One of my British colleagues commented drily about the London riots, 'It's what happens when it's the school holidays, the kids are bored and we get two weeks of long, warm, dry evenings. Bit of heavy rain would put a stop to it.'
A minimalist explanation, but its earthiness and local sense rightly question the huge theoretical, not to mention apocalyptic, superstructures that are being erected on the nihilistic behaviour of excitable young people. Such events have everyday causes. They conceal as much as they reveal deeper, underlying conditions.
That said, it is possible to reflect, not on the deep causes that we cannot see, but on the normal things that we might have expected to see in the scenes of destruction in London, but did not see.
The most striking absence was that of authoritative adult figures. The figures we saw on TV screens were young, many of them children. We saw no sign of parents searching for or curbing them; no local community leaders intervening in the mayhem; no mayors or councillors, no local clergy or doctors, no police. Almost the only adults we saw were those who had suffered powerlessly in the riots.
Only at the beginning, when a group of local women went to the police station to find out what had happened to the alleged police shooting victim Mark Duggan, only to be rebuffed, was there space made for the authority of elders. That in retrospect was the last opportunity of avoiding the riots.
Ultimately the only figures of authority who seemed to matter were the Prime Minister and his police chiefs. He returned from holidays, gathered with the heads of the police, and they planned the fight-back. That was the lowest level, it seemed, at which authority could be exercised.
This leads to the second thing lacking in what we saw. There was no sense of society, nor of connection of the kind that generates respect. The furniture shop of a patently good man, a feature of his suburb for some generations, was burned down by people who would have been his neighbours. The experience of the rioters seemed ecstatic, an ecstasy that alienated them from everyone else.
The absence of adult authority and of connection underlines the perceptiveness of my colleague's remarks. Schools provide adult figures of authority. They also provide predictable forms of connection.
The third thing lacking was a sense of purpose. If there was a grand design in the riots, as some suggested — the hidden hand of masterminds with blackberries — it was not evident in the smashing and grabbing. The reality was banal. The pillaging was a matter of every individual for themselves. The booty of choice was a low range of consumer goodies. What mattered were not essentials but superfluities.
These absences invite us to reflect on the deeper things that may be lacking in our society. The emphasis on individual choice, which has freed us from the unreasonable constraints of tradition, does weaken connections through families and natural groups.
It also weakens, sometimes helpfully, sometimes corrosively, hierarchical authorities. It hollows out some of the pillars on which society has rested. So it is legitimate to ask how we can encourage forms of connection in society that nurture a variety of forms of authority.
The riots also raise questions about the Big Society which is the ideological badge of the current British Government. The slogan points to the need to develop intermediate bodies between Government and citizens. But it has been used to cut government funding to precisely those bodies that are points of connection for individuals.
Is not the misuse of money evident in the GFC and in the subsequent crippling of social programs in the name of consumer capitalism the one thing that might dimly be discerned in the smoke and fire of the riots?
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.