Reactions to the riots

Starting with a broad overview of the grey literature, some of the key messages are being drawn out to start mapping the way in which mainstream reports began with a moral outrage against the riots and moved towards a local level focus on particular social groups; in particular social housing tenants in this case. The key question here is: why did housing, and housing mechanisms, become part of the response to the 2011 riots? In the immediate aftermath of the 2011 riots it would be reasonable to suggest that the responses could be interpreted as reactive. Illustrating this point was David Cameron’s reaction to the Wandsworth Council decision to begin proceedings to evict a social housing tenant whose son was involved in the riots,16 declaring: “I think for too long we have taken too soft an attitude to people who loot and pillage their own community. If you do that you should lose your right to housing at a subsidized rate” (quoted in Topping & Wintour, 2011, np).

This announcement came on the 12 August 2011; just two days after the riots subsided, highlighting the immediacy of the political reactions. The idea that we, the majority of the British nation, have tolerated the behaviour of riotous individuals was a common narrative running throughout the initial responses to the riots. David Cameron’s response made an explicit connection between the disorder and social housing tenants. This pronouncement also has symbolic significance in terms of who the Government supposed were rioting and where they came from. The legal and policy suggestion of evicting social housing tenants

16

See Section 5.2 for a fuller discussion about housing and the riots and see Figure 5.1 for the specific details of this case.

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demonstrated the Government’s perception that the riots were a problem of social housing tenants. Such announcements began to legitimise the punitive approaches to sanctioning the rioters, and their families. It was these reactionary responses, criticised by other actors such as the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which revived the Broken Britain narrative, by drawing on an understanding that the 2011 riots were purely an issue of criminality and a lack of morality. This emphasis on morality was another prominent narrative device, used in an apparent attempt to deflect the blame for the riots away from the state and towards the individual, demonstrated through David Cameron’s speech addressing the riots:17

Everywhere I’ve been this past week, in Salford, Manchester, Birmingham, Croydon, people of every background, colour and religion have shared the same moral outrage and hurt for our country. Because this is Britain. This is a great country of good people. Those thugs we saw last week do not represent us, nor do they represent our young people - and they will not drag us down. (Cabinet Office, 2011)

In the same speech David Cameron also refers to the rioters’ “twisted moral codes” differentiating ‘them’ (the rioters) from ‘us’ (the hard-working majority)18

and thereby reinforcing his position that the riots were primarily a matter of personal responsibility:

These riots were not about race: the perpetrators and the victims were white, black and Asian. These riots were not about government cuts: they were directed at high street stores, not Parliament. And these riots were not about poverty: that insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this. No, this was about behaviour, people showing indifference to right and wrong, people with a twisted moral code, people with a complete absence of self-restraint. (Cabinet Office, 2011)

Despite this articulation of ‘them’ and ‘us’, David Cameron’s speech concludes:

The restoration of responsibility has to cut right across society. Because whatever the arguments, we all belong to the same society, and we all have a stake in making it better. There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ – there is us. We are all in this together, and we will mend our broken society – together. (Cabinet Office, 2011)

Between these two Cabinet Office statements there is a noticeable incoherence in what is being said, demonstrating that even within Government discourse the understanding of the disorders was conflicted and contradictory. For example, in his speech Cameron begins by defining the rioters and the majority of society as two dichotomous groups – the idea that a subset of the British population lack personal responsibility and self-restraint – which is then juxtaposed with the statement that there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’, it is just ‘us’ and we are all responsible for “repairing our broken society”. This denial of the them and us dichotomisation is countermanded by the reiteration of a Broken Britain, which Cameron has argued elsewhere

17

For example, one argument in this thesis is that the morality narrative was powerful enough to legitimise the government responding in a punitive way, whilst simultaneously shifting the blame away from structural factors such as unemployment and poverty and placing the blame with individuals who did not take personal

responsibility. This argument is discussed more in section 5.4.

18

Within the narratives of responsibility and morality is the idea that the tax-payer is a full citizen, entitled to full membership rights; by comparison, worklessness or unpaid work – such as caring for children or family members – is not considered to be an equal contribution to society, reducing the rights of such individuals to certain

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is largely because of certain people within society that refuse to engage in economic activities such as paid work and paying taxes.

Other prominent Government ministers reacted in similar ways. Iain Duncan Smith MP, then Minister for Work and Pensions, also responded to the riots using this morality narrative, as his comments in The Guardian illustrate:

While I am, like many, appalled at the events of last week, I am not entirely surprised – I have felt that Britain's social fabric has been fraying for some time. On Monday the Prime Minister spoke of the social problems in some of our communities, characterised by the breakdown of responsibility, of respect for one's neighbours and for authority. He spoke of morality, the rise of dysfunctional and broken homes, fatherlessness, and a culture in welfare and in schools that puts entitlement and rights above responsibilities and hard work. (Duncan Smith, 2011) The perspective of the Government, as illustrated by the responses above, suggested that they perceived the riots as a cultural issue; the social pathologies of particular groups of society meant that they were predisposed to behave in a particular, often anti-social, way. David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith also explicitly drew a distinction between hard work and responsibility on the one hand and entitlement, rights and dependency on the other. Yet in direct contradiction they explain that we are ‘all in this together’ when it comes to ‘mending our broken society’. These examples demonstrate how immediate responses were founded on a limited evidence base – with no data cited to support the alleged background of the rioters – suggesting that responses were predicated on predetermined notions and assumptions about the causes of the riots and who was involved. This was considered in non-governmental commentaries on the riots, such as the report commissioned by the Runnymede Trust (2011):

Condemnation as opposed to explanation defined the immediate political response as the government and the mass media sought to translate the disorders into a narrative fix for the public consumption. Someone had to be blamed and it didn’t take the coalition government long to identify a folk devil that would then be made responsible for the worst disturbances the UK has witnessed since those of the 1980s. (Hallsworth & Brotherton, 2011, p. 3)

The particular folk devil being alluded to in this context is those with gang affiliations. The political responses may be read as identifying multiple folk devils ‘responsible’ for the riots by building on historical and stigmatized narratives of particular groups of individuals, such as those who do not work in paid employment, those who live in social housing or those that rely on other state benefits, not just gang members. For example, in an interview with the BBC in August 2011, David Cameron explained:

We’ve got to find ways of enforcing responsibility in our society and if you live in a council house you are getting a discount from what other people have to pay and so with that should come some responsibilities. For those people who may struggle as a result of being evicted he said they… should have thought of that before they started burgling… in some cases it may actually help break up some of the criminal networks on some housing estates if these people are thrown out of their houses and I think quite right too. (Excerpts from an interview with David Cameron, BBC, 12 August 2011)

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This quote highlights some important points. Firstly, it assumes that everyone who lives in social housing would be aware that their behaviour could have led to eviction from their property. At the time of the 2011 riots the ‘riot clause’ was not part of any legislation, so it may not have been entirely clear what the consequences would be. The nature of the disorders also meant that many of the people became involved in the riots serendipitously. Secondly, the commentary that explicitly talked about the consequences for those living in council housing could mislead the public that it was council housing tenants in particular that were responsible for the disorder. Many organisations and professional bodies also disseminated reports documenting their perspectives of what caused the disorder, with a range of interpretations and suggestions for the causes of the riots, as well as their response to the initial political pronouncements. For example, London Councils19 made strong reference to the notion of morality and responsibility, referring to the riots as “undermining social resilience” (London Councils, 2012), whilst their report also addressed popular perspective of the multifarious explanations for the disorders:

We believe that many factors lay behind the cause of the riots, and that these varied between groups of people, according to place, age and circumstance. However, there are a set of common factors which create an environment that appear to pre-dispose individuals to choose to step outside the law. (London Councils, 2012, p. 1)

For London Councils, these common factors were disadvantage and criminal backgrounds, educational factors leading to a sense of disengagement and a lack of aspiration - usually through worklessness; all of which strongly resonate with the political pronouncements presented above. The TUC’s response, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the Prime Minister’s speech:

The focus on a small number of families, variously described by the Prime Minister as characterizing ‘generations of worklessness’; representing ‘selfishness’; and taking advantage of ‘rights without responsibilities’ is misguided. (TUC, 2011)

The National Council for Voluntary Organsations (NCVO) produced a report drawing on voices and perspectives from across the voluntary sector.20 This was consistent with many of the popular narratives, focusing on issues such as deprivation, inequality, relationships with the police and young people with nothing to lose. The NCVO focused on the disengagement of young people especially, explicitly blaming young people’s perception of government and politics as a causal factor for their motivation to riot:

Some attendees [to an event held to discuss the riots] commented that politics holds little meaning for young people. Some went further to suggest that there has been a slow moral decline of political and economic institutions. They suggested that events such as the MPs’ expenses scandal, risk-taking bankers and the phone hacking scandal have cumulatively led to

19

London Councils is a cross-party think-tank that lobbies and represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London regardless of political persuasion.

20

The NCVO report was a collation of views gathered from an event they held with frontline and support bodies convened in September 2011, with ongoing engagement.

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a lack of moral compass and role models for young people. (Allen, Stuffins, & Wilding, 2011, p. 6)

The most noticeable distinction between the NCVO’s position and that of London Councils’, and that of the Government, is that whilst each concur that young people may feel a sense of disenfranchisement or a lack of aspiration, for the NCVO, the rioters’ motivations were not simply mindless criminality. Instead, they argued that they should be understood as a reaction to the behaviour of the elite in the widely documented expenses scandal, bankers’ bonuses and the News International phone hacking scandal that was orchestrated by influential members of the establishment.21 Both NVCO and the Government focus on the idea of declining morality, but the interpretations of these manifestations of moral decline differ. The explanations given here continue to demonstrate the contradictions in responses to the riots, where the London Councils and governmental perspectives can be read as one of mindless criminality – apolitical rioting and looting – and the NCVO’s response implied that perhaps there were underlying motivational factors driving people to behave as they did, suggesting an element of protest was present during the 2011 riots.

It was not only national responses that focused on the core issues of morality, responsibility, young people and parenting. Local responses also had a broadly similar perspective about what caused the riots. For example, on the 10 August 2011 the Manchester Evening News reported on the riots using a quote by Gavin Poole from the Centre of Social Justice:

Perhaps this time around, it is not just society which has failed the riot generation, but their own families. Gavin Poole, of the Centre for Social Justice says these youngsters may be a “lost generation” facing life on benefits in ghettos scarred by poor housing and street gangs, “completely devoid of aspiration”. The anarchy they bring to the streets is a mere projection of the anarchy in which they have grown up. This, for them, is normal behaviour. (P. Taylor, 2011)

Here a particularly strong viewpoint is taken, whereby anarchic families are constructed as perpetuating the behaviour of the rioters. At both a national and local level the similarities in the reporting was indicative of how powerful the immediate narratives and discourses pertaining to the riots were, and how the causes and the individuals involved were being illustrated. Responses such as those from the Centre for Social Justice also broadened this idea that a lack of personal responsibility was a causal factor of the 2011 riots, but that it was also a problem of parental, rather than just individual, responsibility. Considering the cause of the riots as a lack of parental responsibility and framing the riots as a generational concern allowed for explanations of the rioters ‘knowing no better’, and to state that for some families, those with deeply entrenched social issues, this behaviour was normal. This point is important, as essentially the argument is suggesting that these individuals are not aware of the

21

For an accessible and detailed discussion of the phone hacking scandal and the involvement of prominent figures from the government, the Metropolitan Police Service and the media see Watson and Hickman Watson, T., & Hickman, M. (2012). Dial M for Murdoch. London: Penguin Group.

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consequences of their actions. Knowing no better infers that there is a fundamental lack of understanding around the wider social and economic implications of their behaviour and therefore, by extension, they cannot be held morally accountable. Again, this is another explanation that over simplifies the underlying issues. Linking with the narrative of responsibility and parenting, the NCVO talked about latchkey children:

One [reason for believing young people have no power in society] was identified in the phenomenon of latchkey children, which has led to young people forming social relationships outside the family, often in gangs. Spokespersons from frontline organisations working in areas affected shared that some known gangs in the areas united during this short period due to a vision of collective causes and hatred of the police. (Allen et al., 2011, p. 6)

There was a sense that ‘problem’ families,22

in particular ‘broken families’, were leaving children with little alternative but to foster other forms of social support networks, such as gang affiliation for example.23

The activity of gangs in orchestrating and subsequently being actively involved in the 2011 riots was another popular narrative alongside the discourses of personal responsibility and broken Britain. In David Cameron’s speech responding to the riots, following on from talking about toughening policing in Britain, he turned to gangs and gang culture:

It’s time for something else too. A concerted, all-out-war on gangs and gang culture. This isn’t some side issue. It is a major criminal disease that has infected streets and estates across our country. Stamping out these gangs is a new national priority…we will fight back against gangs, crime and the thugs who make people’s lives hell and we will fight back hard. (Cabinet Office, 2011)

However, the prevalence of gangs in the 2011 riots has been discredited, in particular by the Runnymede Trust’s ‘Perspectives’ report offering a powerful rebuttal to the “grip of gang fever or gang talk” (Hallsworth & Brotherton, 2011, p. 3). Whilst gangs and gang culture may not be the central focus for this research, it is a useful parallel to draw upon to demonstrate how particular populations were constructed in a way that outlined identifiable groups which could then be blamed, offering the Government a platform to demonstrate they are attempting to deal with underlying issues. As both the social housing and gang culture narratives show, these constructions are formulated based on historical stigmatised narratives, rather than with clear evidence and data. This lack of data was a primary concern for the Runnymede Trust:

Evidential support for the claim that gangs were behind the riots was justified on the basis of a statement released by the Metropolitan Police claiming that around a fifth to a quarter of the people they had arrested in relation to the riots were ‘gang affiliated’. This would provoke papers like the Daily Mirror (2011) to bizarrely read this as conclusive evidence that gangs were therefore behind the riots. (Hallsworth & Brotherton, 2011, p. 5)

22

Problem families were a popular narrative in responding to the 2011 riots. This chapter will further discuss this narrative, but also how the TFP was discussed as a policy solution to the 2011 riots, despite it being an already active programme during the 2011 riots.

23

The use of existing and current political objectives being utilised and seemingly legitimised by narratives pertaining to the 2011 riots, such as the rationale for the TFP being to prevent children from broken becoming affiliated with gangs will be discussed later in this chapter.

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For the Runnymede Trust, the concerns were not only about the unfounded evidence to support the statements being made, but also the complexity associated with the accuracy of gang designation figures and police statistics on gang affiliation, which themselves were not robust. In the comprehensive analysis and critique of gang talk in response to the riots, the Runnymede Trust report explains how the adoption of such narratives, or folk devils, should not only be understood as iterations of past narratives, but also the damaging impact unfounded political pronouncements can have on what are already vulnerable citizens or communities:

The gangland thesis, as such, is really no more than an iteration of an older narrative about the