Recent rioting across Britain has drawn comparisons to previous unrest there in the early 1980s, but the differences are intriguing, says Dr. Chad Martin, assistant professor of history.
In each case, the trouble occurred against a backdrop of high unemployment, cuts to social services and complaints about police aggression. But in the earlier situation, he says, the people in the street were primarily unassimilated immigrants.
“In the 1980s, the riots were highly racialized,” says Martin, a specialist in British and modern European history. “This time it seems more multiracial and more opportunistic.”
As in the United States, manufacturing has declined in the U.K., leaving working-class people with limited job opportunities. But in that nation, which still has a substantial social safety net, last week’s looters weren’t driven by a lack of food or housing. They seemed more interested in grabbing high-end footwear and flashy electronics.
“They are excluded from participating in the consumerist life that is presented to them through advertising and popular culture,” Martin says. “To some degree, looting is what happens when the marketing people do their job too well — you convince people of the necessity of owning your product, and yet large numbers of people simply can’t afford it. They don’t mind breaking the law because the system, while keeping them housed and fed, isn’t providing them with opportunities for social mobility, and therefore they feel no loyalty to it. It’s becoming an endemic problem in a lot of post-industrial societies.”
