Today's post is written by Kam Gill, Runnymede's Research and Policy Analyst

According to Theresa May the riots were ‘pure thievery’ and we should focus ‘the victims, because they are the ones who really matter’.  Much ink has been spilled in recent months hypothesising about the causes of the riots, and the Home Secretary’s statements demonstrate a key flaw in much of our thinking about the August disturbances and riots in general. If the riots were pure criminality why did it take a police killing to set them off? If they were an act of political defiance, why all the emphasis on trainers and TVs?

At ‘Reading the Riots’, a conference discussing the results of Paul Lewis (Guardian) and Tim Newburn’s (LSE) recent survey of rioters motivations, May’s speech was one of a number of occasions where this attitude surfaced. I believe that two claims form the basis of a lot of the discussion around the August disturbances and that they are premised on mistaken assumptions about the behaviour involved. 

The first claim is that the riots were nothing more than criminality. The second claim derives from the first; that there is a clear distinction between criminality and protest during a riot.

After three frustrating months of StopWatch (and others) yelling in the wilderness; ‘Reading the Riots’ has finally confirmed that inter alia, the riots were about policing. This fact, which seemed clear to us, has been greeted with incredulity by police representatives on numerous occasions since the summer. Because the riots involved acquisitive crime, and took place in areas other than Tottenham they were, therefore not political.

This belief recurs through out discussion of the riots. Many people are willing to concede that the disturbance in Tottenham, on Saturday was a response to the killing of Mark Duggan and the subsequent actions of the police and Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). However, such motivations could not apply in Croydon, Liverpool or Manchester. Lynne Owens speaking on the same event as Theresa May, declined to provide any evidence for the underlying assumption; ‘If people weren’t rioting in Tottenham, on Saturday night, then Duggan’s death cannot have been a motive’. If nothing else, ‘Reading the Riots’ has called this assumption into question and for that we should be grateful.

The second claim is the logical conclusion of the first, and is even more questionable. If the riots as a whole were not political because they involved significant instances of looting then there must be a clear division between riots which are political and those which involve looting.  GAnyone who engages in one cannot engage in the other, and the political opinions of anyone who looted a television are completely invalid.

 There is, apparently a more noble, legitimate type of riot in which all participants turn up their nose at simple acquisition and engage only in violent demonstration of political grievance. Advocates of the ‘high-minded riot theory’ are willing to examine the motives of these ascetic, political rioters. If any of those involved grab themselves a television then their motives suddenly become obvious and irrelevant. They acted out of greed, and there is no political lesson to be learned whatsoever, from asking why greed was capable of overriding the socialisation of thousands with such savagery.  ‘Reading the Riots’ has, at last, provided the empirical evidence for what many have suspected. The truth is significantly more complicated than this.