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WEB EXCLUSIVE: These rioters are Tony Blair's children

13 August 2011

Nihilism and disorder have been fostered by the state

On the third day of the London riots I received a telephone call from Mash, a member of a Brixton gang who I befriended three years ago. He was standing outside an electronics shop in Clapham, watching the looting. I could hear shouts, glass breaking but never a police siren. I urged him to go home. ‘Harri man,’ he remonstrated, his voice hoarse with emotion, "You don’t get to do this every day. You do your thing, and you don’t get arrested. It’s wild and exciting. These few days, it’s our time."

The riots engulfing areas of London and other cities this week are not about poverty or race. They are about young men like Mash who are barely literate, unemployed, with no future and nothing to lose. For them it is suddenly a dream come true. Their favourite video games have become a reality. They have got what they never had before – power, a sense of achievement and lots of goodies. Most of us want the same thing. The difference is we can get them without setting London ablaze.

I met Mash three years ago, when I interviewed black Caribbean and white working class boys around the country – the very boys who recently took charge of our streets – for a think-tank report on why these boys are failing. During my investigations, I got to know one south London gang in particular. Am I surprised these riots have taken place? Not at all. I am only surprised they did not happen sooner. In fact so convinced was I of the danger that I stocked up on tinned food, fixed my old fashioned, wooden shutters and bought a baseball bat. I am glad I did. Last night a gang carrying machetes were on patrol only two streets away.

This is no left wing, hand-wringing series of excuses for acts of violence and criminality. But unless we understand the causes of this anarchy and the role that government has played, how can we put it right?

The young men I interviewed had very obviously failed to make the transition to manhood and a successful adult life. Their failure leaves them disengaged from society and its values. The majority find themselves trapped in an extended, semi-criminal adolescence well into their 20s and 30s. The former Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, has been quick to blame this sudden explosion of violence on Conservative tax cuts. He has a nerve. These young men came of age during the thirteen years of Labour. They are Blair’s children and the Left’s creation. It is not deprivation that has stunted their lives, but the policies of the previous government in three key areas – school, work and home. As one boy said to me, "I did not want this life. It just happened to me." Here is how.

To understand the mayhem on our streets look no further than a set of figures on literacy rates that came out a week before the riots began. Teaching a child to read and write is not difficult or expensive. Poorer countries than ours manage to do it. The statistics in the UK are staggering. A full 63 per cent of white working class boys, and just over half of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below. How does that translate to violence on our streets? Humiliated in lessons, 14 the young men I interviewed either dropped out or were excluded. They then spent their time hanging around on the streets – only turning up to school to sell drugs or stolen goods

Illiteracy is a life sentence. Studies show that about half of the prison population has a reading age below that of an 11 year old. Of the South London Gang I met three years ago, all bright but only semi-literate, three are now in prison. Bigs, the former leader of one of Brixton’s most notorious gangs received his first prison sentence at 15. As he told me: "Other people go from school to university. We go from school to prison. I thought I would be dead by 30."

Reading failure is just one example of how our educational establishment puts their cherished beliefs first and the child a very distant second. They emphasise what ought to work. They do not investigate or accept the evidence of what actually gives teenage boys the traits needed to thrive: discipline, structure, plenty of exercise and something in which to identify and take pride in, which, ironically, many only find in gangs. As one teacher from East London told me, "I am instructed to put into place educational initiatives for which there is no educational evidence whatsoever." Faced with a child who is incapable of "directing his own learning", teachers will question what is wrong with the child or blame his background, not their teaching.

Over and over again, the previous government put the interests of teaching unions above those of pupils. Even with such dismal educational results from our poorest children (only one in six white boys on free school meals, for example, have mastered the three Rs) just 12 teachers out of a work force of 450,000 have been suspended for incompetence in the last nine years. As Tuggy Tug, the leader of the gang who is now in prison said, "The teachers don’t even try. They only care about the wage at the end of the year." The casualties of an education system based on wishful thinking now fill our prisons and our benefit queues. But they come to the national attention only now, when they are causing mayhem on our streets.

The second factor is the change in Britain’s job market. Forty years ago a young man like Tuggy could leave school at 16 without few, if any, qualifications – then get a job in a factory and at 19 support a wife and child. Now there are far fewer such jobs in our economy. This leaves working class black and white boys particularly vulnerable to the other major change in the job market – immigration. Under Labour, the arrival of large numbers of skilled capable immigrants willing to work for low pay has hit them hard and left them sidelined. According to the ONS, of the 1.8 million new jobs created over the Labour years, 99 per cent went to immigrants. Since David Cameron came to power, the figure is 82 per cent.

This invidious combination of poor schools and immigration goes a long way to explaining why, for so many looters, there is no choice other than the dole and criminality. What do we think happens to boys like Mash who emerge from a school where only 7 per cent of the pupils at that time got five good GSCEs? What future can he possibly have? As he puts it: "School shatters your dreams before you get anywhere."

This situation is compounded by the effect of benefits. Far from lifting these young men out of poverty, it bolts down the hatch. Over and over again, I have found myself in court speaking on behalf of young men who have tried to get jobs, been laid off then got into council tax arrears having lost their benefits. Another young man finally got a job, only to be told by his Job Centre advisor not to take it. After the loss of his rent, council tax and utility payments he would have been £30 worse off.

As for motivation, Swagger, who is in his thirties and on incapacity benefit, shrugged and said: “Of course immigrants are motivated. I seen on the TV the houses they build back home with what they earn here. If I could buy a nice little house with two bedrooms and a garden in London on a minimum wage, I’d be motivated too.” At the same time the catering trade alone has recruited 10,000 workers from outside Europe to work in kitchens or as porters or back of house staff – all jobs the young men I know could have done, despite their illiteracy.

The young men now in charge of our streets frighten us because they have such total disregard for our values. But then they have disengaged from society for a reason. They see nothing it for them. And in this they are quite right. Semi-literate, in competition with skilled and motivated immigrants, they are not qualified for low paid work as a first step for something better and an independent adult existence. The overwhelming attitude of all the young man was despair at the prospect of a lifetime dependent on benefits. Mash summed up all their futures, “I know men of 40 doing nothing but drink and drugs all day. I don’t blame them,” he shook his head angrily, “But it’s too early for me. I don’t want to be beat like that.” Unfortunately he is.

The third place where government intervention has been so disastrous is the home. Politicians are now appearing on TV demanding parents to keep their children under curfew. I wonder what planet they are living on. Certainly not the same as the boys I know, for whom grown-ups have been absent or ineffectual. The boys do not even get fed properly, let alone supervised. They are not alone. In a recent survey 49 per cent of British parents did not know where their children were in the evenings or with whom. Some 45 per cent of 15 year old boys spent four or more evening a week hanging about ‘with friends’ compared to just 17 per cent in France. Tuggy Tug, the leader of the gang said of his friends, “I get more from them than I ever did from my family.” His recent jail sentence was his first experience of spending time with adult males.

Nearly every one of the young men I interviewed had a young, single mother. Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Despite the huge amount of evidence of the harm this causes children (mothers of children on the ‘at risk’ register, for example, are five times more likely to be single, teenage mothers – boys are more likely to join gangs and commit crime) the Labour government made single motherhood an attractive proposition. Since 1997, a single mother of two children has seen her benefits increase by a staggering 85 per cent.

To accuse these young girls of being feckless is unjust. They are merely responding to the economics of the situation. They are as much victims of the crisis in our schools and the perverse influence of benefits as teenage boys. They have grasped the consequences of our poor education system. Whereas boys take to crime, girls get pregnant. The government have put young girls in a position where the only career open to them is to have children, whether they want to or not and regardless of whether or not they are good mothers. The state has taken over the role of both husband and father and, as it is all too clear, have failed at both. We can watch the effects of that policy play out on our streets every night this week.

But such visible failure may, finally, make us address the role of the welfare state, just as the Los Angeles riots of 1992 helped to create the climate for welfare reform four years later in the States. Sadly, Britain has proved far, far better than America at ignoring the warning signs.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the telephone, Mash was giving me the latest update. Usually confined to one small area, he was relishing the freedom of being able to move around London without being attacked by other gangs, "Only people to worry about is the feds," he said then added, chillingly, "But the feds are scared, Harri. We can see it in their eyes. They are scared 100 per cent." And that is why we should be getting very scared indeed.

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Tom Callaghan

August 11th, 2011 12:35pm Report this comment

I spend a lot of time in Kyrgyzstan, one of the world's poorest countries, one without a social safety net and where people in the capital hold down two jobs to earn less than ten pounds a day. And yet the literacy rate is almost 100%. I wonder why...

Sally Weale

August 11th, 2011 12:52pm Report this comment

I blame feminism.

Dominic Brenton

August 11th, 2011 1:53pm Report this comment

Thank you, a very sobering article that ought to be required reading across the political spectrum. John Major's call, much derided at the time, for a 'return to those core values, time to get back to basics' now seems alarmingly prophetic. As he continued: 'to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on other people and the state'.

bojimbo

August 11th, 2011 2:49pm Report this comment

Refer writer Frank Chalk ; teachers are not allowed to discipline children , they do not wish to be taught .

Newbritannia

August 11th, 2011 5:42pm Report this comment

An excellent and refreshing read, thank you. Whilst it is clear that we need to overhaul the education system to prevent future generations from being excluded from the jobs market, might I venture to sugest a solution for the current genereation, who have already left school?

We are currently faced with paying a lot of cash to send vandals and looters to prison, where they learn new criminal method and get access to hard drugs. What if we changed our definition of what a prison is, to make it somewhere that they could learn a trade and work? Heck, it might even pay for itself!

More detail here: http://newbritanniaindustry.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/working-9-to-5-what-a-way-to-make-a-living%e2%80%a6in-prison/

phil

August 11th, 2011 7:04pm Report this comment

I hope the author of this article will be passing on details of her looting friends to the police.

2trueblue

August 11th, 2011 7:39pm Report this comment

I agree with the fact that they are Blairs children. Born, bred and fed in his time. No aspiration, no inspiration and no education. Benefits were meant to assist those who were unable to fend for themselves. Blair/Brown made it a lifestyle choice. They also were in charge of the most corrupt parliament of our time.

I disagree with the fact that they have no choice, that the boys take to criminality and the girls get pregnant. Both of these are the easy option and once you set about condoning it as the only choice, you have little to offer in the way of solutions.

Man in a Shed

August 11th, 2011 8:36pm Report this comment

This concept of "Blair's children" is one we must nail to national conciousness.

The great danger we are facing is that left wing commentators will talk much longer than right wing ones will. Its amazing that anything other than the left wing orthodoxy is getting air time right now - but in a months time you'll only hear about cuts and spending as the solutions as self satisfied Guardian readers keep coming back to Radio 4 and Newsnight studios.

We really need to nail them this time or the consequences will be frightening.

Viv Evans

August 11th, 2011 8:41pm Report this comment

Are there any literacy classes in our prisons - and if not, why not?

It is shameful that so many of these boys, black or white, leave school illiterate.

Edward

August 11th, 2011 9:50pm Report this comment

The poisonous fruits of the 1960s.

Miamia

August 11th, 2011 10:24pm Report this comment

While the points Harriet makes are absolutely correct, does it really have to be so pointedly focused on party political blame? This is not the fault of any one party - and to focus on this as a means of political point scoring is hardly constructive. The fact is, these children have been badly failed by not only the education system, but a culture based on material goods and greed.

While I do not condone the violence, we have to accept that our society is indeed 'sick' and getting sicker. Things will only get worse without addressing the fact that we live in a deeply divided society, where so many young people have no hope of escaping from the ghettos they live in, whilst others enjoy every advantage.

Denial of the growing inequality of opportunity and wealth in this country is not only morally wrong, but exceedingly dangerous. We cannot afford to simply label these children 'mindless thugs' and 'feral rats.' They are people too, and deserve the same chances in life as their wealthier counterparts.

daifromwales

August 11th, 2011 11:28pm Report this comment

Escellent article - should be required reading. 2trueblue condemns the viewpoint ('that does not excuse them') - he, too, is guilty of the wishful thinking that has plagued the education system and left-leaning politicians for decades.

Wishful thinking? I remember so clearly the day that our new headmaster in 1968 abolished corporal punishment - were we kids happy? No. We all merely had contempt for his weakness. We reckoned discipline would rapidly collapse - and so it did, as did the educational performance of the entire school population.
But the complete lack of job prospects for those whose strength is their brawn and not their brain is a much bigger problem now than it was then. When I worked on a building site holiday job in 1968, a gang of a dozen men offloaded fine finished facing bricks from a lorry by hand to ensure no damage. That is done today by the lorry driver all my himself. You cannot even turn up on a building site and ask for a job - you must have the correct kit, training, certificates etc. Students don't do holiday jobs on building sites - they go on gap year projects to nations like India who are rapidly overtaking us anyway.
It's hard to see how labour intensive jobs for people with poor education attainment will ever reappear in the UK. We even have a tory MP who is scandalised by the fact that unqualified (and possibly illiterate - how ghastly!) girls can be hairdressers even though they have not passed examinations. When we have what I consider to be silly state-centred communist intellectual snobs like him in charge, the poor must carry on getting poorer. (How dare he be a Tory MP!)

jenny barnes

August 12th, 2011 9:35am Report this comment

One of the few articles I've seen on this that clearly points to how our capitalist economy has disconnected a large section of the population from jobs and society. Yes, they're being kept alive on welfare, but it's not a life, really. All those basic jobs - gone to China / India because capital is now hypermobile. These shattered lives are the collateral damage from the profits made. We can't all be highly paid forex traders, after all.

piripu

August 12th, 2011 10:17am Report this comment

This is a really interesting read and the author's long years of work in the field add weight to her views.

Some of the arguments are compelling here, for instance I think even for many graduates, however much you work, you can never afford eg a house. So goodness knows how people with low skills must feel.

The big question I have is about the benefits/support for single mothers issue. The thing is, I always feel it is right to support people who are hard up, for instance single mothers. For many single mums extra benefits are a lifeline. But obviously the argument here is that extra benefits create an economic choice to become eg a single mother. I really want to believe that this can only happen because either there are no other options or people cannot see any other options. What is it that is trapping people into such a depressing, small existence?

For instance I have grown up never feeling that benefits were an attractive option. That is certainly because I grew up feeling there was a lot more out there. It's that feeling of opportunity and possibility that needs to be engendered in all our children, no? Then benefits wouldn't be so attractive even if they are on offer.

I just feel that if you take away these "incentives" i.e. benefits then you are punishing all the people who really need them and use them well. What you need to do is make people have a sense that they have a future outside of them.

NorthernGrouse

August 12th, 2011 10:23am Report this comment

A really good article based on solid research and bang on the money. I worked with some 15 year olds from a sink estate in the Northeast who were one step from permanent exclusion and the disconnection from mainstream society was palpable. All were barely literate and were at various stages of an early career in crime - all had ASBOs and two were on the tag - but beneath the thin veneer of bravado they were lost souls, desperate for help but unable to grasp it because of their inability to function normally. They come from dysfunctional families on an estate where benefits are the norm but school outreach workers still have to give basic advice such as it better for children to have a mattress than just sleep on a floor. The writer is correct in that girls see pregnancy as a way out but it not just economics, in my experience it is often that a baby gives the unconditional love and attention that in the main has been missing from the girls' lives.
These are minor personal tragedies that are being played out up and down the country and we are all picking up the tab for the appalling way we manage (or fail to) our young.

andrew

August 12th, 2011 10:42am Report this comment

"But they come to the national attention only now, when they are causing mayhem on our streets."

you mean: 'But they CAME to the national attention only THEN, when they WERE causing mayhem on our streets.'

This is because the rioting has stopped and already the same entrenched left wing propaganda is back pushing for more of the same things that caused the problem in the first place.

And with David Cameron being a left winger, how can they fail?

Webby

August 12th, 2011 11:58am Report this comment

Re Kyrgyzstan, ironically enough it's probably the legacy of Communicm. Anyone who's been to a Communist country, or recently-Communist one, will know what I mean. I'm not a Communist, by the way.

Leroy

August 12th, 2011 12:30pm Report this comment

An interesting article, with some valid points. However the description of the sample size in of itself is rather misleading. Black Caribbean Boys and Working Class White boys. It is interesting that the distinction is made between white working class boys and other white boys i.e. middle class, wealthy etc. But the same distinction isn't made about the black Caribbean boys. Please note that the black Caribbean boys referred to in the articles also come for a similar socio-economic bracket as the white working class boys, both groups although different have been brought up in similar environments i.e. high prevalence of broken homes, irresponsible men, unemployment etc.

Therefore, it would be more useful if you qualified your definition of Black Caribbean to Working Class Black Caribbean Boys as was done for the White Boys. As it presupposes that all Black Caribbean Boys fall under one socio-economic bracket, or that irrespective of their socio-economic status they are bound to develop into an underclass of adults with no stake in British society – which I disagree with.

Just a thought!

Valerie Tomalin

August 12th, 2011 4:03pm Report this comment

Can none of you see that these so called "Blair's Children" are the dysfunctional offspring of "Thatcher's Children"? It is HER legacy that we are now having to confront.

Suzanne

August 12th, 2011 4:37pm Report this comment

Good point, Leroy!

Alfred T Mahan

August 12th, 2011 6:50pm Report this comment

Leroy, I think you misread the article - it refers to "black Caribbean and white working class boys" and I'm pretty sure the author meant "working class boys" to refer to both sets, I.e. Black Caribbean and white.

If she didn't, I agree with your point completely.

Jamie

August 13th, 2011 3:08pm Report this comment

I thought this was a very insightful piece, and the basic premise that it is an entirely rational financial choice for many to disengage from the system is sound. But there are two basic points that are missed:
1. There are other reasons to engage with the system than purely financial ones - most importantly, self-respect.
2. There is still freedom of choice within this system.

"For so many looters, there is no choice other than the dole and criminality."

Surely you can see that this is FALSE? There are plenty of other choices, from suicide to emigration. What you mean to say, I suspect, is that these other choices you have arbitrarily ignored are less financially desirable. This may well be true, but it is disingenuous to pretend that there is no choice other than the dole and criminality. Here's one idea - go to adult education centres and get those GCSEs you missed.

"What do we think happens to boys like Mash who emerge from a school where only 7 per cent of the pupils at that time got five good GSCEs?"

For any given individual, they have a choice of whether to be in that 7% or not. Like it or not, the educational opportunities are there. No matter how crappy the school is, you can still get your head down, ignore the crap and just get on with it. People _choose_ not to do so. We need to remind any given individual that, no matter what the behaviour of other people, they can still decide that they aren't going down that path.

"Another young man finally got a job, only to be told by his Job Centre advisor not to take it. After the loss of his rent, council tax and utility payments he would have been £30 worse off."

£30 (a week, presumably?) worse off. Sure, but talk to all the interns out there. They work for a _loss_ for ages. You might be financially worse off for a while, but you can take some pride in yourself and you know that you are investing in something. Once again, there is a _choice_ here. The system might suck in that it provides financial disincentives, but we need to draw attention to self-respect and pride here, and the fact that people can make different choices.

"The government have put young girls in a position where the only career open to them is to have children, whether they want to or not and regardless of whether or not they are good mothers."

Once again, to argue that the only considerations involved in whether to have kids or not are the finances is horribly crude. Apart from anything else, it is disgustingly immoral to bring up kids for welfare payments and anyone doing this should feel deeply ashamed of themselves. Frankly, if my _only_ choices were to kill myself or condemn another human being to a life of misery with my dreadful parenting, I think I would kill myself. But yet again, these _aren't the only choices_. Only if you narrow your mindset to a ridiculous degree where the only thing that matters is money could these possibly be regarded as the only choices.

For most, there's a simple (but not easy) choice available. Buy a train ticket. Get the hell out of there and never go back. I'm not saying it's easy to take charge of your own life in these dreadful conditions. I'm just saying: let's not pretend there are no choices for the individual in these horrible conditions, and let's draw attention to some benefits of social engagement that are not financial at all, but rather relate to being able to hold your head up in public.

James Harborne

August 13th, 2011 7:41pm Report this comment

Valerie- please, I didn't see Thatcher's children charging up and down my street last week, so don't you dare try to pin this on the Lady. Yours is a typical reactionary Labour viewpoint- be honest with yourself and confront the truth that your hero Tony has far more harm than good.

Endymion

August 13th, 2011 10:15pm Report this comment

Very insightful article. I would also like to add that the welfare safety net has done more harm than good. I have been to many so called third world countries yet they have managed to keep the youth motivated without no infrastructure whatsoever, wonder what they are doing right!

Paul Potts

August 14th, 2011 1:52am Report this comment

Again, what a very good article. The insight here and the quality of the writing make this memorable. The thinking is not, of course, Labour or New Labour, but what the present government might understand. The remark of Cameron that this represents a poison, though, ignores the fact that it is fomented by our political classes.

The article should get wider publication than this website, and the writer is wasted as a mere lawyer.

Daulat Ram

August 14th, 2011 5:25am Report this comment

Endymion:

Quite right. Let's get back to the good old well-disciplined society where children were sent up the chimneys.

By the way, the financial speculators are immensely selfless fellows, and stole far less than the looters.

Harriet Sergeant

August 14th, 2011 2:14pm Report this comment

This is in answer to Leroy's interesting point. I do mean 'working class' to refer to both black Caribbean and white boys. Forgive me if this is not clear. The technical definition, which probably I should have explained, is it is those boys, black and white, who are on free school meals. In other words this is now badly we let down our poorest young men.

misirkov

August 14th, 2011 6:59pm Report this comment

Conclusion:

Abolish private education or prepare for civil war.

Robert Tilley

August 15th, 2011 10:10am Report this comment

Blair shouldn't be handed all the blame. He was just continuing the policies of materialism and greed that originated with Thatcher.
Under the Wilson government, as a young man earning 2,000 pounds sterling a year in London and with a wife and three children to support, I was able to afford a detached house with garden in a quite salubrious suburb of the capital. It cost me the equivalent of three and a half times my annual salary, raised without difficulty through a mortgage and a modest deposit that made only a slight dent in my savings. That house formed the basis of my personal wealth and a feeling of security I was able to pass on to my family.
Such a possibility eludes a big sector of Britain's younger generation today--remaining an unattainable dream for young people who see no opportunity at all of acquiring the kind of wealth which the Thatcher years generated for a pampered and self-satisfied middle class. Is it any wonder that many of them now resort to smash-and-grab methods? They can't carry off a house, but they can burn it down, break into local shops and stagger off with the loot that until then had remained inaccessible to them. And while Lonndon burns, the capital's chattering classes debate the crisis over bottles of Premier Cru, safe in their million pound homes that have provided them with the personal wealth that will for ever be denied a section of the population whose frustration has erupted in blind rage and savagery. If I were now in England, I'd stock up on supplies of my favorite wine--and canned food, too.

Tim Brown

August 15th, 2011 1:01pm Report this comment

Just tried to verify your figures relating to the percentage of new jobs occupied by immigrants. The ONS said that they were inaccurate because they don't publish new jobs stats. How did you arrive at those figures?

wacistwonny

August 15th, 2011 1:06pm Report this comment

Hi Webby. As a vetaran of communism in various lands, I know exactly what you mean. Nothing prepares a society for modern capitalism quite as well as communism, which is one reason why things have worked out in Eastern Europe.

Why? Because communism enforces universal basic education and healthcare (of course) but also (less well understood) because it takes rural populations and puts them in factories and offices, forcing them to adapt to the methods of mass economic production, and because communism does not tolerate shirkers, unlike social democracy. We’ve all heard the Polish joke “they pretend to pay and we pretend to work,” which was true, but there was another truth—woe betide you if you refused to take the job in the first place. There was a reason why unemployment in the Communist block was always about 1%. Another thing about communism—as long as you toed the party line (admittedly a huge personal compromise) it was basically meritocratic and classless.
Only problem was, put it all together and it did not work, mainly because of the lack of economic competition. But it created a readymade workforce for capitalism.

REPay

August 15th, 2011 2:18pm Report this comment

"Teaching children to read and write is not difficult..." except if they don't want to learn. It is incredible with all the money that was poured into education (mainly to buy expensive new buildings and to reward superteachers to mask the lack of general achievement.) If the aim of the education system is to make people more equal (the left's real interest) I suppose it has made everyone who has suffered it less well-educated then I suppose Balls and predecessors must be bursting with pride.

David Vinter

August 15th, 2011 3:51pm Report this comment

I went to school in WW2, when many tens of thousands of homes were 'one parent families' with fathers in the forces. However discipline was enforced at school, and most did learn to read and write!
As it was wartime, I started school at 3yrs and 2 months,being taught to read by 2 ten year old girls from day 1. Thats how it was done then, fluent at age 5,it surely wasn't poverty, no one had anything then. But as a country boy what else was there to do on a winters evening through the war, and with the 'blackout' regulations, except sit by the fire and read!

Sam

August 15th, 2011 8:31pm Report this comment

New Labour were left wing?

Joe Jeney

August 17th, 2011 4:28am Report this comment

Political citizens are extinct, and didn't spend much time historically with us anyway, and political citizens with power to change their societies were rare when they did exist. Today, you are what you pay for, and that’s society’s measure of citizenship: the ‘consumer-citizen’. So when the writer said, "For them it is suddenly a dream come true. Their favourite video games have become a reality," the truth that she had hit upon was that in stuffing consumer items in their pockets, these social fringe dwellers were also empowering themselves with citizenship in their own minds. Their dreams became reality of a sort. By their own deeds, they became a part of a society that they had merely watched from the sidelines for a long, long time. Maybe from the beginning of time, from the day they were born. If this seems a dysfunctional way to go about things, it is: society is dysfunctional. Their dreams never really did become a reality of course. The rioters never really did become citizens of a world they watched from the sidelines for a long, long time. Essentially the rioters had invaded someone else’s world last week. And that other world will punish the invaders will all the ‘big think’ that got us into this mess to begin with. And that’s how you finish a sentence with a preposition.

big cheese

August 17th, 2011 7:33pm Report this comment

I couldn't disagree more with this pathetic attempt to find an excuse for the terror last week.

leon vestey

August 17th, 2011 9:23pm Report this comment

It all boils down to the spread of state-sponsored single 'mums': after TV the worst thing that ever happened to Britain.

sandfly

August 18th, 2011 7:54am Report this comment

This is the best account of the real situation that I've read. Although I haven't lived in Britain for many years I'm interested because I grew up and was educated in a working class community after the War.

Clive Power

August 18th, 2011 8:04am Report this comment

I regret that this article is full of inaccurate statistics and which thus make the conclusions drawm moot. I list many of these errors in detail on my eponymous website.

Colin Bowman

August 18th, 2011 1:51pm Report this comment

Nicely measured article, in its approach to the life-circumstance of at least some of the children who became involved in rioting and looting. But I don't see how its possible to cut of the antecedents to this with Blair's New Labour. Clearly Thatcher's era laid the structural conditions within which New Labour operated. The two political regimes were clearly synergistic.

Jeff

August 19th, 2011 11:15am Report this comment

I have read Harriet's report - "Wasted: the betrayal of white working class and black Caribbean boys" - in it she basically states that a lack of role models, failure of the education system and poor incentives due to benefit payments and competition from immigration are to blame. She is excusing their violence and barbarianism as we saw last week because of the above factors.

Yet I do not see many (if any) role models for Chinese or Indian kids. Nor has the education system failed them, or that the lure of benefits has persuaded them to stay on workless, rather than get out of their rut. Indeed, they seem to work HARDER in the face of competition - of which minorities are disproportionately facing from both unskilled and highly skilled migrants. Yet I did not see them riot, loot and assault others last week. Why? Could it be, that your report was completely inaccurate, making excuses for a demographic that just doesn't give a damn? Whose parents are equally as uncivil and resigned to be the dregs of society?

Simon Icke

August 20th, 2011 1:58pm Report this comment

Urban Breakdown

Urban breakdown, society in turmoil,

we used to live simply, off the working man's toil.

Communities stuck together, in good times and bad,

Good family values are what we had.

Then life became too busy, chasing materialistic ideals,

no time to talk to each other; over family meals.

Greed and selfishness crept in,

and living together was no longer a sin.

Money and false celebrities became the gods,

and going to church was no longer mod.

People became indifferent

and good friends distant.

Now we have so many lives in a muddle,

with so many young mums left to struggle.

What happened to free love, the 60s dream?

Why did our lives turn out so mean?

How sad to see so many relationships fail.

No one said the liberal life, would have such a sting in the tail.

Whether you live in the country the city or town,

we are all paying the price of the urban breakdown.

By Simon Icke

FootNote: Society is prepared to pay £ billions trying to deal with the symptoms of 'Urban Breakdown'.
However, it seems unwilling or unable to look at the causes of the breakdown. The 'godless liberal, do as you please, selfish and greedy society', has completely failed. I believe we need to re-examine our Christian heritage and values and the importance of the traditional family unit; that was once the enduring strong foundation of Great Britain.

David Thornton

August 20th, 2011 8:44pm Report this comment

The teaching of reading to semi-literate army recruits in the days of national service was efficient and quick. They were taught by instructors in the RAEC - no threats or punishments, just a single-minded teaching of the skills necessary for reading effectively. It could be done with pupils in the school holidays today; they can have their holiday when they can read properly.

Obnoxio The Clown

August 24th, 2011 1:54pm Report this comment

"But unless we understand the causes of this anarchy and the role that government has played, how can we put it right?"

I am so tired of this lazy use of the word "anarchy" when you're actually thinking of "nihilism".

Anarchy is the belief that we do not need a government to coexist peacefully. It is not a belief in the wanton destruction of property, nor is it a belief which calls for more taxes and more state "support" of those who feel entitled to a handout.

Yinka Oyesanya

April 23rd, 2012 12:12pm Report this comment

New Labour's racist policies were the root cause of the race riot in August 2011. New Labour's obsession with the RRA 1976; continually nit picking at it and ultimately undermining it, scrapping the Commission For Racial Equality and replacing it with The Equality and Human Rights Commission, and inviting Nick Griffin on to the BBC to cover up their own racist policies which were beginning to emerge with a number of non-whites defecting from them to other political parties.

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