Riots expose underbelly of British society

CLAIMS that the English city riots were provoked by social deprivation, marginalised youths, the disadvantaged and social malcontents in British society, do not tally with the profile of some of those already charged with looting, arson and vandalism.

Included amongst those brought before the courts were university students, law students, postmen and many people currently in secure state and private employment.

Watching and listening to some of the looters and rioters as they vented spleen at community workers, small shopkeepers and the police was like a mammoth open-air episode of a cross between the Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle shows. The underbelly of modern British society, nurtured from its embryonic state by Thatcherite policies of “there is no such thing as society”, is crudely exposed.

The irony of the near anarchy surrounding the riots and the everyday lawlessness in marginalised sink estates throughout the British Midlands, the Black Country and the north of England was forcefully brought home to me when some England footballers, with breathtaking hypocrisy, expressed outrage at such loutish behaviour.

It is without question that many of those thugs and louts who brought anarchy to the streets of Britain were, to some extent at least, influenced by the “anything goes” attitudes of some English footballers, both on and off the field of play. Footballers they may be, role models for impressionable youths they certainly are not.

Tom Cooper

Dublin 16