad as the US) and then compound the situation of an entire generation who feel (And often quite rightly so) that they have nothing at all to lose, with increasingly aggressive behaviour of police, themselves stressed to breaking point by massive budget cuts, and layoffs, all wondering if their jobs will be the next ones to arbitrarily be dropped, you have a powderkeg, and a lit fuse.

Interestingly, the more northern areas (We consider regions like Manchester to be "the south" even if they think of themselves as "north") have not seen rioting this time around. This seems largely due to our part of the country already having an "us vs them" mentality of hatred towards London, which we see as more of an invading foreign power, and having an almost nationalistic pride in our shared identity and in our cities, rather than nihilistically seeing no value at all in anything.

Originally Posted by smc

Thank you, Amy, for saying what no one else did: that despite the despicable behavior of the rioters, and the fact that such action does nothing to advance the "cause" of those who riot (to the degree that they have a "cause"), the riots are definitely rooted in a socio-economic situation of deep alienation from society. Here in the United States, it has become the norm that ascending generations are worse off than their parents. The economic disparities in this country grow and grow. Young people face a future of temporary labor (what the French rightly call "precarious work") and increasing alienation and atomization. It's no wonder that any spark can lead to conflagration.

This is not to excuse rioters. Individual or group violence is a bankrupt approach to changing the world. The youth of England, just like the youth of the United States, could learn a thing or two from the serious side (i.e., not the Yippies) of the anti-Vietnam War movement and how it was organized, or how the students in France in 1968 united with trade unions and nearly brought down the DeGaulle government.

That?s all a socialist claptrap theory that absolves people of taking responsibility for their own actions. Poverty is no excuse for what happened during the riots.

The media has now started interviewing people that the media calls ?experts? on this. However unless one has experienced poverty then one can hardly be called an expert in how poor people will act. These ?experts? see things only through their own eyes and then imagine how they would act if they were in that situation and then extrapolate that to the poor.

I was born into poverty. I had an alcoholic father who used most of his money to feed his addiction. We were in dire straits before, but when my father died we were even worse off. Later when my mother remarried my step father wanted nothing to do with me and I was treated with indifference at best and open hostility at worst.

We were nowhere near to being considered middle class. We often didn?t have much to eat so to supplement our meals I went hunting and fishing every chance that I had which would be most weekend mornings and sometimes all day Saturday or Sunday. I would do this throughout the year. Depending on the season I would also go fishing or hunting in the evening. I certainly contributed a substantial amount to what we had to eat.

I started working at age thirteen and by the time I was sixteen I was working three part-time jobs as well as going to school.

All this wasn?t all that strange to me as most of my friends were also considered poor. There were distinctions made between my friends and me and the others we knew who would be considered middle class to affluent. Those from the affluent families would have nothing to do with us.

It has been suggested that the young people rioting and committing criminal acts see no hope of improving their lives because they can?t afford to go to university. However, none of my friends nor I ever went to university although many of us certainly wanted to go. University was very expensive and we simply could not afford it. There were very few scholarships available then and those always went to the ones that didn?t need them anyway. Instead my friends and I furthered our education by other means.

According to the ?experts? my friends and I should have been bitter at society and taken our revenge by robbing, looting, burning, destroying, etc. None of us went our rioting. We didn?t blame anyone else for the position that we were in or things that we couldn?t have. We didn?t go out looting, pillaging, burning, or destroying others property. We didn?t maim or kill people. Instead all of us worked hard and pulled ourselves out of poverty. Every one of my friends, from when I was young, and I are now considered middle class and most of us are quite well off. It was hard work and ethics that got us this far in life.