In my opinion, the UK riots were totally unnecessary and the reasons behind them typically overlooked. Whilst the carnage was taking place, there was barely any mention of the reasons behind the wreckage and why it was all happening.
'Jumping on the bandwagon' is a phrase that is used a lot but in this particular instance I think it describes the situation perfectly. Many people, mostly youths, in main UK cities such as London, Birmingham, Liverpool and so on used the death of Mark Duggan, an alleged drug dealer and gang founder, as an excuse to cause needless violence, vandalism and looting. What was an originally peaceful protest by Duggan's relatives and members of the local community in order to warrant more information about the circumstances of his death descended into violence when two cars were set on fire outside Tottenham Police Station.
Rioting, arson and looting spread to other parts of London, and to other cities in England.With the aid of social networking sites such as Facebook and Blackberry messenger rioters, mainly youths of which apparently 75% had previous convictions, could contact each other easier in order to arrange further attacks. It is clear that everyday members of society were also involved, seeing shops being looted and 'jumping on the bandwagon' as it were.
It is obvious that a group mentality helped to encourage these people, seeing it as an opportunity to obtain free goods and stating that 'loads of others are doing it so why not join in'. Psychological research into group mentality and obedience has taken place, often referred to as 'crowd psychology', and has proved that when people are in a group they can get sucked into doing things that they would not dream of doing as individuals. This type of psychology is used often to probe the behaviour of football fans and hooligans that cause violence and destruction as part of a group in that respect, and can also be applied to the riots in this sense.
People have often talked about the riots as a 'sign of the times' and shows that the country is going downhill in the sense that so much youths in the inner city are prepared to cause mindless violence but let's not forget this has happened before, with riots such as in Brixton in 1981. There will always be a social/class divide in London and other major cities, inevitably this is going to be there, but should not be used as an excuse to riot nor should we generalise and say 'only the poor was involved' as this was obviously not the case.
Nor should we generalise in terms of race; although Mark Duggan was of African-Caribbean race, it was not just the black community that was involved and this was evident throughout.
Suggested contributory factors were that of poor relations with police, social exclusion, family breakdown - it was argued by Christina Odone that a lack of a male role model, in terms of many young people having no father at home, may have caused young people to do the things they did. Government cuts, unemployment, gang culture, criminal opportunitism - in terms of people thinking it is an opportunity to steal the latest gadget or television and get away with it - and moral decay - in terms of a larger rich/poor divide - were all also suggested contributory factors.
Overall there are lessons to be learnt regarding a number of things associated with the riots - mainly the realisation that this can happen in extreme circumstances, people are willing to cause trouble but the police approach should be refined and looked at in order to improve the response in the situation that, god forbid, something like this happens again.
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