Cruiselogs1on1: Letters: The politics of social unrest

It is absurd for Simon Jenkins to lecture other cities on how recent events highlight the need for powerful mayors (Comment, 10 August). I hope Boris Johnson enjoyed his holiday. But it didn't seem to impress people in London.

In Liverpool councillors were on the streets from early on Tuesday morning cleaning up after the night's violence. Cllr Joe Anderson, leader of the council, condemned the violence and co-ordinated the cleanup. Councillors in affected wards spoke to residents and businesses, and identified problems needing immediate action and ways to prevent further trouble. My cabinet colleagues joined in the cleanup while talking to partners ? police, housing associations, companies, community groups, youth workers ? about how to deal with the problems we faced. Most people, including political opponents, would agree that our council leader speaks for the city at moments like this. But it's the force of his passion that brings people with him, not the power of his office.

Of course, policing is the responsibility of the whole community. In wards across our city, councillors, police, residents, youth workers, council and housing staff will be meeting every week to discuss how to tackle crime and other problems facing our communities. Liverpool is united in condemning the violence and damage created by a few hundred criminals, just as we are united in condemning the long-term damage our unfair treatment by this government is inflicting on the city. But the latter neither excuses nor explains the former. We will not let crime or the cuts hold us back as a city or act as an excuse for failure.

Cllr Steve Munby

Cabinet member for neighbourhoods, Liverpool city council

??I am the white, middle-class mother of two sons, now young adults, born, raised and educated in Hackney. I get the impression that when certain people say things like "being liberal is fine, but we need to be given back the right to parent" (Report, 11 August), they are frequently saying that they want the right to use corporal punishment. Well, I know that it is possible to raise sons in Hackney without using corporal punishment, but I think it might be fruitful to look at what they had.

They had parents who had a good relationship, who communicated well, and who are still together. They had parents whose income was such that they were always well nourished and provided with stimulating toys and books, and whose level of education was such that they could be provided with factual information appropriate to their age. They had parents who were not afraid to say no.

What they didn't have was the pressure of being stopped and searched; of being raised by a single mother short of cash and time. They did not come from a history of colonial oppression based on slavery, with its concomitant fractured families and internalised brutality. I think the riots are multifactorial and complex.

Meg Taylor

London

??I would like to assure Seumas Milne (Comment, 11 August) that most parts of Tottenham (the football stadium excepted) have superlative public transport links with the rest of London ? a city where probably over one million foreigners have found employment in the last decade. Furthermore, as one of the largest private sector employers in Tottenham for over 40 years, I can assure Mr Milne that no presentable, industrious, literate local has ever found it difficult to find employment. Why else would we employ Nigerians, Asians, etc and risk falling foul of the employment laws?

Edward Atkin

London

??The complaint that the rioting and vandalism earlier this week was only mindless criminality has been repeated mindlessly all week, and was not improved on in parliament today. The idea that other riots have been "political" while these were only opportunistic is a nonsense. This week's riots were very much political, but conducted by people without the articulacy to speak their cause. Until that is understood, we're not going to get anywhere, and certainly not when the only response is to ask where the parents were, and demand punishment.

Stephen Games

London

??Whatever explanations are offered for the riots (for instance, a state-dependent generation with a false sense of entitlement, and a "victim culture", underpinned by family failure and woeful leniency on the part of the authorities; or a natural instinctive human response from those brutalised by decades of neglect and social deprivation on the margins of our market society, now facing further levels of deprivation and hopelessness in a society replete with exhortations to consume the latest products), each will remain firmly rooted in the ideologies, epistemologies and methodologies of those putting them forward. But this does not mean that all explanations are equally correct or valid. For my part I am happy to acknowledge my bias towards a deprivation-based socioeconomic analysis, rooted in decades of neoliberal policymaking and an associated neglect of the British "underclasses". For me, therefore, the complete lack of any coherent political agenda on the part of the rioters does not imply that the causes are not rooted in a highly complex form of political economy.

For the reasons I outline above, there will never be agreement on what caused these riots, even among scholars, perhaps especially among them. However, one view will eventually win and underpin the consent of the majority of the public and be reflected by victorious political elites in their policymaking, and this will lead to very specific policy outcomes. My fear is that it will be a simplistic authoritarian "law and order" view that prevails, and that therefore little will change in Britain as a result, aside from greater use of force by the state and plenty of new jails, and a new generation of deprived young people with even less commitment to the wider society in which they live ? if that is humanly possible.

Dr David Lewis Baker

Bath

??For many years I taught a final-year undergraduate course on the uprisings of the peasants and artisans that swept across large parts of 17th-century France. Buildings were attacked, their contents pillaged, crops destroyed and occasionally a perceived oppressor was killed. Had my students explained it all by simply invoking feral criminality they would have failed.

David Parker

Emeritus professor, University of Leeds

??Anyone seeking explanations for the recent riots might wish to look up a comment piece by the late Michael Young which appeared in the Guardian a decade ago (Down with meritocracy, 29 June 2001). In it he reflects on his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy, where he had warned of what would happen to society when people are sieved "according to education's narrow band of values".

In his Guardian article he wrote: "I expected that the poor and the disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later unemployment.

"They can easily become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who have done well for themselves.

"It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that."

David Harding

London

??Since Thatcher, and certainly since Blair, we have grown accustomed to the idea that there are people at the top who are above the law. Private equity firms have been allowed to legally load healthy firms with debt and sack half their workers in order to "extract value" from them, in a manner far more damaging to their long-term health than simply ram-raiding the front of their high street stores. For the likes of many big corporations and their executives, it is entirely a matter of choice whether (or not) they wish to make a contribution to the public tax pool. Bankers have gambled with the livelihoods of millions for the short-term enrichment of the themselves, and until recently were praised for their cleverness in doing so.

Our last prime minister but one waged a war of aggression that destroyed millions of lives simply in order to enrich a few particularly nasty corporations. He went on to undermine the rule of law in this country by intervening to stop an investigation into bribes paid to a tyrannical monarchy by a British arms company. He has not only avoided prison, but is doing rather well for himself.

At the other end of the scale, street gangs run riot, and vast numbers lack the dignity to even try to work their way out of the poverty trap (liberals can sympathise all they want with the circumstances that led the people who have been rioting over the last few days to behave as they do ? there is no getting away from the fact that they are profoundly unpleasant individuals).

We now seem to have an amoral underclass that has opted out of civil society, and a morally identical group of people who float above society with similar disregard for the consequences of their actions, with the significant difference that they are careful only to wreak havoc well away from their own backyards.

For those who work, pay taxes, and try to respect the law, there is an increasing feeling that we are clustered together on a melting iceberg.

I'm pretty sure that civil society will eventually muddle through, but if this is where 30 years of neoliberal economic policies have brought us, perhaps it would be better to try something else ? and soon.

Qasim Salimi

London