Tears stream, down your face when...

..you lose something, you cannot replace.

Gleaning information on the London and then England riots since Saturday has been largely, until today, solely via the internet. On Saturday night the usual quick check of BBC News showed unrest in Tottenham. This though unnerving, didn't seem significant until events on Sunday began to unfold. Yet still, as An Englishman watched events unfold for a second night, it still felt appropriate to write a flippant email to my brother-in-law. Though I wanted to make sure he wasn't effected by the outbursts in the borough where he lives, in my old house, it still seemed alright to click send on,

"Hope everything's OK. Not wanting get too dramatic seeing as I doubt you'd ever consider

a) Hanging out in Walthamstow
b) Looting a Foot Locker
c) Wasting good beer by lobbing it at a policeman.
 

Anyway, hope all's well but if anyone in the pub does offer you a cheap new iphone4, get one for me too, I'll pay you back"

After four days of watching ever worsening scenes unfold and finally, perhaps inevitably, make headline news in the USA, those words feel regrettable, idiotic even. What has happened in the last few days in London really does make tears stream down this face. Watching footage of looters who have poured acid on a wound in England that no one wanted to acknowledge is painful.

Being in the US but with strong ties to London has given an interesting perspective on events, on how they are reported and reflected in the media, comparing experiences of those living in rioting boroughs, the UK media's reporting of events and then that of the US. At each level versions of events become more and more distilled, starting with a street by street detail of what is happening and ending with the simple "Riots break out in London" headline on CNN.  This immediately begs the question, what does anyone really know of events unless they are there, in the thick of it and how does that reality compare with the understanding onlookers from around The World have? To add to that, CNN's coverage was a hotchpotch of the previous twelve to twenty-four hours events thrown together to make a digestible supposedly live report and all but ignored events outside of London.

A barbour assess the damage in Tottenham http://www.dankitwood.com/ from Getty Images

Sometimes though, a picture says it all and the eighty year old barbour, who sifts through the wreckage of his shop in Tottenham, is heartbreaking. As people wrestle with why the riots happened, whether the rioters, more accurately the looters, should be strung up or listened to, this image captures the individual effect of what has to be senseless violence. For who would loot a barbour's shop? The answer has to be only, The Mob.

The Mob is not an individually sentient person, The Mob is not someone to invite over for dinner but an unpredictable drunk party guest who will do anything, turn on anyone, at anytime, for any reason. The last person you'd invite into your home.  

Yet, given the right circumstances,  The Mob could be you or I. I say this with conviction because, the majority of people in The Mob, taken as an individual, would not loot, would not set fire to buildings, would not rampage from shopping centre to shopping centre but, given the right situation,  people will join together and cause unrestrained havoc. Of course there will always be some people in any and every society who will steal, who will use violence, but for The Mob to form, usually law abiding citizens must join. "There but for the grace of God, go I."

Riots could happen anywhere and it seems  they are becoming more frequent. What is shocking for anyone following events in the UK right now is that there is no real cause and no one trait that links those who are rioting. As the courts quickly process those who have already been arrested and the police hunt for more, the culprits are not all black, not all poor, not at all aware of the seriousness of what they have done.

This is a wound that hurts so much because if there is no single rallying cry to unite the looters on the streets, what is their motivation? There is no easy answer. The events cannot be dismissed as poverty, as racial inequality and certainly not as a unified response to the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. A tinder box had been set alight, but to compare that with the riots in LA sparked by the police treatment of Rodney King in 1991 would elevate the UK looters to a level of having a cause, of knowingly reacting to an unacceptable act of police brutality.  The insight into the minds of looters in the UK is far more disturbing. "We're fighting against the government", "That guy...yeah Cameron, that's his name, is it?", " We're taking back our taxes". A mismatch of justification without any thought or true incentive.

What really seems to be happening are groups of bored people following the media, in all its forms, and thinking, "I'll have a bit of that". But why? From across the Atlantic it is because there is no aspiration in people's lives, nothing to lose, everything to gain and most of all no sense of consequence. It's all a "bit of laugh". Rather than "have-a-go-hero" we now have, "have-a-go-looter".  Looting solely because it's what everyone else is doing and this is marked by images of people stealing not just Plasma TV sets but Tesco Value rice, while others have enough swag to set up a market stall.

So why do tears run down the face of this Englishman watching footage of events back home? It's because right now there seems no way to heal the wound. If there is no one cause, how is it treated? Like cancer it can spread rapidly and the only treatment we know is radical. Like cancer no one knows how to cure it but only to throw everything at it in the hope it goes away. For once, don't fight fire with fire, but understand what caused the fire in the first place. Who left the matches out for the kids to play with. For that, I think we're all a little responsible.

For those that are worried about the UK's image abroad I can reassure you that the American's don't really care. Yes they look on surprised, but their reaction is"sympathetic" and "shocked" but this does not change their opinion of the Britain. The US media, taking their typical angle, asks whether this could happen in their country. It is only when I tell people that the looters are kids, some as young as ten years old, that jaws drop. Even then though, the reaction is the same as all those I have read on the internet from people back home. It reflects that we, more often than not, share similar views and fears but no answers. 

I wonder what cannot be replaced. Burnt down buildings can be rebuilt. Livelihoods can be put back together, I hope. But what of those on the streets in the last few nights? What of their lives? What happens when someone with no aspirations sinks to even greater depths? Punish the looters? Certainly. Punish the parents? To what end? Take away benefits? Surely that idea is madness and would only worsen the situation.

To end on a positive note, because what has happened is still the actions of a minority albiet disperate group, the social media that helped fuel the riots, has helped to clean it up. Watching with avid interest from across the pond the Twitter campaign #riotcleanup actually worked, creating heartwarming scenes of Londoners taking to the streets with their brooms.

As for Aaron Biber, the barbourshop owner,  the internet is coming to his rescue too KeepAaronCutting.