Blogs and Briefings
It took a riot...
Connect take a closer look at the public policy response to the disorder in England’s cities
30 August 2011 - Connect Intelligence Briefing
The recent disorder in London and other large cities in England took the public, the police and politicians by surprise. Britain’s inner cities had not erupted with such violence for 30 years and many people had felt confident that changes to policing and the wide range of interventions from national as well as local government in urban areas had made mob violence a thing of the past.
Politicians have been quick to denounce the aggressive criminal behavour, which was unleashed during the three nights of violence and made it clear that the initial response to the violence needs to be tough action by the police and the courts to arrest and punish those involved.
That said there is a realisation, shared across the parties that, there are more deep-seated problems that led to the violence. As Iain Duncan Smith said this week, we simply cannot arrest our way out of this problem and the public policy response will have to look beyond the punishment of those responsible for the unrest.
Downing Street’s announcement, that the Government are going to go some way towards accepting Ed Miliband’s call for a public inquiry into the riots by setting up a 'communities and victims’ panel' in each of the communities affected by the violence means that the public policy reaction is likely to be deeper and longer-term than originally thought. The panels will be chaired by an independent figure and will report in six months.
Although the disorder drew in many who had not been involved in criminality in the past, the core perpetrators of the violence has been identified as criminal gangs and action against them will be central to the Government’s response.
The riots have highlighted the spread of active gangs in our inner cities over the past few years. Gangs have operated in a different dimension to most people. The territorial divisions and the terrible violence of gang disputes mostly passed unnoticed to middle class commuters apart from the occasional witness appeal board or bunch of flowers showing the site of yet another stabbing. The total breakdown of law and order on the night of the riots has made the public fully aware of the extent of gang violence and the number of young people who are vulnerable to their appeal.
In his speech last Monday, the Prime Minister made it clear that he believes that the response to the riots needs to be driven by some of the themes which emerged from the Breakdown and Breakthrough Britain reports that he commissioned from Iain Duncan Smith in opposition.
The key theme of these reports was that the problems of deprivation and disconnection found in many areas of the country are a moral as well as an economic issue, which need to be tackled by a range of interventions. These include strengthening family life and emphasising the place of marriage and the importance of families, improving parenting, ensuring that worklessness does not become an accepted choice, tackling gang culture and substance abuse.
A refocusing on dealing with social problems has been seen by many Conservatives as an opportunity for the Government to swing to the right and to take action on law and order, the Human Rights Act, support for marriage etc that have not been delivered by the coalition. The Liberal Democrats are keen to prevent as shift towards a more socially Conservative direction and the battles within the coalition on social reform are likely to be as intense. The outcomes of these battles will be key in defining the future of the Coalition.
