Riots - a brief history (politics free thread)

Hi Pixiefox,

This argument sounds rational, but on closer scrutiny misses something that I think is key.

If a fish and chip shop gives you food poisoning, do you punish that shop or all fish and chip shops?

If a dog bites your friend, do you put down just that dog or all dogs?

It's the inability of people to see everyone as an individual and instead grouping them together under some arbitrary category (e.g. race or religion) that irks me. What that person did to those girls is horrendous and disgusting and despicable, but it's on him and not some vaguely related community.

No one rioted against white people when the Soham murderer was found and many others of his ilk. It is obvious to people that it would be absurd to do so.

I cannot help feeling that, compared to the French, the inhabitants of the UK are rank amateurs when it comes to rioting.

Legislators across the history of our nation have struggled to define "riot" and associated unlawful actions.

To explore the consensus I noted the below.

 By 1986 the emphasis in legislation (in England and Wales) the definition of riot was:

“12 or more persons who are present together, use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety...”
(Public Order Act, 1986, p. 2).

Riot = 12 or more people.

Violent Disorder = 3 or more people.

Affray = an individual.

Fear or provocation of violence = threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour (or written words or imagery) towards a person "with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked".

The formal psychology of motivation to riot has long been a matter of academic debate.

Sometimes it has more to do with the motivation and emotion of a person's limbic system which initiates behaviour.

The "symptoms" and underlying "disease" of riot, rampage and violence are complex.  There may be altruism or their may simply be material gain as motivation.

On occasion; the thoughts / beliefs / ideology / motivation / needs / wants / deprivation / opportunism / the need for inclusion or a sense of exclusion and emotions of riot participants can be less about the reason an individual or group takes part and has much more to do with factors such as: the influence of coercion, manipulation, duress, external enterprise or criminality.

Each time a person, community or population is exposed to riot conditions there is temptation to rush through assumptions towards rash conclusions.

In the event of any riot; calm heads need to over rule knee-jerk emotions / reactiveness ...long enough to permit the relevant subject matter experts to complete their investigation to secure sound convictions of the perpetrators.

None of that means the detrimental emotions and outrage of individuals / communities / Employers are to be overlooked (although, patience and restraint are needed).

Oh, I didn't know that happened. I don't follow the news any more as I find it depressing - I only looked up why the riots had started.

I think I'll leave it there and go back to living in my own bubble. 

To be honest Pixiefox I wouldn't dignify what they did with a veneer of anything understandable. People who try and set fire to a building with children inside need jailing for a long long time as they obviously have no respect for life or for the safety of those around them.

To me this is yet another example of toxic masculinity, this isn't just kids, its men older than you and I, one was jailed earlier today aged 69! When you get people af the sorts of ages of these thugs, rioting then what hope is there for their children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren if that the sort of attitudes they've been brought up with?

Hi Mark

The recent ones are prompted by:

1. Fear, that their children might be killed

2. Anger, that "the establishment" did not protect children from being attacked

The reaction is tribal: children in their identity group have been attacked - they cannot attack the person who carried out the crimes, they can only attack others who they see as belonging to his identity group. It also signals to the government that they will not accept people being allowed into this country who are not vetted properly. (Not my views, just what I think are their reasons)

It may seem senseless to attack.others for something someone of their race did, but there again many men have killed others of different races in wars, who had done nothing personally to them.

I remember the riots in the early 1980s because they happened 5 minutes away from where I lived.

Historically the British were known to be a nation of rioters and protestors, somehow this changed, although riots may have become less, protests didn't. In the medieval perios there were a few times when the guard at the tower of London, then a working palace and armoury, were either called out onto the streets to quell protest and/or ended up being chased back and shutting the gates against angry crowds.

There is one "odd man out" in the list. Dublin hasn't been a part of the UK for quite a while. :-)

There also appear to have been riots in Dublin in 2006 and 2021 - and before.

Thanks for the information Iain. This list is factual enough - we like facts, figures and lists! But, there was something that made me uneasy about it that I couldn't put my finger on and niggled at me, but I then thought about it during my morning walk. I came to the following conclusion

I think it that most of these riots in your list (as far as I can tell), are pretty much against "The Man": a faceless entity.

What I find most appalling about these recent ones (and a couple in your list), is that they are against real people, in the places that they live.