London's burning: Just pour on water!

When looking at some of the images and thinking about the events and comments concerning the London Riots I can't help going back the the childrens nursery rhyme from the UK and goes back to the days when the whole of London was burning:

 London's burning, London's burning

Fire! Fire!, Fire! Fire!
 Fetch the engines, Fetch the engines,

Pour on water, Pour on water

As with the time of the rhyme we still fetch the enginges and pour water on the actual fires to douse the angry flames and why not, it is a very effective tool for calming the fire and bringing it under control. But now we also pour it all over people, firing water cannon salvos in order to douse the flames of their passion and bring calm and control to streets full angry people.
 

Just the same way as the water only quels the symptoms, the blazing flames of the fire, so it also only quels the blazing passion of a demonstrating crowd. Just as the water only deals with the symptoms and doesn't resolve the actual cause of the fire so it also only quels the manifestations of passion and anger on the streets and doesn't reslove the causes of the anger and disention.

Like the fire officers who usually come along after to investigate the cause of the fire (in this case of these London fires an obvious cause) so also investigators need to go beyond the symptoms and ask what really was really driving the flames of the passions and anger.

As we begin to do so we find that its easy to jump to conclusions and hide behind smoke screens, blaming rioting gangs  or failing police or even modern 24-hour media images for inciting copy-cat events. While these and other criminal aspects may have contributed to the speed and scale with which events got out out hand and in themselves all need addressing, are they not just smoke screens that simply hide the real underlying casues.


As the  smoke finally clears and we have to face up to the root causes I believe we'll find a huge part of the problem comes down to the increasing divide between the "haves" and "have nots" in society with those at the wrong end of the scale feeling as though society has nothing to offer them. Having one rule for those at the top while excluding those at the bottom from even entering the game.


As the poorest people increasingly concentrated in the poorest quality places with high numbers of unemployed and wrongly mentored youth it will take a lot more than a water cannon smoke screen and "hope the problem goes away" attitude to fix things.