Monday, October 17, 2011

Signals of deep dysfunction: understanding the riots

In these times that presage collapse or a great cultural leap forward, we have to create a different kind of discourse. The protests taking place throughout the EU and the riots that took place in the UK earlier this year, are signals of deep dysfunction in our political economy.

The problem however, is that we live in a culture of sound bites, clichés and fragmented discourse. Everything gets packaged and “caste” very fast. Media people talk about “the golden hour”-. this is the time span that effectively determines how a story will look like. Take for example the recent unlawful killing of Mark Duggan by a Met police officer and the subsequent political protest, followed by mayhem. Within one hour the killing was being linked to “gangs” and “drugs” and “weapon crime”. Following the protest march to the police station and then the riots and looting that erupted , the story narrative became about “feral youth” benefit-underclass” , “Chavs”(Council Housed and Violent )”dysfunctional family culture”. The unlawful killing of a young black man and the original protest march was almost airbrushed out of the picture within 24 hours. What also got airbrushed out of the picture was the local context in Tottenham and the wider context within which we have to set the riots and the current ongoing protests.
In trying to understand the riots its instructive to glance back to the Scarman report and what it had to say about the 1981 riots. Scarman identified five factors that created the conditions for the riots:
• The population of Brixton was disproportionately made up of deprived and vulnerable sections of the population as a whole;
• Brixton was characterised as an area of social and economic decay with high unemployment, depressing environment, major housing stress and absence of facilities for leisure and recreation.
• Thirdly, there was the racial dimension, which resulted in high levels of discrimination.
• Fourthly, community-police relations were strained.
• Political alienation

The above five conditions still apply to Tottentham and in particular the Broadwater Farm Estate and the other urban areas that descended into a short lived spate of “smash and grab”.
Here is the picture that emerges from the available data from the 1700 or so cases bought before the courts:
• The majority of those involved were from BME groups
• 90% were male
• Majority live in structurally poor neighbourhoods
• More than 95%(if not more) were less than 24 years of age
We do not have data about schooling, work experience, housing situation etc, but I suspect such data would reinforce the conditions identified by Scarman.
As for community police relations (condition four) then it is clear that bad, and abusive policing resulted in over 1700 young people being stopped under the sus law in just 3 months(April –June) in Tottenham. . The fight against terrorism has provided institutionalised cover for institutional racism to resurface visibly in the Met. Of those stopped only 67 have been found to be “guilty” . Its difficult to peel back the curtain here as its impossible to say what grounds and evidence were used in the determination of guilt. Lets not forget that the same police force was found to be “institutionally racist” by Lord McPherson in the Stephen Laurence report. This is not an organisational culture that can be changed quickly. The very fact that the vacuous and dishonourable Jack Straw pronounced the Met rid of its institutional racism, should make us wake up to,the fact that organisations such as the Met do not and cannot change so quickly. The organisational culture is not something that you can irradiate with good sounding leadership and some well intentioned people.Indeed, anyone who has been following events within the Met on this issue will be aware of the fact that the Black Police Officers association within the Met itself has called the Met an institutionally racist organisation. Look also what happened to the collapse of the “partnership arrangements “with the BME community that were put in place following the McPherson report.

Tottenham is also a testament that 30 years of urban regeneration interventions in deprived neighbourhoods have failed to create the “trickle down” that they promised. In fact , such initiatives have shown more propensity to “trickle up or trickle- out” benefits than impact on the supposedly target groups. Indeed, governments have effectively socially engineered such communities to have the problems they have. Through right to buy and no more social housing construction, it is not surprising that over two thirds of those living in social housing belong to the poorest two-fifths of the population. Nearly 50% of social housing is located in the poorest fifth of neighbourhoods. 30 years ago, 20% of the richest tenth of the population lived in social housing



However, whilst the similarities between Brixton and Tottenham are clear, there are also important differences that need to taken into account to place the riots in their proper context.

The first difference is that Tottenham is part of a wider set of protests and unrest that has exploded across North Africa, and throughout the EU. The wider protests also involve mainly young people, but from across a broader section of backgrounds/socio-economic groups. This is not to say that they are exclusively “youth movements”. However, they stem from the collapse of opportunities that young people are now faced with. This structural transformation in live chances takes many forms. Consider the situation in the UK:
• Unemployment now stands at 38% for those aged 16-24. However, it is important to remember that in 2005, 25% of 16-17 year olds were out of school and out of work at the height of the so called economic boom. So the crash of 2007/8 needs to be seen as sharp deterioration of already a bad situation facing young adults.
• In 2010,335,000 graduates left university with an average debt of £17,500.Many failed to get jobs-69 chasing every job-twice as many as in the last big recession of 1982.Some are already on benefits.
• Institute of Employment report 2010 found that 4 years after graduation, 23% of graduates in the creative sector were still undertaking unpaid work.Relatedly, over 30% of graduates in work are “under-employed”, they are not in any way using their qualifications.
• Job tenure has fallen by 20%. 33% of all first jobs are short terms job contracts. 65% of all agency workers are under 35 years old.
• Low pay. Since 1980 there has been a significant fall in earnings for the 18-24 age group. 20% of all jobs are low paid in 2010. In 1977 it was just 12%.
• Numbers in part-time work has increased from 630,000 in 1984 to 1.8 million by 2010. Infact this relates to the fact that 50% of jobs created by economic growth have been part time.
• OECD report “Growing Unequal”(2009) found that “children and young adults have a poverty rates that are now some 25% higher than the population average, while they were below or close to that average 20 years ago”.
• The minimum wage is just not enough to live on.The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that you need £ 13,900 a year to live to an acceptable level. This is above what the minimum wage provides. A 21 year old would have to work 56 hours a week to earn this level of income.
• 50% of young people are leaving state school earlier(25% drop out of education between 16-19, third highest among developed countries), without a university place, without A levels.50% are in fact leaving without 5 good GCSE’s.38% in 2011 are unemployed and large portion of these have already been on benefits for more than one year.22% are Not in Education, Employment or Training(NEET)-many of them will stay on benefits for very long time if not for their lives
• Apprenticeship have disappeared. In 1960’s we could afford 250,000apprenticeships .today there are about 60,000.
• Now its internships not apprenticeships. So the message is if you want to work , borrow money or parents pay so we can take your labour free of charge.
• Manufacturing jobs have collapsed over the last 30 years. In 1979 over 7 million worked in manufacturing. Now its just 2.83 million. These were important jobs for working class young people.

• Programmes such as New Deal have been expensive disasters, placing young people in temporary work or forcing them into pointless courses. Since 1997 it has cost Britain £75billion. Such schemes have a high proportion of “retreads”-stuck in the revolving door of temporary jobs, retraining course, unemployment. Moreover two –thirds placed in employment failed to hold down employment for more than 3 months. The end result after £75billion is that more are unemployed in 2011 than in 1997.
• Alongside this are the social costs of the above situation which are simply ignored:
o In 2009, 29% of men aged 20-34 were living with their parents, as were 18% of women. This damages relationships, A report by Shelter “The Human Cost” (2010) found that 58% of 18-34 year-old people living with their parents find it difficult to hold down a relationship. 2.8 million people aged 18 to 44 admit they’re delaying having children
o Research (2009) from University of London found that stay-at-home sons are more violent than those who move out.
o In 1990 51% of home owners were under 34. In 2010 its only 29%. Its not just that homes have got more expensive, its just that they have become disproportionately expensive.If food costs had gone up like houses then a jar of coffee would cost 20.22
o Not only are houses more expensive they are simply not being built. In 1968 425,000 homes were built. In 2008 just 182,700. Moreover builders have been building for speculators not residents.In the past 6 years 6647,000 homes have been for buy to let investors.

As Richard Sennett asks “how can long term purposes be pursued in a short –term society? How can a human being develop a narrative of identity and life history in a society composed of episodes and fragments?(1998-Corrosion of Character: the personnel consequences of work in new capitalism).

The second big difference is that the riots and the current wider protests are calls for social, economic, environmental and political justice .That is to say that the citizen protests we are seeing , stem from a desire/recognition that we need to make major changes in the way we do things as well as how we do them. A desire that sees the political and economic model that has run things for the past 40 years(if not longer) as broken. In a recent publication: “Jilted Generation: how Britain has bankrupted its youth” , Ed Howker and Shiv Malik argue that “recent generations seemed to forget completely that the future exists, selling off the legacies of even earlier generations for profit now, and selling off our futures for a fast buck to feed the demands of yesterday”.The impact of the crash has highlighted how valid their assertion is. Consider the following post crash elements:
• The “gilded generation” has built up an overdraft of £ 890billion (€900billion). In 2011, the cost of servicing just the interest of this debt will be £ 48 billion. It will be paid off in 2046,.just when those born in 1980 will be coming up to retirement.
• Private pension schemes have shortfall of £200bn. Public pensions are in an even worse state. The Government Actuarial Department estimates that the unfunded part of UK pension liabilities now equals £2.2 trillion.
• Demographic ageing will also create new fiancial pressures for health and care services.People are living longer and whilst some live longer in a healthy state , a lot live lost longer in a permanently unhealthy state. Almost half the entire NHS budget is spent on pensioners. What it means is the costs of the NHS will rise from 5% in 1990 to nearly 10% of GDP in 2040.
• PFI is also a system that is not only bad value for money but has heaped costs onto future generations. PFI’s between 19997 and 2010 amounted to £56Bn. However, the cost of these PFI’s will infact be £267Bn-60% of which is just to service the debt. Moreover, 214bn is due after 2011. Not only that, when we have paid for all the hospitals and surgeries built with PFI we will have an infrastructure worth just £11.2bn but we will have paid £63bn.
• The PFI liabilities do not in fact show on the government‘s balance sheet. If they did then the total value of our debt is nearly 510% of GDP, worse than Greece.
• PFI also has what is called a “shadow cost”. When Britain has to pay back money, government takes taxes from your income and as result that money stops going back into the productive part of the economy. So when debt equals 60% of GDP, it depresses the nations stock of income-producing assets by about 30%
The baby boomers (the gilded generation) will leave an average debt for future generations equal to £33,000 per head, and this total was calculated in 2005, two years before the crash.

The protests link this reality to the fact that the debts accumulated by the gilded generation have been due to imprudent policies and unrestrained capitalism(greed, political arrogance and corruption, growing inequality). Consider the latest ‘World Wealth report’ which shows that the wealth of the 10,9 million world’s ‘high net worth individuals’ grew 9,7 % in 2010 and now reaches 42,7 trillion US$. This now surpasses the 2007 pre-crisis peak. The global population of HNWIs grew 8,3 %.Europe’s HNWI wealth totaled 10,2 trillion US$ after growing 7,2 % in 2010. Austerity? North American HNWI wealth hit 11,6 trillion US$ in 2010, up 9,1 %. Crisis? Ultra-HNWIs – the super rich – posted slightly stronger-than-average gains in their numbers and wealth. Ultra-HNWIs accounted for 36,1 % of global HNWI wealth.
Meanwhile, a ‘social investment pact’ is proposed to European member states in which social policies are entirely subordinated to the economy, with a risk that only ‘investments’ in the ‘human capital’ of ‘young talents’ will seem to be relevant.

The third big difference is that they have been co-created with new media. As the ex director of Aljazeera rightly said, all democrats “should thank god for the invention of putting a camera in mobile phones”. So for example activists in Tottenham about the recent unlawful killing of Mark Duggan have posted a video that tells it like it was, rather than the “prefabricated” and predictable analysis that surfaced in mainstream media and also in “left” and “right” political statements and debates. In the age of social media mobilisation, the makers were actually able to put together live footage of the events never seen or never acknowledged and which raise important questions about the conduct of the police and also begin the explain the socio-economic and political roots of the riots that ensued.

New media has also provided a plurality of ways that people can take part in the “protest”…even as passive observers simply seeking to make sense of what is happening. Here I believe there is latent majority which, if mobilised in terms of simply voting could prove crucial in triggering the great leap forward we need.
We need a different way of doing business, and housing, and debt, and most importantly of all , of doing politics. Politics has become a career rather than a service.The long march to democracy wasn’t founded on the individual, or on a desire to destroy government, but increasing the accountability of the decisions made on our behalf.

The spread of a philosophy of individualism and self –expression has completely reshaped Britain’s politics. We have a dogma that citizens should be treated like individual consumers by government. It’s a dogma that applies the mechanisms of the free market for the purchase of consumer goods to public services such as health, education, local government, housing etc.

We have been sold the idea of “small government” as it that is good thing. Infact what we have got a more centralised and more powerful “political class”. This new establishment is made up of politicians, their advisors, lobbyists and journalists, key rich people, including senior bankers, hedge fund owners.Their relationships cut across party lines and political fences and are entrenched and familial as any medieval court.
The fact that the “political class” is stacked with middle and upper middle class people helps to explain why there are double standards at work. Take for example how the issue of welfare fraud is presented as huge problem . Sure it costs the Treasury some £1billion per year BUT around £70 billion is lost through tax evasion per year and we hear nothing about this and nor is any action taken to plug this loophole.

As such , the citzens protests we are seeing could be the pre-cursors of bigger and deeper desire for saying “enough is enough”. Here, the above characteristics become crucial.
It means making connections that are inclusive, creating and sustaining a dialogue that is paced and not rushed , a process that empowers citizens as citizens, that is say to uphold values of accountability, transparency, social and environmental justice.We need to re-establish values that centre on People, Planet ….(and if then possible)..Profit.