11th August 2011

Back from a holiday in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands with only sporadic and unpredictable internet access.

So it was a blogging holiday too.

The road ends and from here on there is a Train and a footpath to Glencoe.

Only  the newspapers to rely on.

Headlines. London Burning. Riots. Croydon in flames. Anarchy in the UK. Boris the roadsweeper with a brush. Cameron cuts short his holiday in Tuscany.

It takes time to digest what has happened. Clearly no-one approves. Is it a politically  inspired riot to protest the unfairness of the cuts and the damage to communities? Or is it simply robbery and violence for its own sake? The commentariat are full of the stories, the deaths, a woman jumping from a burning building. Young people out of control and then, breathless from his holiday and fresh from Cobra and wearing his socks, the Prime Minister, it's not 'broken' Britain it's 'sick' Britain.

Somehow I want to say let's just calm down a bit here and reflect.

Britain is neither broken nor sick.

But it is angry.

Angry at Politicians, angry at the Police, angry at Bankers, angry at the sheer unfairness of the cuts, angry about poverty, just plain angry, so angry in fact that people are up in arms.

We have created a society that has moved beyond Descartes, I think therefore I am, to a society in which people are defined by what they have, it is a society shaped by designer labels, designer clothes and possessions.

Our shopping habits are determined by the advertising, the product placement and seductive nature of the spending power given to us by our credit cards, life is priceless - for everything else there's a plastic card.

So what has happened, well the undervalued, often underpaid and overworked teachers are on holiday and so young people are not in school, in other words the first line of social control has been removed at least until September.

Traditionally in the UK the police, police by consent, well it seems that for whatever reason, that consent was withdrawn, too much stop and search? the death of a young man? police using stand off tactics in order to lower the risk of confrontation, the loss of key leadership over phone hacking? dissatisfaction at the financial settlement?

Suddenly we are faced with the possibility of another Peterloo as the army, water canon, rubber bullets are described or prescribed.

And whilst people whose businesses and livelihoods are understandably angry it doesn't help to use words like 'Scum' to describe other human beings with whom you need to make community, however angry their actions might make you feel, they are people first and last and made, as we all are, in the image of one who was both fully human and fully Divine.

And why should any of those in these poor communities worry about the impact of their actions on the Olympics? They won't be attending!

In 1985 I lived for six months in Boston, Massachusetts. I was a student at The Episcopal Divinity School. My Tutor at the school once said in passing, that he was always amazed that the USA managed to 'hang together' between breakfast and lunch, such was the complexity of the social mix, the racial mix, the economics and the weather.

I have lived in Birmingham and enjoyed everyone of the six years in a City that offers a rich mix of cultures, opportunities and experiences. I have visited London regularly and enjoyed the rich social, artistic and cultural mix I have found in different communities from Tottenham to Brixton.

The trouble with using the idea of brokenness as a sound bite is that it can become true and return, as it has these past days, to haunt us all.

Britain is not broken. That is a simple fact.

It hangs together generally very well between Breakfast and Lunch and right through into the evening.

Generally the streets are safe. People are friendly, there is common courtesy and often those simple acts of kindness that are exchanged between strangers do much to make this a good place to live, which is why people hold it as an aspiration to move to England for the opportunity it offers to better their chances of a good and fulfilling life.

It took a riot in Liverpool before Mrs Thatcher tasked Lord Hesletine to look at what was needed to transform the City and return hope to the people.

I can only hope that Mr Cameron has the courage to see these tragic events not as 'criminality' but as the cry of rage they represent, an almost inchoate expression of anger about the appalling effects of poverty and the withdrawal of services that support individual families and communities and without which life becomes unbearable.

Britain is locked into a pattern of social division exacerbated by the structural unfairness of our economics and there is a common view that the people who got us into this mess have been allowed to get away with it and have not been held to account.

As the author's of the book 'The Spirit Level' have argued a more equal society is better for everyone.

So when those in the financial industry who, it is perceived, can still buy a house or a Porsche out of the loose change in their annual bonus payment, or the tax they have avoided paying, it is hardly surprising that people weighed down with poverty and indebtedness feel that, as one woman, quoted in the Guardian, commented, as she carried a stolen TV away,  'I'm just claiming my tax back'.