Abstract
On 11 August 2011 in Camberwell Green Magistrates Court, a 23-year-old student with no criminal record was sentenced to a prison term of six months for stealing a pack of bottled water worth £3.50. This extraordinarily harsh sentence would normally be cause for widespread denunciation of judicial abuse but, following five nights of fiery rioting across a dozen English cities from 6 to 10 August, the extraordinary turned ordinary for the courts. Whereas the rampant financial criminality at the top of the class structure leading to the near-collapse of the banking system in the autumn of 2008 saw no reactions from criminal justice, even as it sent the UK economy into a tailspin, overturning millions of lives and causing hundreds of billions of pounds in damage, a street fracas at the bottom, estimated to have cost around 300 million pounds, triggered a lightning-fast and brutal response from the penal wing of the state. Those convicted at the Crown Court of robbery (that is, looting, however minor) during these nocturnal disturbances were sentenced with stunning celerity to an average of 29.8 months in prison, nearly treble the usual rate of 10.8 months. Culprits of violent disorder reaped 30.6 months compared with the standard fare of 9.9 months, while those nabbed for theft received sentences nearly twice as long (10.1 months as against 6.6 months). After the riots stopped, the police deployed munificent resources and manifold schemes to track down and round up the looters, mining television footage and web postings, setting up phone lines for snitching, running “Shop A Moron” posters on buses, while politicians promised to cut welfare and housing benefits to the families of the culprits.
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Notes
- 1.
A damning account of the contribution of systematic illegal behavior to the financial bubble-burst of 2008 is Charles H. Ferguson’s award-winning documentary, The Inside Job (2010). The main reaction of the British government was to roll out a rescue package topping 500 billion pounds, lest the banking system disintegrate.
- 2.
These figures come from Ministry of Justice (2012).
- 3.
One illustration: The BBC was forced to issue an apology following its 9 August interrogation of the veteran broadcaster Darcus Howe. When Howe stated that he was not shocked by the riots, which in his view were an “insurrection” reflecting “the nature of the historical moment,” the interviewer immediately accused him of being a rioter with a criminal past.
- 4.
The exact circumstances of Duggan’s death remain unclear, but on 12 August 2011 the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), with customary obliquity, announced that it “may” have given misleading information to journalists that shots were fired between Duggan and the police—significantly fanning the flames of that week. The official verdict, months later, was that Duggan was armed at the time he was stopped by the police, but never once fired his gun and in fact discarded it well before he was fatally shot in the back. After numerous delays, a public inquest took place from late 2013 to early 2014, and on 8 January a jury delivered its conclusion (an eight to two majority) that Duggan’s death was a “lawful killing” by the police, even though the judge in the case instructed the jury as follows: “If you are sure that he did not have a gun in his hand, then tick the box ‘unlawful killing’” (Press Association, 2013).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Quite where this figure came from is still a mystery. For a very detailed catalogue of the eugenic mentality of civil servants who think they can fix Britain’s “troubled families,” and of the abuse of statistics and general skulduggery that underpins the entire troubled families agenda, see the excellent work of Stephen Crossley at https://akindoftrouble.wordpress.com/
- 11.
He has on many occasions spoken of this visit a life-changing experience, “a sort of Damascene point” (ibid.).
- 12.
It was later followed by a package of “policy recommendations” entitled “Breakthrough Britain,” with numerous sub-reports focusing on particular cities: Breakthrough Manchester, Breakthrough Glasgow, Breakthrough Birmingham, etc.
- 13.
These “pathways” are notable for how they reverse social causation in pushing behavioural explanations for poverty. For example, never mind that a massive literature on financial exclusion confirms that poverty is a pathway to “serious personal debt,” the Centre for Social Justice is desperate to show that it is the other way around.
- 14.
Peers and bishops in the House of Lords defeated eight parts of the Welfare Reform Bill, especially its proposal that, regardless of circumstances (disability, family size, etc.), no household should receive more than £26,000 a year in welfare benefits. The Bill then “ping-ponged” (the official language) for several weeks between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but in the end MPs overturned the concerns and the votes of the Lords and passed the Bill, principally because they managed to turn specific amendments encouraged by the House of Lords into vague ministerial commitments to undertake some form of ‘review.”
- 15.
In one of the more depressing outcomes of the riots, an e-petition calling for convicted rioters to have their benefits permanently removed attracted well over 100,000 signatures. At the time, very few made the point that plans to remove benefits are already underway for those living at the bottom of the class structure.
- 16.
Mead was arguably the most influential scholarly voice behind 1990s welfare-to-work legislation in the USA, consistently arguing that paid employment is an obligation of citizenship.
- 17.
Bratton was attracted to the vacant post of Chief Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police until it was realized that, as a non-UK citizen, he could not apply.
- 18.
Prominent political figures were at pains to show their annoyance at having to cancel their foreign holidays and return to England to deal with the crisis.
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Slater, T. (2016). The Neoliberal State and the 2011 English Riots: A Class Analysis. In: Mayer, M., Thörn, C., Thörn, H. (eds) Urban Uprisings. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50509-5_4
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