Matthew Flinders: Police must be allowed to halt this lawlessness without fear of reprisal

To view the riots as the result of political failure or social alienation risks excusing – even romanticising – behaviour that is quite simply opportunistic violence.

The similarities between the events since Saturday, and the Brixton and Toxteth disorder are, on one level, too obvious to ignore.

Social unrest was initially inflamed by concerns about the nature of policing within London – this spark was ignited not just in the wake of a Royal wedding but also within a severe economic recession.

Moreover, riots and looting is occurring in many of the same suburbs, even on the same streets, where it occurred three decades ago. And yet the triggers that stirred up social tensions in the early 1980s cannot be used as an excuse for today’s violence.

There have been major changes in relation to fighting social deprivation and reforming the police that have delivered major benefits to local communities both within London and beyond.

I am not trying to argue that everything is perfect, that pockets of social deprivation do not exist or that the police are not beyond reproach.

But I am arguing that huge strides have been made and that the behaviour of a relatively small number of people risks setting-back decades of social progress.

Today’s riots are not the result of an outburst of social anger and resentment against the police or social deprivation, as Lord Scarman’s landmark report on the Brixton riots concluded, but are more accurately seen as the result of a small number of selfish people who lack the moral fibre to deny themselves an opportunity to loot shops and cause chaos.

Local community leaders in London have gone out of their way to stress how the rioters are damaging their own communities and to praise the police for exercising restraint in the face of extreme provocation.

The problem is, however, that the senseless violence and stupidity of the rioters is harming exactly those communities that need and deserve most support from society.

As Diane Abbott, Hackney’s Left-wing Labour MP, stated: “These young people are trashing their own community…and it’s going to be very hard to get investment back.”

If today’s riots lack the deeper social undercurrents that sparked the London riots in the early 1980s then to compare them with the Arab Spring is equally, if not more, misleading.

Although many people on twitter and the blogosphere may like to somehow legitimate recent events through reference to the rioting we have seen in recent months across North Africa and the Middle East to make this connection is both reckless and foolhardy.

The protesters in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and many other countries have endured decades of living in a “fear society”. These are societies in which there are no rules, where free speech is forbidden, where the police are free to act without restraint and in which people frequently disappear in the night.

The people of London (and Bristol, Birmingham, etc) live in a free society in which basic freedoms are protected, the political system distributes a vast range of social benefits (education, housing, welfare, healthcare) and the rule of law ensures that neither MPs nor the police are above prosecution.

Our political system may not be perfect but let us not pretend that the recent riots have anything to do with the Arab Spring.

The public uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East were driven by absolute poverty, raw pain and rampant corruption and not the senseless violence and stupidity that is unfolding in London.

The BBC’s video footage of a gang of youths helping a heavily bleeding and injured young man to his feet on a London street in order to steal the contents of his backpack made me burn with rage.

The simple fact is that the social unrest and rioting was not driven by poverty or a demand for basic political rights but by a demand for easy money and luxury goods.

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, may argue that cuts to educational maintenance allowances and cuts across the public sector have left many young people feeling no one cares about them. In making this argument, however, he risks failing to fulfill the responsibilities of a serious politician by failing to stress that living in a civilized democratic society brings with it responsibilities as well as rights.

Over the next week, we can expect to see the balance of power shift between the rioters and the police shift as the wider demos – that is the broader political system including the majority of the public – sanctions a more robust style of policing.

This will inevitably result in a flurry of complaints about heavy-handed policing due to the simple fact that being a police officer (like being a politician) is an invidious occupation in which you cannot please everyone all of the time.

The most important fact, however, is that politics isn’t failing, democracy isn’t broken and we cannot let the behaviour of a few destroy the achievements of the many.

Matthew Flinders is a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield.