RIOTOUS LONDON MOBS - A SPARK THAT BECAME A WILDFIRE

In London, and in other cities in England, crowds of angry, restless youth have taken to the streets during recent nights to riot, loot and create social unrest and disorder. They've burned down homes and businesses, demolished automobiles and looted shops of all merchandise. Whole neighborhoods lie in ruin.

As British officials seek to quell the disturbances, many are painting the rioters as a band of outlaws in need of swift and unmerciful justice, but that type attitude does nothing to solve the discontent of England's youth that underlies that which sparked the riots in the first place.

Let's not forget that mobs have a mind of their own. People in mobs frequently do things they'd never consider doing on their own. Mobs provide a kind of release from the constraints that normally keep people on the path of acceptable social behavior and a mob's occupants often get swept up in the tide. I'm not suggesting that mob behavior is necessarily justifiable. I'm just acknowledging the reality of the situation.

In many respects, a riotous mob is like a wildfire. With a wildfire, a single spark can touch off a blaze that quickly erupts into an unstoppable inferno. The wildfire spreads, engulfing and destroying tens of thousands of acres in its path. Riotous mobs frequently carry the same kind of destructive force. After a wildfire has been brought under control, efforts are undertaken to determine the spark that touched off the blaze, but lost in the shuffle and often suppressed is the question of why the wildfire spread. The same goes for rioting mobs.

In England, they know what sparked the riots. The police in Tottenham killed a black man and a crowd gathered at the Tottenham police station demanding an explanation to what happened. The police were not forthright in their explanation and the crowd's anger reached a boil. Okay, that was the spark, but what has kept the fires burning? That's the question people everywhere should be discussing, because I believe the answers to that question are not answers that are unique to England. They apply everywhere social unrest boils over into riotous mobs.

On the whole, youth in England suffer from extremely high poverty and unemployment rates. Large segments of their generation feel that hope for the future is gone because of severe cutting of government funding for education and other social programs. The resulting anxiety has lead to restlessness and anger – dry tinder waiting for a spark. It doesn't justify the rioters' behavior, but it does help explain why their behavior has spread. Societies that ignore those answers do so at their own peril.