Minority report

As a member of the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel, I believe that we failed to address the deeper causes of last summer’s violence

Will the riots happen again? That was the question many people asked after last summer. As one of the appointees to the government’s Riots, Communities and Victims Panel, set up in the wake of the riots, I think I know. But a number of my conclusions differed from those of my fellow panellists, and some of the politicians who set us up.

We spent six months travelling around the country speaking to people about what happened. Those who spoke to us cited many issues, including poverty, inequality, consumerism, entitlement, policing, discipline and ‘the X Factor society’. The panel rightly addressed many of these in its report. But more striking — I regret to say — were the things that we failed to address.

I also learned of more sinister agendas. The day after the Tottenham riots, the smouldering ruins of the carpet shop were being demolished, along with the homes of people who lived above it. Nearby, far-left activists were handing out leaflets calling for more riots. Weeping families and burning homes seemed not to bother such people in their celebration of disaster.

As founder of a charity that works with excluded teenagers in Tottenham and Hackney, angry young men, street violence and burnt-out cars were not new to me. I have seen gang culture dominate areas, observed how the disintegration of the traditional family has devastated poor communities and watched our broken welfare and criminal justice systems further demoralise and fracture our society. Yet a local government culture of psychobabble, ideology and self-perpetuating bureaucracy remains in denial about these major underlying causes of the riots. They are an ‘inconvenient truth’ for the left-liberal establishment that has been asleep at the wheel for a generation.