Britain gropes for solutions

LONDON — The images of burning buildings and looting of shops that took place between Aug. 5 and 9 in parts of London and other major cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, have rightly made the English people ashamed. The damage caused has been serious and some families have lost their homes and all their possessions. Some of the rioting was organized by gangs of hooded youths coordinated via social-networking sites such as Twitter. Much of the looting was inspired by infectious greed. Sports shops were among those looted; 30 shops out of 250 in one chain were attacked.

The riots were ended as a result of tough action by the police. When it looked as though mayhem might spread and that law and order was breaking down, some called for the use by the police of rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas as used in other countries. Others called for curfews in riot spots and even for the army to be called in. Fortunately none of these measures proved necessary.

Over 2,000 people have been arrested and are being tried for various offenses including looting, arson, robbery, and in two cases murder. In London half of those being brought before the courts were teenagers. Much to the dismay of magistrates and judges some parents did not attend the courts to help their children.

In Birmingham three Asian men who were trying to protect their property were run down and killed by a car driven at them at high speed. In London a man confronting vandals was set upon and died of his injuries. In both cases arrests have been made on suspicion of murder.

In another case a Malaysian student whose jaw had been broken by muggers was then robbed by youths who pretended to help him. Despite a call by his mother to return to Malaysia the student has said that he wants to stay in Britain to complete his course of study.

Rioting and looting did not occur everywhere. In many parts of London and other cities there were no violent manifestations and there seemed no threat on the normally peaceful streets. The civic-minded volunteered to help clear up the mess amid many other acts of good citizenship. The father of one of the young Asian men murdered in Birmingham made a persuasive appeal for calm.

Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior politicians, who were almost all away on holiday, rushed home. Parliament, which was in recess, was recalled and the violence and looting were unanimously condemned. The government made it clear that the criminals would be pursued by the full force of the law. CCTV images of rioters and looters have been displayed in the media and calls made for witnesses to come forward. The police have been continuing to make arrests and to search for stolen goods.

Questions have been asked about the failure of the police at first to react with sufficient numbers of officers on the streets and about their tactics. Initially the police hung back while shop windows were being smashed. The police seemed mistakenly to believe that the rioters were peaceful protesters angered by the shooting of an armed black man by a policeman. In previous peaceful demonstrations the police had been criticized for overreacting and being high-handed.

The British police are generally unarmed and are supposed to use a soft touch in order not to exacerbate tensions. By the time they realized that tougher measures were needed the contagion had spread and it took time before they could bring the situation under control.

Police morale has been low following accusations in the phone hacking scandal of police collusion with sensational journalists on the News of The World and of accepting payments from News International, the paper's owners. This scandal had forced the resignation of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London and of his deputy.

Attention is now being focused on the underlying causes of this bout of mid-summer madness. Cameron has spoken of sick elements in society and the loss of a sense of responsibility. Poor parenting and a lack of discipline at home, especially in one parent families without a father figure, and in schools have also been blamed. In some families mothers are said to be frightened of their own children. But some of those arrested were grown-ups with jobs. One of the first to appear before magistrates was a 32-year-old teaching assistant.

The speed in which violence spread has been ascribed to the gang culture in inner cities. On the political left there has been a tendency to attribute unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people as root causes. The left also blame the police for their use of stop and search powers that, they say, have alienated the young. They also assert that the greed of bankers and the fraudulent behavior of some politicians with their expenses scandals have set bad examples.

These are all factors which may have contributed to the riots, but the fundamental problem lies in the decline of ethical standards. The welfare state has created a society where rights are more important than obligations. The driving force has been greed and envy.

There are no easy solutions. Tough police action and tougher punishments may be necessary but they will not succeed in effecting a long term cure. Prison is necessary to protect society against violent criminals. But for most criminals it is a revolving door. They emerge without being reformed and their only training has been in learning how to commit more crimes.

Some have called for the removal of welfare benefits from those convicted in the recent rioting, but throwing people out of social housing and denying them other benefits may simply lead to increased crime. The first priority must be to improve education and impose discipline. People with work must be better off than those on benefits. All parties agree on these objectives, but adequate progress has not been made in implementing them.

Hugh Cortazzi served as Britain's ambassador to Japan from 1980-1984.

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What is not blamed for the riots in Britain

LONDON — To a watching world, the sight of Britain on fire last week has surely been shocking. The looting and torching has revealed an inner-city London, Birmingham and Manchester seldom glimpsed in the England usually offered for export via soft-focus period dramas, Hugh Grant movies or stories on Will and Kate.

If the revelation has puzzled outsiders, it has confused Britons no less. The mood is a mixture of rage, fear and bafflement. Not that we're not used to riots: England caught fire during that other royal-wedding year, 1981. But 30 years ago, the battle lines were relatively clear. Race was central, especially in the predominantly black south London neighborhood of Brixton. The target then was a police force charged with racial bias. The recent explosions have not had that clarity.

Even though the troubles ignited the week before last after the police killed a black Briton in the north London area of Tottenham, the copycat outbursts since have lacked that racial dimension. Among the looters, all races were represented, while their targets had not been overtly political. They didn't hurl stones at police stations, city halls or the Houses of Parliament. Instead, these rapidly mobilized crowds concentrated their fire on stores, especially those selling cellphones, sneakers and large-screen TVs. One looter was seen trying on different pairs of shoes, making sure she stole the right size.

The Guardian's Zoe Williams has called these the "shopping riots," noting how mobs move from malls to main street stores, avoiding confrontation with the police, in contrast with the 1981 rioters, who actively sought it. If today's looters have a political point to make, it is that politics doesn't matter.

I walked Tottenham High Road on Aug. 10, as demolition crews removed what was left of a large carpet store burned to ash on Aug. 6. I listened to Mohammed Abdi, a Somali-born cellphone store owner whose life's work was destroyed that night. "It took an age to build this business — and now I have nothing," he told me. The local member of Parliament, David Lammy, was doing his best to reassure those whose neighborhood was ravaged. "The consumerist and materialist nature of it is new," he said. "And it's of this generation."

The methods are new, too: using instant-messaging technology to assemble a crowd; diverting police to one place by, say, burning a car, then looting in another. The fact that the police cannot be everywhere at once has made them all but powerless. The short-term remedy has been to triple the number of police on duty in London, which restored calm here Tuesday night but is no more a long-term solution than the pleas for BlackBerry to turn off its instant-messenger system. One Tottenham resident warned Aug. 10 that the rest of the world should brace for the spread of this new "social criminality."

Amid the destruction and debris, one question is ultra-sensitive: Why? Those who seek to understand the looters' motivation have been instantly accused of justifying their actions — as if to explain is always to excuse. Some have nevertheless dared to offer reasons, with poverty an early and obvious explanation — though that view looked less credible once details about some of the suspected rioters emerged. Among those in court have been university graduates, an army recruit and a youth worker. Such people might be a minority among the looters, but they hardly fit the conventional definition of the "underclass."

Others have said the source of the malaise is a greed-is-good consumerism, with the looters following a take-what-you-can lead set by the bonus-earning bankers at the top end of the income scale. Still others have preferred to concentrate on family breakdown and fatherlessness, suspecting that many of those involved are, if not poor, then emotionally deprived and utterly disconnected from the wider society. Lammy has been struck by those looters caught on film who don't bother to hide their faces.

Most controversial is the suggestion that the riots might have even a tenuous link to the government's austerity program, aimed at reducing the deficit. Funding for youth services — clubs and outreach workers — in the Tottenham area has just been cut by 75 percent.

It's too early to know whether spending cuts played any part in England's burning. But as the United States embarks on its own retrenchment, it should beware — this is an argument that could soon be coming its way.

Jonathan Freedland is an editorial page columnist for The Guardian.

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