Blogs

Nick Mahony and John Clarke's blog on Open Democracy

We need to develop new understandings of public action, public culture, public space and the public sphere and what impact it has on these when people see themselves as in crisis.

Read the full article on the Open Democracy website

Making a difference? Riotous assemblies and the state of society

 Riots dramatise the state of society - and those of the summer of 2011 in England were no exception. All sorts of differences and divisions were projected on to them: were they about the difference between the purely criminal minority and the hard-working law abiding majority (as so many of our politicians insisted)? Were they about the growing gap between the police and young people? Were they about 'race'? Were they about the growing social and economic inequalities that left some despairing and disaffected?

The history of riot tells us two things. The first is that rioting is a very English behaviour. Despite the sense of shock that always accompanies riot, we have been here before, and many times. The second is that people always project stories about the state of society on to riots and rioters: and the one that never sticks is the story that says this is just about crime and criminality. Look back to the 1980s - and the riots in places like Brixton, Birmingham, and Bristol. What we now remember is that they arose from deeply felt senses of injustice - about social inequalities and, not least, the treatment of young people at the hands of the police. They were, of course, announced and denounced at the time as 'purely criminal', but the story failed to stick.

Two decades from now, will we be looking back at the riots of 2011 and pondering how they pointed to deepening divisions in Engalnd's poorest areas? Considering how they revealed a deepening rift between police and young people that took decades to mend? Reflecting on how they merely marked the beginning of a decade of social and political disorder that followed in the wake of austerity policies and deepening unemployment and social misery across Europe? Riots, as I said, dramatise the state of society - and sometimes contribute to the possibilitioes of making a difference to it.

Knowing the other

On 16 January 2012 the Guardian revealed that the new commissioner of the metropolitan police Bernard Hogan-Howe intends to make officers of operation trident the 'spearhead' of a new police campaign against street gangs. The newspaper reported, moreover, that Hogan-Howe 'has solid political backing' for his envisaged war on gangs, because it is entirely in line with the 'security fight-back' David Cameron has called for in his speech on the riots on 15 August 2011. Apart from the fact that precisely those officers will take the lead in the envisaged 'war on gangs', who ran the operation that led to the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last August, which triggered the riots in the first place, this strategy amounts – at least to my mind – to fighting fire with oil. For the 'war on gangs' will for sure implicate an increase in those 'stop-and-search' operations among marginalised youths, which convinced the latter that last August was the right time to 'violate [the police] just like they violate us'.

From Common Sense to Good Sense

In the December issue of Prospect magazine Professor David Coleman, a demographer at Oxford University, makes a number of population projections based on migration and fertility trends. The main point of his article 'When Britain becomes "majority minority"' is about the changed ethnic composition of British population when the population may reach 77 million by 2051. Coleman notes that foreign born mothers have the highest fertility rates; linking that with standard net migration trends, he projects that white Britons will become a minority by 2066. In another projection, this would occur by the end of the century, when white Britons would make up 50% of the population.

Big Cuts, Big Society

Here we invite CCIG members and others to reflect on and intervene in the politics of the present. Right now, we are concerned with the politics of the 'Big Cuts, Big Society' agenda.

Who is choosing choice?

Everywhere these days the mantra of ‘choice’ rings in our ears. No politician can speak about education or health without choice being a key part of the message.

But, what is less often discussed is the question of who is choosing choice. It does seem that we are simply to take for granted that this idea, one that is driving change and reform across the public sector, will lead us to better public services. For in the name of this idea, we are promised enhanced ‘transparency’, openness and democracy. On the face of it, it’s difficult to see why anyone could question that all these things are simply good things.

Can we ever learn to love social workers?

Lord Laming's review of children's services in England, announced on 12th March 2009, concluded that child protection issues in England had not had ‘the priority they deserved’ and that many of the reforms brought in after Victoria Climbie's death in 2000 had not been properly implemented. Laming referred to Social Work as a ‘Cinderella service’.

Notes on visiting Gurkhas

Having spent the past 18 months doing research on Commonwealth soldiers in the army, I thought it was time to try and explain what I’ve been up to. It’s been a strange and haunting journey involving many train rides, the odd plane, and countless lifts from army drivers who have been instructed to pick me up at stations and take me into the guarded enclaves of different bases.

Final report from Beirut

The themes raised in both these sessions were continued the following day. The local paper The Daily Star provided a surprisingly good summary. If interested it’s worth reading, but here’s a bit more detail.

Report from Beirut, Day 2

As the conference progressed, the divisions and disagreements deepened, but at the same time it was clear that shared political perspectives were not only emerging but becoming enriched by the conversations. First the disagreements, inevitable – and necessary – in any political gathering.