An eruption of mayhem in Britain

What happened

The streets of Britain were filled with violence, flames, and chaos this week as police struggled to contain gangs of youths rioting and looting in cities across the country. The riots began in the Tottenham neighborhood of London after a peaceful protest against the killing of a 29-year-old black man by the police got out of control. The Metropolitan Police Force quickly found itself stretched beyond capacity as violence flared in all corners of the capital. By midweek, rioting had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, and claimed four lives. At least 1,100 people were arrested across the country. Gangs of black, white, and Asian teenagers used their BlackBerrys to coordinate the looting of shopping malls and liquor stores, and roamed the streets setting fires and robbing passers-by. Many of the rioters were children, some as young as 12. When asked to explain the riots, one teenage girl told reporters the point was to show “the rich” that “we can do whatever we want.”

Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his summer vacation and returned to Britain as rival politicians lambasted his government for failing to restore order. Cameron ordered 16,000 law-enforcement officers into London’s streets and gave the British police, who are usually unarmed, permission to use guns with plastic bullets. “This is criminality, pure and simple,” he said, “and it has to be confronted and defeated.”

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What the editorials said

If these riots seem familiar, said The Washington Post, that’s because they resemble the street uprisings in the Middle East. Although the British rioters seem motivated more by greed than by political fervor, the underlying factors are similar: “high unemployment, resentment toward a prosperous and seemingly impenetrable upper class, and hatred of the police.” Clearly, 2011 has become the “year of rebellion by the dispossessed.” And in Britain, their fury was fueled by the recession-battered government’s austerity measures, said The Seattle Times. “Cutting social services, along with law enforcement,” creates a tinderbox for urban discontent.

You can’t blame this on budget cuts, said The Wall Street Journal. The British government hasn’t stopped spending yet, and its social safety net is still “remarkably generous.” People aren’t torching cars and stealing televisions because they’re angry about “reduced hours at the local library.” These are simply “looters and vandals and thieves,” said the London Telegraph. Dealing with them will be a crucial test of Cameron’s leadership. If he can’t bring this situation under control, “he may struggle to recover.”

What the columnists said

Blame Britain’s welfare state, said Charlie Cooke in NationalReview.com. Parents no longer feel the need to raise their children properly, relying on social services to do it for them. The courts have “redefined wickedness” as illness or disability, and liberals claim that ever-greater government handouts will somehow cure all ills. Meanwhile, the nanny state relegates the poorest to “endless underclass status.” It’s no wonder they rebelled.

Welfare is indeed the problem, said Camila Batmanghelidjh in the London Independent. We don’t have enough of it. Young people in Britain feel “cut adrift from civil society’s legitimate structures” because our schools and social services are too under-resourced to reach out to them. Instead, youths have formed “parallel anti-social communities” of street gangs led by drug dealers. These riots are the inevitable result.

That doesn’t explain why the rioters are looting TVs, said Clive Bloom in the Financial Times. Now that Britain’s flood of cheap credit has ebbed and jobs are scarce, the disenfranchised poor scramble for footing in a “world where social identity comes from consumption.” Thievery is the only way to keep up. And the gap between rich and poor has never been wider, said Nina Power in the London Guardian. Britain is now one of the “most unequal countries in the developed world,” with the richest 10 percent some 100 times better off than the poorest. The consensus seems to be that a “widening gap between rich and poor, no jobs, and a frustrated underclass” are to blame for the riots, said Raymond Bonner in TheAtlantic.com. That could almost be “describing America today.” Are we next?