August 16, 2011--Crowd Dynamics

The British are confused as to why so many "normal," educated, successful people are participating in the urban violence that is wracking their country.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who has more than his hands full with the Murdoch empire's phone-hacking scandal--he has been exposed as having an ultra-cozy relationship with Rupert--couldn't complete his vacation in Provence and had to race back to London to fulminate in political rage about the "thugs" who were torching and looting large areas of London and Birmingham. He sputtered that those convicted of even minor crimes should be evicted from public housing and presumably left to live on the streets.

Since the police--Scotland Yard--are being scapegoated as responsible for letting things get out of hand and, if this is proven to be true and to have happened on Cameron's watch, his coalition government is likely to fall and Cameron himself will wind up ironically being kicked out of his public housing--Number 10 Downing Street.

The frustration is understandable and the finger pointing and rush to avoid responsibility are also understandable since the causes for what is going on may turn out to be both obvious and condemning. More about that in a moment.

The rioters the press there, and here, have been focusing on are the kinds of people who are, well, just like us. Again, educated and economically and socially successful people from many (read not-only-ethnic) backgrounds. If all the troublemakers were Africans and "Pakis" (all Muslims in England are to many labeled Pakis) what else would be new. Since they are perceived to be on the dole, what can one expect of them anyway.

There must be deeper causes than just urban blight, lack of jobs for under-educated (and lazy) youth, and unfettered immigration. After all, Brit leaders and the self-satisfied have be harrumphing, the opportunities are there for the ambitious and hardworking; and so if "those people" refuse to appreciate all that England has to offer, well, they can bloody well go back to where they came from.

Thus British (and American) professionals and academicians are searching for deeper reasons to explain the alleged widespread participation in mayhem and violence of ordinary people who should by all measures be feeling good about their lives and prospects. They are the last ones, in other words, who should be out in the street throwing rocks at the police.

The New York Times the other day reported about some of these kinds of rioters and joined their British colleagues in the search for the real explanation for what is happening. (Article linked below.)

Especially perplexing is the seeming split-second decisions many made to join in the looting. An aspiring social worker who has no interest in television turned herself in after impulsively stealing a $500 set. She could not explain why she ran off with it, saying, "I never watch the telly." A young engineering student who has never been in trouble with the law found himself grabbing water bottles from a store that he helped trash because, as he said after being arrested, he was thirsty. An 11-year-old, also a "good" kid, was arrested after stealing a trash can.

I hope he doesn't live in public housing.

Luddite experts are lashing out at modern society, especially the social media and beyond that technology itself. It's all, they say with certainty, about Twitter and Google and iPhones. Others are looking to that branch of social science, "crowd dynamics," that attempts to study how and why people get swept into forms of behavior when in large crowds that they ordinarily wouldn't think of engaging in when alone or out with a few chums having a pint or two.

Then, compounding all of this, is the claim--again yet to be proven--that things became a conflagration because the police stood on the sidelines and watched while North London went up in flames.

The truth is closer to what was first suspected and then, when glimpsed, frantically papered over--the Cameron government has been imposing drastic cuts to virtually all parts of Britain's social safety net and public programs. The size of the police force, schooling at all levels; public housing (which could be scaled back by we-know-what), government jobs across the board; job-training programs, all have been mercilessly slashed and this is already having a profound effect on middle-income and poor people all over Britain.

Youth unemployment in England is 20.3%. Need more be said? If a young person--even with a decent education--can see no prospects for the future it takes less than crowd dynamics to get them going. Even to become violent.

Before we get too smug about our own situation of relative calm--though Philadelphia has seen the beginnings of riots recently and there is now a curfew in place--we should take note and be very concerned that youth unemployment here is about the same, pushing 20% overall, while it is at least 35% for African Americans.

On top of this, we are seeing British-level public sector cuts in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, New Jersey, and Rick Perry's Texas.

We're almost through a long, hot summer; but we should nervously stay tuned.