Britain's Riots: Entitlement Culture from Top to Bottom

by A. Millar
August 18, 2011 at 4:30 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2361/britain-riots-entitlement-culture

Anarchists smashing up the Ritz; "Student" mobs attacking the Conservative Party headquarters; Anti-globalist," anti-capitalist, and pro-Hamas demonstrations in London: Britain's recent history is stuffed full of violence masquerading as serious politics. Although the BBC and respectable, high-profile individuals on the Left were convinced that the recent rioting and widespread violence against police and passersby, muggings and looting were a message about "social justice" and Government cuts, as more and more graphic details filled the news, and with this position more and more indefensible, the "protesters" were recast by the tax-payer funded BBC as the "poor," merely seeking a crust of bread and a hand up.

Next, as viewers began calling in to point out that these "poor" people were communicating via their Blackberries, and looting designer stores, the narrative shifted to worrying about "football fans" who had come out to defend their neighborhoods against mob violence arson attacks.

In contrast to assertions that poverty was the cause, it has been pointed out that since New Labour took power in 1997, the police have been hamstrung by pointless regulation that requires officers to spend hours on paperwork whenever they arrest a suspect in a criminal investigation. Most suspects never see inside a court, and most convicted criminals avoid jail altogether. No doubt this was partly motivated by the belief that criminals are victims of society, who should receive counseling, not punishment.

But there is also the problem of the lack of funding -- one might say the lack of seriousness in parliament -- regarding the country's police forces. In some cases, police have been told to arrest fewer criminals to save the force money.

Astonishingly, the Conservative-LibDem Government intends to press ahead with further cuts to Britain's police force, even in the wake of these riots.

Parents -- whether single mothers. or not -- struggling to bring up a child can no longer point to society for examples of what happens to those who break the rules. Parents simply cannot tell their children, in all honesty, that if they misbehave they will have set foot on a path toward criminality, the result of which will be a long time in prison. For most criminals it will not be.Young people know that. Drug pushers have become heroes to many young men, and violence is now enacted by girl gangs in Britain's inner cities.

Many people also point to Britain's entitlement culture. There is now a significant percentage of families in which no one in three generations has worked. Instead, such families are sustained through welfare handouts. This is certainly a serious problem, but it is hardly the whole story. High income tax rates, relatively low wages for menial and manual jobs, and hugely expensive public transportation -- which most people need to get to work -- are all prohibitive factors for many people who want to work. Many people simply cannot afford to. Some will make very little more for 40 hours a week of work -- and many will earn considerably less -- than they receive in benefits. For some it is scrounging. For others its a trap -- financial and mental, emotional, and existential.

Council tax, which funds social services -- and as there are more of these in deprived areas, think armies of social workers -- is another barrier to social mobility. The tax can amount to several hundred dollars a month, and is most expensive in poor areas. Of course, the Government kindly foots the bill for the unemployed, leaving those on low incomes, and barely scraping by, to feel like "suckers."

A sense of entitlement is not, however, exclusive to Britain's poor: if not strictly a class society, Britain inhabits the remnants of one.

After graduating, an acquaintance worked in the arts as the personal assistant and the sole employee of a wealthy individual. Even though she worked five days a week, for two years she went unpaid, and survived by claiming unemployment benefits -- a claim that was, of course, illegal. Although many people would say that the government was subsidizing her, in reality the Government -- or, really, the taxpayer -- was subsidizing her employer, the company owner.

Most prestigious, tax-payer funded galleries and museums in Britain still use unpaid interns. The prestigious National Gallery, for example, offers unpaid internships of up to nine months. How, one might wonder, can someone work for free for nine whole months? The answer, of course, is that few people can, and most people do not. Many of these interns will, illegally, claim unemployment benefits. Others will end up working in bars or strip clubs, or depending on their partners or family.

Perhaps they are the lucky ones; some interns have to pay for the privilege of working.

Last year it was revealed that top Conservative Party donors were actually buying prestigious internships. According to This Is Money, "At the Conservatives' Black and White Party, millionaire Tory supporters paid about £3,000 each for their children to have the golden chance of spending a week or two with a number of top finance companies and banks. If they do well and win a full-time job, they could join the ranks of City tycoons who earn multi-million-pound bonuses."

Does this sound like a good idea? Is this a nation hiring the kind of talent to take it forward into the future? As Rosamund Erwin, in This Is London, said, "The only beneficiaries of the current system are the moneyed and mediocre: those who wouldn't succeed if it was open to all." If the traditional working class jobs barely pay a living wage, those higher up the latter take considerable financial backing to get into. The arts, the financial sector, and no doubt others, are regarded as fields for those of wealthy backgrounds only.

In recent years many thinkers have attempted to trace the roots of multiculturalism, the ideology which currently dominates Britain. Everything from Protestantism and the Christian reverence of martyrdom and suffering -- transformed into multicultural victimology -- to cultural Marxism has been offered up. Although the class system has not been seen as a contributing factor. But, in the aftermath of the riots, it very much looks as if it is. People seem to see classes of people before they see individuals, and to be fundamentally concerned with social hierarchies. No one seems concerned with merit; on the contrary, people often seem hostile to meritocracy. It takes no particular talent, after all, to be born into a wealthy family, a poor family, or into a White, Black, or Asian one.

A society that puts categories of people before individuals is one that denies people the possibility of reaching their full potential; instead, it confines them to low expectations -- in terms of employment and morality. Some bloggers and media outlets have suggested that the British riots were a racial and class issue. Although, from photographs and footage, a significant proportion of the rioters were Black, and in some cases no doubt poor, there were also a considerable number of Whites involved in the violence.

College graduates and the middle class were also represented. One of the rioters, Laura Johnson, 19, is the daughter of a millionaire, and a student at Exeter University. She was charged with stealing approximately $8,000 worth of electronic goods, including a microwave and two televisions. The rioters also included a 17 year-old ballerina, an aspiring musician, and an aspiring social worker.

Two things really united Britain's rioters last week: First, their view of themselves as belonging to a category of people who are "against the system." There are good reasons for both the working class and the middle class to feel frustrated when it comes to getting on in life. Nor should we overlook the fact that minorities have, and in some cases do, face real discrimination. However, having no solutions to real problems, many people have preferred to create ever more categories of "victims:" Women, ethnic, sexual and religious minorities, liberals, and criminals, are all presented by many politicians and the BBC as groups not only oppressed by Great Britain, but as implicitly opposed to it. Never has opposing the state been so widespread, so bourgeois, or so cool. Having had every advantage in life, Miss Johnson no doubt feels that she has been oppressed by thousands of years of patriarchy, and is entitled to a few thousand dollars worth of electronic goods in compensation. This brings us to the second thing uniting the British rioters: their perverse sense that entitlement is normal, and should perhaps extend to almost everyone.

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