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Here's a thought:
Riot and disorder have always been a part of the political expression of this country. From the highly organised protest marches that fly out of control, through the street level violence and anger at race motivated police brutality, to the mindless ransacking that springs from a less obviously political place.
What we're seeing here has been seen before. The big differences are that the people concerned are primarily very young. And they've been able to organise a response around looting, using social media. Instead of the atmosphere of a riot stretching across the people in the immediate vicinity, and then other places kicking off as news slowly spreads, this time the atmosphere of a riot was able to spread far from the immediate crowd, into a virtual space which these youngsters live in.
This is no different really to what happens from time to time in Britain, except that it was accelerated beyond anything we've previouisly experienced. What took a year and a half to play out in the 90s, as town centres and housing estates accross the land began to erupt in riots and disorder, with a new spate occurring every few weeks or months, and again in the mid 00's, with race riots in the northern towns, this time happened across three nights, everywhere, simultaneously.
I would not be at all surprised if many of the people involved are not particularly criminal or immoral in their day to day life. And whilst it is ill-articulated, I think somewhere behind their 'it's the rich people's fault' excuse for looting, a genuine political grievance is operating. They may not fully understand it themselves, and it in no way should be taken as a reason not to prosecute criminal behaviour, but it absolutely needs recognising and tackling.
This is not simply a moral decline in our youth. We've been singing that particular ditty for generations. Yea, even unto the middle ages. Nor is it the result of a state that helps people to stay out of work. Because, we've also been singing that ditty for generations, and again, yea even unto the middle ages. The debate now is about the 'Welfare State' and then it was about 'The Parish', 'The Poor Law, and 'The Poor Union'. Then as now, the indigent poor were seen as a feckless and irredeemable underclass. Provide them and their families with shoes and linnen for their clothes and why would they choose to work? Allow a subsistence of existence to be supported by the Parish, and vast swathes of feckless layabouts choose that rather than work. It teaches them to be lazy. It teaches them to be immoral. They are different from us. They can't raise their children properly. Their children are immoral. Poor children, whose parents are little more than beasts that walk.
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