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As society grows more unstable, the real worry about the underclass is ending up a part of it
Whenever a shocking public event occurs – whether it's 9/11 or the recent riots in English cities – there's a temptation for politicians to look for off-the-peg explanations. We've seen plenty of that over the past month.
We've been told that, on the one hand, criminals, single parents and school discipline are to blame; and on the other cuts, bankers and materialism – all of these cut and pasted to fit the political tastes of the person doing the explaining. Earlier this week Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, accused the so-called "feral underclass". And on Friday Caroline Lucas, the Green party leader, blamed "unrestrained capitalism". However, whether anyone will be willing to listen in the current climate is another matter.
The most striking feature of the recent conversations that I have had with my family, friends and neighbours in east London is that, as far as many people are concerned, the debate over the riots has already been and gone. They have got far more important things to worry about. There's a growing sense – especially among people on the margins – that the walls are starting to close in and that life is about to get very hard indeed.
As my niece prepares to go to college, the prevailing emotion should be of pride in her achievement, not anxiety over how on earth her family is going to afford it. But changes in the world of employment, housing, benefits, health and education – the things that actually matter to people – have made life increasingly edgy over the past year.
Significantly, it's not just the poor who are feeling the heat. There are professional people I know who are beginning to get very anxious about where they will be in 12 months' time. In my own field of education, work that was plentiful at the beginning of this year is starting to dry up, and the fight is on for what's left. The most common emotion is fear. How will I manage? What's going to happen to my family?
It's this very climate of fear, worry and hopelessness that helps create an environment where disorder becomes possible. Stable, confident and hopeful communities, even poor ones, don't riot. And stability, confidence and hope are at a premium at the moment in poor areas of Britain. Working class communities were once virtually self-policing – it's often forgotten that the white working class were often no more trustful of the police than black communities. Even criminals were expected to obey certain rules. But all that is now going out the window.
In the meantime, there's a question of responsibility for the riots. Even more important than convicting those responsible, there's the question of why they were involved in the first place. No doubt their lawyers will be offering explanations in mitigation as the trials go on, some of which may be more persuasive than others. But until opportunities are created to ask those found guilty what the actual sequence of events was, and what actually motivated them to join in last month's mayhem, we are going to be at least partly in the dark. We might even have to face the depressing possibility that a significant number of rioters won't really know themselves why they got caught up in it.
As for the so-called underclass, the authorities need to take note of one very important fact. As our society becomes more unstable there's a growing fear among people in this country, not least among the comfortably off, that they're going to end up in it. For politicians who can convincingly address that problem, there will be a lot of votes at stake.
Dreda Say Mitchell
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