The riots this month have spooked Britain.  They’ve spooked the public and the politicians.  In a time of panic, there has been a disturbing right-wing backlash, characterized by a refusal to engage with the causes of the riots, calls for more police power and less civil liberty, and arbitrary, draconian sentencing.

The loss of people’s homes and livelihoods in the riots is a tragedy.  Looking for explanations for the riots, however, is not the same as condoning the suffering of those directly affected.  In fact, it’s about preventing it from happening again.  Looking for causes and trying to address them is about creating a more empathetic and caring society. 

It will take time, however, to determine what the causes of the riots were.  In the meantime, we need to challenge the reactionary arguments that are becoming so ubiquitous, because if the backlash continues, it could make the situation infinitely worse. 

Here are five backlash arguments about the riots, and how to counter them.

1. The rioters are immoral.  Parts of British society are “sick”.

As Vaclav Havel, the first President of the Czech Republic wrote while in office,

‘Politicians are indeed a mirror of their society, a kind of embodiment of its potential.  At the same time – paradoxically – the opposite is also true: society is a mirror of its politicians.  It is largely up to the politicians which social forces they choose to liberate and which they choose to suppress, whether they rely on the good in each citizen or on the bad.’

The rioters were holding up a mirror to the political class, and it wasn’t pretty.  The moral bankruptcy of those in power over the past few years has been startling.  If there is some truth in Havel’s assessment, then, that society and its political leaders reflect each other, it shouldn’t be surprising that young people have reacted in the way that they have.

Three recent events have exposed the immorality of the political class.  The first is the News International scandal.  News International is a criminal organization; they bribed police officers and invaded the privacy of victims of crime.  David Cameron, however, employed one of their former senior employees, Andy Coulson, to advise him.  David Cameron also attended the corporation’s summer party when they were facing two police investigations.

The second is MPs’ expenses.  MPs legitimately have expenses to rent and furnish their second homes in London.  They flagrantly abused this system, however, using taxpayers’ money to, amongst other things, clean their moats, install helicopter pads and buy flatscreen TVs.  They have shown scant remorse. 

The third example of immorality is in many ways the most shocking.  The politicians decided to bail out the banks when they recklessly gambled with people’s money and nearly brought the economy to its knees.  Instead of punishing the banks and imposing regulation on them, politicians allowed them to carry on regardless.  RBS, which is owned by taxpayers, paid out £1.3bn in bonuses to its staff in 2010.

MPs have no moral compass.  Yet they wonder why young people lack a moral compass too.  Where are the leadership, guidance and support for young people?  Where are the good examples being set and where are the role models?  They are certainly not finding anything to look up to in politicians. 

In fact, MPs have become a joke.  The idea of trusting an MP is laughable.  They have brought this on themselves, however, by propagating a culture of cronyism and excess.  It is now expected that MPs will do whatever they have to, to get and maintain power, rather than standing up for their principles.  MPs have become careerist ciphers.

The rioters are a mirror of the politicians and the politicians a mirror of the rioters.  If MPs want to dismiss and undermine the rioters as immoral it’s time they got their own house in order, because to make this argument at this particular point in time is hypocrisy of the highest level.

2. The riots are “sheer criminality”.  There is no political motive.

It is important to point out that the absence of an explicit political motive - people waving placards and chanting slogans, or attacking political targets - does not mean that the riots had no political cause.  The rioters were not formally organized, but they were reacting – consciously or otherwise - to a political situation.  Poverty and inequality result from a political and economic system that is created and maintained by those in power.  Recent decisions, such as taking away EMA and university education, and cutting public services are all political decisions.  Failure to invest in jobs, urban regeneration and opportunities for young people are political decisions.  The introduction of stop-and-search laws was a political decision.

Also, young people feel they have no way of engaging with or changing politics.  There is no opportunity to express dissatisfaction at the ballot box because the culture of opportunism has infected all of the main political parties.  Voting Labour in and the Tories out will not change it; nor will the Lib Dems, who so vociferously claimed to be a principled party prior to gaining power and have let their young voters down so badly.  Becoming an MP, moreover, seems more out of reach than ever, with few high-profile working class MPs, and the men at the top all from a highly privileged background.  Party politics offers young people nothing.  Rioting is a reaction to absolute powerlessness.  It is a reaction to the extreme arrogance and bad behaviour of politicians, with which we have no way to engage.

In terms of whether the rioting was criminal, no doubt there was gang involvement.  We must ask, however, why there are gangs to begin with.  Mainstream society is failing to provide opportunities to inner-city kids.  Social housing is so pathetic and cramped that kids end up hanging out on the streets.  They have nothing to do, so are prey to older gang members.  And crucially, those older gang members have been through the exact same thing as the kids; they understand them.  In a gang, a disaffected young person can find a home, with people who have had similar life experiences and can provide a sense of belonging.  Gangs don’t exist in a vacuum.  They are a product of society. 

Criminality also doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  Without excluding the idea that there are genuinely “bad” people in the world, it’s worth remembering that to create the global networks that allow organized crime to proliferate requires a lot of manpower.  We should be asking why so many people are getting involved.  What alternatives do they have and what alternatives could they have?

Again, I want to stress that looking for causes is not the same as condoning individuals’ actions.  Even within unjust structures, individuals have choices, and if they make choices that harm others they should be held to account.

However, this principle is no less applicable to those in power, who should also be held to account for their immoral and criminal actions.  News International faced a criminal investigation that ended in a whitewash.  They are undergoing another investigation now, but does anyone really believe that Rebekah Brooks or James Murdoch will feel the full force of the consequences of their actions; that they will go to jail?  Glenn Mulcaire, their private detective, got six months in prison; the same as a looter who stole a £3.50 bottle of water.

With the expenses scandal, a few MPs were scapegoated and put in prison, and some vague proposals for reform were drafted.  That is the extent of the repercussions.  There are different ways to criminally procure a TV: one is to walk into a shop and steal it; another is to fiddle your expenses and use taxpayers’ money to get it.  If the theft is going to be punished, both methods ought to be punished and the punishment ought to be proportionate.

As for the banks, there have been no repercussions whatsoever.  The banks have stolen taxpayers’ money to the tune of billions and billions of pounds.  Bonuses have lined the pockets of a few individuals; they have committed theft on an astronomical scale.  Yet where are the consequences?

So yes, gang crime and looting are criminal actions.  But MPs, bankers and media moguls have committed crimes too; crimes that have cost the public a lot more both financially and politically.  If the law is going to be taken seriously it has to be fair.  Only punishing society’s disadvantaged and acquitting the rich is unjust, and almost certain to provoke more disorder.

3. The youth have a sense of entitlement.  They are out to take what they can get and give nothing back.

It should be clear by now where the real sense of entitlement lies; and it is not with young people.  In fact, the only people I have seen making this argument are white, upper/middle-class, public school educated men.  Perhaps what they are referring to is the sense of entitlement they have experienced and are projecting it onto the rest of the population. 

The public school, Oxbridge-educated elite has been imbibed with an over-weaning sense of confidence, and a distasteful sense of self-importance and entitlement.  The privileges they have experienced in school, at university, in employment, aren’t even recognized as privileges.  There is no desert here; nobody deserves to be born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth.

In the same way as the elite are born into their social position, the poor were born into poverty and will almost certainly never escape it.  The rioters don’t have a sense of entitlement.  They have a sense of consumerism and a sense of being shut out from the possibilities of a consumer society.  What they need are jobs, an education and a chance of a future; in other words, a chance to participate in the market economy to be able to purchase the consumer goods they are taught to crave.

This gulf in life experience could go some way to explaining the dearth of empathy that MPs have for disaffected youth.  They literally have no idea what it’s like to wake up with nothing to do and no hope of anything better in the future.  They take the opportunity for progress in life and career as a given, and cannot begin to imagine what life would be like without it.

Jobs, education and opportunities are all the things a just state is supposed to provide.  These are the things that the elites in this country take absolutely for granted.  The concept of justice is one of the most written about and contested in political philosophy.  In recent times, however, many theorists have converged on Rawls’ definition: social distributive justice is “the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.”  Britain has the least social mobility in Europe and is highly unequal.  Whether the rioters waved placards around or not, what they were reacting to was a deep and pervasive sense of injustice.

4. The youth have grown up in a “rights culture”. They have no sense of responsibility.  Rights and responsibilities go together.

This is correct to a point: rights entail responsibilities.  But whose responsibilities?

There is a debate within human rights theory as to whether human rights obligations are institutional (apply to the state), or interactional (apply to everyone). 

Human rights, as codified in international law, place obligations on the state to fulfill the rights of their citizens.  This has been criticized because human rights do not apply to “private” harms, such as domestic violence.  Human rights are also not the responsibility of non-state actors like corporations.  In this context, the interactional view of human rights obligations is seen as progressive.

However, the Tories are twisting a progressive argument to suit their own ends.  Arguing that human rights responsibilities fall on young people, the poor and deprived is simply wrong.  It is a deliberate attempt to try to shirk their responsibilities and undermine the role of human rights as a check on state power.  As legal human rights stand now, the only agent with the responsibility to uphold them is the state. 

However, it could be argued that we have more general responsibilities to each other by virtue of our common humanity or shared identity, locality or other form of connection.  Shouldn’t the rioters have respected these responsibilities? 

When the state is unjust, and those who benefit from it fail to fulfill their responsibilities, why would those who are disadvantaged by it feel moved to fulfill theirs’?  There is no incentive to be responsible.  The only incentive is decency and morality; but again, if the privileged fail to exhibit these qualities, it seems unfair to insist that the disadvantaged absolutely must possess them.

5. It’s the fault of the family.  Women have children too young, there are too many absent fathers and there is no discipline in the home.

In my opinion, this is the most disturbing, disempowering and pernicious backlash argument of all. 

Mothers always get the blame for social problems, especially single mothers.  However, millions of single mothers do a wonderful job in spite of the circumstances – pitiful benefits, no state support, and stigmatization.  Vilifying these women is absurd.

Arguing that women have children too young is interesting in historical perspective, because women in the UK are having children later than at any point in history.  If we want to talk about teenage pregnancy, however, there are some important issues.

The first is state-sponsored childcare.  If the state provided child-care it would allow women who have children young, or at any age, to go out and get an education or work; thereby developing themselves and giving them the tools to educate their children too.  This promotes the well-being of the mothers and the children.  It would also, in the government’s own terms, give women an opportunity to get off benefits. 

Child-care is prohibitively expensive.  It is unaffordable on benefits.  Even if an unqualified woman goes out and works, however, she still will not be able to afford it.  Her salary will just about cover the costs of childcare, so it is not in her interests to work.  This solution of providing state child-care has been known for decades, it’s about time it was put properly on the agenda.

Another issue, which is uncomfortable to raise in this context, but worth reiterating, is abortion.  There are probably many women who have children, as much as they love their children now, who would not have gone through with the pregnancy if they had the opportunity and support.  There are two aspects to making abortion more accessible.  The first is making it physically more accessible.  Getting an abortion is not easy – you need consent from two doctors, some of which are unwilling to give it, and some women don’t want to go to their local GP about it.  In Northern Ireland, abortion is still illegal.  The other aspect is breaking down the taboos about abortion.  The social norms that still exist in relation to abortion – the silence, insidious stigmatization and judgment – urgently need to be challenged.

Of course, there is a danger here; there is always a worry when talking about abortion in this sort of context, that it could be manipulated and co-opted by those wishing to make nefarious, eugenics-type arguments.  I am not arguing that particular groups or classes in society should be encouraged to use contraception and abortion services.  What I am arguing is that all women should have the choice over when and how many children they have. 

Instead of facilitating reproductive rights, however, the government is making abortion more difficult.  They have brought pro-life groups into government to potentially erode our reproductive rights even further.  This is entirely counter-productive if they want to create a society were every child is wanted and cared for in the way it deserves. 

On the issue of absent fathers, is this really the women’s fault?  Why did the fathers leave?  If the government wants to talk about the responsibilities of mothers to look after their children better, and the responsibilities of children to wider society, what about also questioning the responsibilities of fathers to their children? 

There is another side to this coin, however.  Female empowerment has given women choices.  Perhaps the fathers of these children would not have been good fathers.  Perhaps they were abusive - physically, psychologically or emotionally.  For centuries women were bound to such men by law and social convention, now they can leave them and get divorced.  Would it be better if women and children were forced to stay with abusive men simply because they are parents?  There is of course a role for stable family units; but it is also essential that those units can be dismantled if it’s not working.  We cannot return to an era where women could not petition for divorce, or single women with children were completely ostracized by society. 

Finally, on the question of discipline in the home.  Corporal punishment in UK schools was only outlawed in 1998.  Parents are still of a generation where they may have experienced corporal punishment at school or at home.  We know now that hitting children is inhuman and degrading, not only for the child but the adult.  It may take a few generations before society works out how to best provide boundaries in the home; boundaries that don’t involve violence.  Instead of berating the parents, why not provide parenting classes in schools, in adult education centers and advice online?  Nobody knows instantly how to be a parent; they learn on the job.  The government should take responsibility and make that job a bit more manageable.

There are many more backlash arguments around, and there is much more to be said about all of these topics.  We must fight these arguments wherever we see or hear them, because they seem to be seeping into every corner of society.  The backlash could have serious repercussions for progressive politics in the coming years. Yet, with a little bit of thought, they are easily exposed as ill informed and misguided.  I would argue, therefore, that one of the “responsibilities” of the left is to expose and dismantle them, before they become accepted dogma.