This article was originally published in August of 2011.

When, yesterday evening, I re-read my piece about the causes of the Tottenham riots, it was clear to me that in the space of a few hours, my analysis was already pretty much out of date. As the riots spread to other parts of London and then Birmingham (and to a much lesser degree Liverpool), it became apparent that we were not dealing with a situation that could be readily explained as an outburst of anti-social behaviour by disaffected youths who had reached the end of their tether after the killing of one of their number by the police, but something far more fundamental and serious.

Tottenham Riots

Although, it is no coincidence that the public disorder is being carried out by inner-city youths from areas of high-unemployment and deprivation, there can be no legitimate reason for endangering the lives of others, looting and the massive destruction of your own community.

The immediate issue is how to stop it, and over the next twenty-four hours, if the riots are repeated, there will be increasingly shrill calls for the introduction of the army, the imposition of curfews or the use of water cannon. Such things fill most of us with dread (especially the idea of the army being deployed on the streets of our capital) – but, sadly, order does have to maintained, it is no one’s interests for these riots to continue. My hunch though, is that by the time drastic measures are being introduced the riots will have already run out of steam of their own volition and that the police will swiftly round up the culprits who will be remanded.

Stopping the riots though, will be an easier task than the challenge of understanding why they happened in the first place and making sure that they don’t happen again.

As I said yesterday, it is far far too simplistic to dismiss this mass outburst of criminal disorder as just the work of thugs with mobile phones – there must be an underlying reason why someone is willing to go out on the street and arm themselves with missiles and petrol bombs and be prepared to commit criminal offences.

What caused the London riots th

I would proffer that the answer lies in the landscape of our inner cities. For years, these areas have been allowed to crumble, effectively ghettoised by a combination of poor housing, rising crime and the education system which has encouraged the homogenisation of schools based upon race and class as the richer, predominantly white families rush to educate their kids in the ‘better places.’

There are issues of drugs which has encouraged a lawlessness that makes the step from casual and petty anti-social behaviour to wholescale serious violent disorder a small one.

There are issues of economic failure in these areas and the fact that capital is moving away from them rather than into them; there is the diminution of the role of family and a widespread failure of parenting; and there is a fundamental lack of discipline and respect for institutions which is endemic amongst this particular generation.

Tackling these issues should not become an excuse for political posturing and point scoring – the issue transcends some traditional right – left thinking (though I stand wholeheartedly by what I said yesterday about the fundamental unfairness of Toryism). For example, when the right says that a causal factor is the breakdown of family values, and an excessively tolerant attitude of some towards anti-social behaviour these are legitimate points that can’t be ignored; similarly, when the left point to the reduced funding for social services and the failure of the elite classes to tackle the problems of inner-city social and economic deprivation they are also absolutely correct.

As someone said in a very thoughtful response to my piece yesterday, pundits will be attempting to come up with ill-thought out, knee-jerk responses to the London riots – the reality is that once the dust has settled and the re-building has begun, we all need to do a bit of soul-searching, we all need to ask ourselves the difficult questions, and there needs to be an honest and, perhaps brutal, assessment of what caused this, because without such an assessment we will not mend our country.