Riots and Housing

I was away from Europe during the English riots this summer, and didn’t really have much chance to follow their progress while they were going on.

One small advantage this affords is to be able to look at the media coverage after the event almost as a historian rather than as current affairs.

The main conclusion from this is that the media seemed to overreact. Even the blessed Economist included a number of articles claiming cathartic status for the riots. They were smart enough not to rush into trite analysis of causes, but they did seem to get swept away by the tide of excessive significance.

For, three weeks later, apart from the poor people directly affected who will have to painstakingly rebuild their lives, these riots don’t seem such a big story after all. Many places have frequent riots. A death tool of six would be a good week in Mexico City, or Rio, or Jo’burg, or Washington DC, and probably in Shanghai too if we knew the full truth. There have been riots in England before. It will do us English good next time there are riots in the Paris banlieux, perhaps we won’t be so smug about it.

Some things I have read have stuck in the memory. Private Eye dragged out some quotations from the 1981 riots. They were almost word for word what politicians and commentators are saying now. Lots of guff about loss of parental discipline, breakdown of family values, disadvantaged underclasses, and predictions of imminent doomsday.

There was a letter, also in Private Eye, from Northern Ireland, bemoaning that they suffer this stuff all the time yet the British press don’t care. It is a good point, but I guess that is what devolved government is for, to find local solutions for what are clearly local problems. A Scot also wrote in pointing out that descriptions of British riots were not accurate, since in truth they were all in England.

Then there are the politicians. Here, the Labour ones are on very thin ice bemoaning the way cutbacks have created an angry underclass. Surely these things take much more than a single year to simmer? And who has been in power for the thirteen years that these kids have been growing up?

But Tory are little better. As usual they mourn the loss of supposedly better times past, conveniently glossing over every statistic proving that beforehand there was even more poverty and family abuse. And the solution of punishment and more punishment is pretty thick. Bagehot wrote nicely to redeem the Economist a little when he/she argued that this was an English perennial solution dating back to colonial times – wish the troublemakers away. Where to, exactly? Penal colonies in Australia? Sorry, guys, these are our people, we can’t just make them vanish. I hope Ken Clarke sticks to his laudable justice principles during the coming weeks. Hooray for LibDems in government.

Myself, I think it is far more banal. Young men always have some urge to rebel, to make their mark in the world and show off to their peers. How they rebel is controlled by simple risk and reward. In the old days, eternal damnation was a deterrent from the Church, and tighter families also created deterrence, in good ways and bad ones. On the reward side, social media have made things easier – if you learn that a shop is ready to loot and all you have to do is join the crowd, then it is more tempting. Risk of sanction by the state is always limited, especially for kids with limited assets and prospects.

If we accept the banal explanation, responses can be more piecemeal.

The police can try to get smarter in developing intelligence from social media, and finding ways to amass more force more quickly in a locality.

Deterrents can be stepped up a little, though recognising that many perpetrators have little to lose.

Patient efforts at community building should continue. The same for vocational work and apprenticeship initiatives. Building tolerance between races and those of difference generally is always a good thing.

But one potential priority is not often mentioned in the UK, and that is the link to the quality of housing. I suspect that the quality of accommodation is a big driver towards law-abiding participation in society. If you live decently, you feel better and less excluded, and you are less likely to partake excessive rebellion.

I am always impressed by the housing development activity in the Netherlands. The root cause may be the lack of free land and the challenges of abundant water, but the outcome is fantastic. Everywhere is zoned, and each year, I see many projects of new housing developments and many more upgrading the worst existing housing. Unlike in the UK, you rarely see top-end housing going up, the mass of development is aimed at first-time buyers and at less affluent households. In the space of ten years, more than half of the low quality housing around the Hague seems to have been upgraded into very respectable dwellings. Holland has its social problems, but my guess is that the drive to decent housing for all is one policy which keeps them in check.

By contrast, most activity (and headlines) in the UK seem to be focused on the top-end and the green belt discussion. The result may be greater division, greater resentment, and greater squalor for many.

I applaud the coalition for its housing policies generally, and find it one of the biggest indictments of recent left-wing governments that they largely ignored housing. It was Maggie Thatcher who came up with the brilliant idea of selling council houses, and idea for shorter contracts rather than lifetime tenancies makes a lot of sense. It also has to be possible to evict trouble-makers and send them somewhere less desirable. But all of this requires a decent stock of housing to begin with.

Public-private partnership has worked (arguably) for schools and hospitals. Why not for house-building as well? Such a policy would not require much government investment, and it would create growth and jobs just when and where they are needed. But it might also be the most effective way to reduce the chance of future riots.