![]() It is also deprived young people whose education has been most affected by the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. ![]() The research also makes clear that the young are the age group most likely to have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, with almost one in five 18 to 24 year-olds who were in employment before the pandemic no longer working. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation has found that over ten percent of young men occupied NEET status (signifying that they are not in employment, education or training) in 2000, and that this figure was still broadly the same for 2019. In terms of unemployment, some of the most concerning statistics remain basically unchanged. But what seems clear, a full decade on from riots of 2011, is that many of the social conditions that bred them remain in place.įor example, The Guardian recently reported that the national budget for youth workers and youth centres has seen cuts of over 70% since 2010. Sometimes, as the political philosopher Avia Pasternak has noted, riots can contribute to the rectification of the social circumstances that bred them, usually by drawing awareness to the existence of injustices where they were previously overlooked. Duggan was, after all, just the latest name to join a long list of working class people of colour killed or seriously injured by the Metropolitan police in highly contested circumstances, including Cherry Groce, Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner, Roger Sylvester and David “Smiley Culture” Emmanuel. Duggan’s shooting in particular was seen by many participants in the riots as reflective of the police’s disregard for the lives of many of the citizens they are charged with protecting. Many of the young participants in the riots also reported a deep-seated distrust and antipathy towards the police, an agency whose practices (particularly the use of stop and search) they often regarded as central in reinforcing their sense of marginalisation and hopelessness. According to the Office for National Statistics, the youth unemployment rate between June and August 2011 stood at over 20%, more than double the rate of the UK average, and the highest figure reported since comparable records began in 1992. In addition, the employment prospects of many 16 to 24 year-olds were severely affected by the recession which followed the 2008 financial crisis. Many of the young rioters had also failed to thrive in school, with exclusion a common occurrence. Participants in the riots tended, for example, to be from some of the very poorest areas of England. ![]() Practically all of the academic reports into the causes of the 2011 riots at least partly confirm King’s analysis. But, according to King, it is persistent experiences of social marginalisation that help make rioting seem a reasonable response to such an event: it is usually only when groups feel their horizon of future possibilities to be highly constrained, that a violent lashing-out comes to seem a tenable option, from which there is little to lose. famously described riots as “the language of the unheard.” Rioting certainly always requires a ‘flashpoint’ or ‘spark’: in 2011, this was provided by the shooting of a young Black man, Mark Duggan, at the hands of the Metropolitan Police, in circumstances which remain unclear to this day. The largest episode of civil unrest in Britain since the previous English Riots of 1981, an estimated 15,000 people are thought to have taken part, many of them under the age of 25.ĭiscussing the summer of unrest that erupted across the United States in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. Cain Shelley details how conditions have worsened over the intervening decade.įor five days in August 2011, many towns and cities throughout England were the site of widespread looting, arson and running battles with the police. The 2011 riots were partly the result of the social marginalisation of many of England’s young people.
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