Blame where it's due

The reality is that events unfolded for differing reasons in different areas. While the focus in Clapham and Ealing was looting, the focus in Nottingham was the police with five separate police stations being attacked.

In Tottenham the violence was motivated by the police reaction to a peaceful protest over the "shoot-out" that left Mark Duggan dead.

The causative factors at play in each area are also manifold, ranging from policing, marginalisation, inequality, gang culture, status frustration, rampant consumerism, issues of masculinity (around 90 per cent of those brought to court were male) and the virtual disappearance of social mobility.

For many who work in public-sector professions such as youth workers, social workers, police officers and teachers, the existence of a disaffected youth embracing subcultural values such as hostility to authority and rejection of education is something we've been aware of for years.

The thrill seeking and immediate gratification that were on display during the riots is something that those of us who work with many inner-city youngsters are all too familiar with.

The feeling among those at the bottom of society's structure is that they're forgotten failures - something which is exacerbated by a media dominated by the middle classes.

TV schedules seem to be full of shows in which middle-class people have their homes made over or conduct cooking in their expensive kitchens.

Shows are dominated by journalists and politicians discussing the political issues that seem to matter to them, such as interest rates and share values.

When do they discuss the casualisation of labour, job insecurity and the deterioration of the public housing stock?

What the media is also doing is acquiescing in the retail corporations' plan to create an acquisitive culture. Newspapers, television and the internet are filled with advertising. We are endlessly encouraged to spend on the right brand or the latest gadget.

Is it really so surprising that so many youngsters headed to the stores that hold the very goods they are tempted with every day?

Wider structural problems also have to be included to gain a fuller understanding of the riots.

The growing middle class convinces itself and tries to convince all sections of society that its members hold their positions on merit alone. But we are seeing less social mobility today than at any time in the post-war period.

As a result of the promotion of individualistic culture, the myth has been created that a person's socio-economic status is the result of their individual effort.

However the individual effort argument must conclude that, if everybody made the effort, we could all be lawyers, teachers and journalists. But then who would clean their offices?

Hence the introduction of tuition fees and student loans we can't have too many graduates thinking they can enter the middle classes.

Below the working class is that large body of workless poor, identified as providing many of the rioters.

The creation of this class, about which so much has been written describing "their" dependency culture, deviant values and lack of any stake in society, is also the result of the socio-economic structure.

In the 1960s Harold Wilson talked of the "white heat of technology" ushering in the "leisure age." But instead it brought an age of unemployment.

Mainstream discourse tries not to blame the market for this. Instead the individual is blamed for claiming benefits rather than the economy that cannot offer gainful employment.

Britain has simply learned to live with mass unemployment to the point where it now seems normal.

Since January 1972 when it hit one million, unemployment has not once dipped below that benchmark and has averaged out at almost two million. It's explained away as the result of lazy, work-shy individuals greedily claiming those "lavish" benefits.

Britain's socio-economic inequalities are the root cause of the social malaise that resulted in the inner city riots. When Camila Batmanghelidjh asked on BBC Question Time: "Why doesn't Sweden have this problem?" former Met chief Brian Paddick replied: "Because there's a more egalitarian society there." There followed a stony silence.

There is mounting evidence that every criteria for assessing a country's social stability such as crime rates, literacy, mental health, prison numbers, life expectancy and social mobility is better in countries that have the smallest gap between rich and poor.

Japan, one of the most equal of all the developed countries, has an exceptionally low crime rate, minimal drug use and high social mobility. And yet foreign journalists talked of their astonishment at the lack of looting following the earthquake of March 2011. It wasn't astonishing to those who were aware of the impact of economic equality.

There has been a lot of moralising since the riots. The suffering of people whose businesses and homes have been destroyed will be immense.

But to put the wider picture into perspective, the suffering that is resulting from the bank bailout of 2008 will reach far further.

Those responsible have not been castigated, denounced or punished in anything like the way the rioters have.

Over £7 billion has been paid out in bank bonuses over the last year alone. Meanwhile Britain's richest 1,000 people saw their total wealth increase from £256.2bn in 2009 to £395.8bn this year, amounting to a 54.5 per cent increase in just two years according to the Sunday Times rich list.

There's a rapacious culture at the top. Small wonder such behaviour was witnessed during the rioting.

If we want to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the August riots, then the social and economic direction we've been going in has to be abandoned.

Putting hundreds more in prison, depriving offenders off benefits, bringing in a so-called "super cop" to oversee increased repression will not resolve these deep rooted problems.

Beginning to redistribute this country's vast wealth, investing in training and jobs, restoring the EMA, reversing the tuition fee increases, recreating the opportunity for real social mobility and rebuilding a genuine sense of community will.