Class and the English Riots 

by Tim Strangleman

Posted on August 29, 2011

http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/

A few weeks ago, England erupted with protests that
many saw as tied to the global economic crisis.  What
began as a peaceful protest against the police, who had
shot dead a suspect in Tottenham North London on August
6, rapidly spread across London and then to other parts
of the country. Over the space of the next five days,
Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester all experienced a
wave of rioting and looting.

Politicians and commentators proceeded down a well-worn
path of analysis and political point scoring. Most
politicians were quick to blame "mindless thugs,"
"gangs," and "feral youth."  They pointed to the lack
of moral values in contemporary society, and the
Conservatives, who are the senior partners in our
coalition government, saw the riots as yet more
evidence of their narrative of "Broken Britain"
(conveniently ignoring the fact that other parts of
Britain, such as Wales and Scotland, suffered no
problems).

What was lacking, initially at least, was any mention
of class. It appeared only in references to an
underclass. Rhetorically this is a really useful piece
of shorthand for the political classes in Britain, as I
guess it is in the US. Talk of the underclass allows
critics to blame society's troubles on an ill-defined
amorphous band of cultural stereotypes and folk demons.
 It also allows for a wider sidestepping of questions
of class and inequality that has been rising for the
last three decades or more and is sure to increase
further in the age of austerity. In this narrative, the
riots are defined as the work of the work shy, the
amoral, and the feckless; looting represents a mindless
opportunism of those lacking a basic ethic of
responsibility.

Any other mention of class takes the form of a kind of
nostalgic lament for the working class of old. You
remember, when the working class knew their place,
worked hard, and got on with their lot without
complaint. They, the old respectable working class,
never complained about deprivation or went out and
rioted.

When he was the leader of the opposition, David Cameron
-- now British Prime Minister -- developed his party's
social policy around the concept or sound bite of
"Broken Britain." This was an interesting strategy and
not without risk.  It allowed him to reclaim social
policy for the Tory party and create a British version
of compassionate conservatism. In this way, Cameron
could blame the Labour government, which by that time
had held power for over a decade, for all of Britain's
social problems. Rather than the solution, state
intervention was identified as the cause of the
problem. Labour was strangely quiescent in the face of
these charges for a number of reasons. It had itself
been largely silent on the question of class; it had
also been, as one senior New Labour figure put it
"relaxed" about the super rich.  But above all, the
Party's acceptance of Thatcherism and the wider
neo-liberalism of the 1980s and 1990s meant that they
were unable to develop a more critical analysis of
deepening inequality.

In the wake of the riots, other voices that do want to
talk about class and social and economic inequality
have begun to be heard. At first this line of
explanation was a difficult one for politicians and
commentators as it was portrayed as a causal argument -
poverty equals riot - and therefore easy to criticise
as not all rioters were poor, and not all poor areas
went up in flames. Gradually what has been emerging, I
think, is a more nuanced account of the riots which
begins to look harder at the nature of social
inequality in Britain. This more self-confident attempt
to talk about these issues emerges from a range of
academics through to journalists.

In their wake, Labour politicians and some liberals one
have begun to deploy these arguments themselves. The
most high profile academic in the UK addressing
inequality is the social geographer Danny Dorling (most
recently in Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists),
whose detailed reading of a range of materials places
in long-term perspective the widening gap between rich
and poor. Dorling is joined by journalists such as
Polly Toynbee, who writes for the left of centre
Guardian newspaper and who has been a longstanding
voice for those left behind by neo-liberalism. Finally,
the riots have thrust centre stage a young social and
political commentator Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The
Demonization of the Working Class - whose book charts
how the working class has been marginalized within
political rhetoric and had its  problems ignored. While
none of these commentators seeks to excuse civil
unrest, they all, in fairly similar ways, explain the
complexity of British society and its longstanding
problems. All three recognize that contemporary social
problems and community breakdown have their origins in
the deindustrialization and subsequent joblessness in
Britain since the 1970s and 1980s.

The hopeful development from the tragic events of early
August is that class is once again beginning to be
rediscovered in the political lexicon.  It is
interesting to note that some commentators draw
parallels between the unbridled acquisitiveness of the
looters and the compensation paid to bankers and the
fraud so recently committed by members of Parliament in
their expenses claims. This may suggest the potential
to shift the discourse about class, so that inequality
is no longer seen as evidence of individual moral
failing. It also might herald a shift in the vernacular
where class can be really talked about and "working
class" ceases to be a pejorative label. It might also
allow those critical of the current government to pose
two questions.  First, if Britain is broken, who broke
it? And, secondly, if you didn't like the organized
working class of the 1980s, how do you like the
disorganized working class now?

Tim Strangleman

Strangleman is a Sociologist at the University of Kent
and co-author of the  textbook, Work and Society:
Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods

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