Julia Unwin is Chief Executive of JRF and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust. She has blogged on the August rioting in England:
Now that the glass is being swept up, the courts are doing their work, politicians have had their say, and the media circus has moved on, it is a good time to take stock of the events of last week.
The first thing, of course, is to say how truly shocking these events were. For the people affected and their communities the devastation was horrific, and the environment genuinely frightening. We know that most damage was done in communities that suffer most from poverty, disadvantage and a depressed environment. Those rioting and looting laid waste some of the poorest communities in Britain and the victims were among the poorest people. The actions were criminal and the criminal law must take its course. Those who suffered in the riots, and the communities affected will take many years to recover. All our research makes it clear that getting over major civil unrest of this sort is neither quick nor easy, and helping that recovery will be a time-consuming and expensive task for us all, not least those who suffered so horribly.
But although the events were shocking they were not truly surprising. What was perhaps more surprising, and more worrying, was the rapid rush to judge both the cause and the nature of these riots. Blaming either individual pathology or structural inequality seems trite. Widespread assumptions about what unites the rioters, where they come from and what they are like are daily challenged by those arrested and charged. A moral panic about feral youth seems to have been answered, though not silenced, by a simple glance at the evidence of who took part and how. Just as we know that there are areas of acute economic desperation where no riots happened, we know that the overwhelming majority of people living in poverty had nothing at all to do with these events. So connecting poverty, bad housing, poor life chances or weak parenting unthinkingly with these shocking events is neither useful, nor accurate. Indeed it blinds us to more challenging and more difficult discussions about what has happened. So too does the ugly stereotyping, the sweeping assertions, and the dismissive language that has so carelessly branded young people as scum, described the lives of others as feral, and treated those who suffered as simply collateral damage.
We know far too little about what triggers civil unrest, and what fuels it. But what we do know is that people in some places feel absolutely powerless. We know that they believe their aspirations are frustrated and that whatever their effort they will not be recognised. We know that we live in a culture that has increasingly viewed material possessions as the definer of status and the accumulation of possessions as worthy in its own right. And we know that many people feel little loyalty to or involvement in their communities. None of this excuses or even explains rioting, and it certainly does not give us a clear direction for preventing riots in the future. But the response does perhaps give us the opportunity for a more fundamental discussion about the nature of the 21st century social contract and forces us to ask those big questions about the relative responsibilities of individuals, families and government. It forces us to address questions of autonomy and alienation, and fundamentally it makes us think about the nature of trust, and the trust we have in our neighbours, and the agencies that exist to support us but are all too often perceived as hostile intruders, rather than bodies that can enable.
We are living through very challenging times. The global financial crisis continues to affect the circumstances of every single person in the UK, and a national programme of austerity affects us all. We need to rely on evidence about what happened and its effects, and we need to develop understanding and knowledge, not just anecdotes. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat the mayhem and misery of the last week, and once again it will be the poorest people and places who will pay the biggest price.
JRF is reviewing its body of research to see what we can usefully contribute to the national debate that must now take place. We will be working with others to establish a response and to see what more needs to be understood. But we will be doing this in a way that respects the evidence, understands the complexity and recognises that easy political point-scoring may generate headlines but will never inspire lasting social change.
