In light of recent disturbances across the country we wanted to create a space for the sector to come together and feedback their experiences in one place to ensure that the fullest picture of the current situation is presented and debated.

Many people have written pieces sharing their experiences and providing context and insight on what has happened. In September a summit was held bringing together charities, community groups, young people’s services with government to reflect on the causes of the disturbances and the best ways to respond.

Yesterday, 31 October, we launched a report After the riots collating these views and making a series of recommendations to government, the sector and the media to lessen the risk of events repeating themselves.

Read the report After the riots  download a full copy of the report (PDF 896KB).

Or read the summary of recommendations in NCVO's news statement we posted on the NCVO website yesterday when the report was launched:

The Government must ensure tackling the causes of August's civil unrest does not drop off of the agenda according to our new report released today (31 October 2011).

Following on from a summit we convened in September, which brought together over 100 people from charities, community groups, young people’s services and government to reflect on the causes of the disturbances and the best ways to respond, the report makes a series of recommendations to government, the sector and the media to lessen the risk of events repeating themselves.

It stresses the importance of community groups and statutory bodies working closely together to ensure that an ‘early warning system’ is in place. Many delegates at the summit described how they sprang into action during the disturbances to dissuade people from taking part, bring together community representatives and co-ordinate clean-up activities.

The report also calls on Government to make a full assessment of the impact of spending cuts on communities, and ensure that any cuts to services are introduced sensitively and strategically with the impact mitigated as far as possible. It voices many attendees’ concerns over the lack of funding for young people’s services beyond 13-19: a ‘cliff edge’ approach to funding which can lead to further social exclusion and the breakdown of useful mentoring relationships built up over time.

Other recommendations, which are also drawn from feedback from NCVO members, include:

• Government should invest in structured job creation programmes, particularly for young people and apprenticeships, working with employers to fund or match fund placements or offer a range of other incentives including tax breaks as appropriate.
• The voluntary and community sector has an important role to play in speaking out and constructively challenging decisions and practices, including those of government and the wider public sector.
• When reporting on the riots, the media must ensure accuracy and proportionality, and balance negative news stories with reports on what community groups are doing to attempt to alleviate these problems.

Sir Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of NCVO, said:

‘It is essential that the lessons of the riots are not ignored.  While the actions of the rioters were deplorable, we must address the sense of despair and disconnection felt by many who felt they had nothing to lose by taking part.

‘The riots summit threw up shining examples of the pivotal role that charities are continuing to play to help communities get back on their feet and reach out to disaffected groups.  To lessen the risk of last month's shocking events happening again, it is crucial to preserve and value voluntary action.’

Urban Forum's latest issue of our Clearway magazine focuses on the ways that civil society has responded positively to the fallout from the riots.

It includes reports from Hackney, Croydon and much more.

take a look here:

Click here to download:

clearway_75_final.pdf (2.82 MB)

(download)

Click here to download:

clearway_75_final.pdf (2.82 MB)

The riots of early August were shocking, but at UnLtd we knew that social entrepreneurs were working at the heart of the communities affected and could offer insight and solutions. In the days and weeks that followed we went to them and asked what they were doing to solve the underlying issues behind the disorder taking place on their streets.

A riot-focussed survey of 131 of our past and present Award Winners revealed that the vast majority were working to address issues that might have contributed to the riots. We saw many examples underlining how social entrepreneurs had a unique role to play:

• Being embedded in the community - several described themselves as leading grass-roots organisations that had support and trust from the communities they worked within
• Leading with authenticity - several social entrepreneurs stressed how their personal experience of issues behind the riots helped them connect with the types of people who were involved
• Innovation – there were lots of examples of how social entrepreneurs were trying new techniques and approaches to tackle persistent social problems

In early September we took the conversation further. In a private roundtable discussion with social entrepreneurs, key policy makers, and supporters, we heard how people leading social and community ventures across the country believe they can contribute to building stronger, more cohesive communities.

We heard that solutions lie within communities, and that underlying long-term problems can be solved when local leaders step forward to create channels and opportunities for reconciliation. We heard that though rioters and looters are quick, social entrepreneurs and social leaders with the right support, can be quicker.

On hearing about the riots Liz Douglas, founder and director of Personal and Community Development CIC, rallied the members of her community development project and went to the people of Bolton to discuss why they should not get involved in the violence. Bolton did not experience the public disorder seen in other parts of the country. Liz strongly believes that the success of her approach was only possible due to the long term work undertaken in that community for the previous two years.

We’ve heard how social entrepreneurs are uniquely able to create solutions in their communities, but they cannot do this over the long term, or at scale, without support from and connections to legitimate authorities who have the power and resources to enhance their impact. They believe authorities need to harness the positive power of social entrepreneurship by legitimising and supporting action at community level. Authentic change depends on it.

To watch, hear and read about our consultations with social entrepreneurs please click here.

Katharine Danton,
Director of Research and Policy at UnLtd, The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs

Katharine is responsible for developing the impact of UnLtd Research and Policy to assist and inform social entrepreneurs and those who seek to support them.

If ever there was a moment for the Big Society, the response to the riots is it.   There’s a real opportunity here but government, the voluntary sector and businesses need to work together in new ways to help get things off the ground.

There’s definitely a new spirit abroad locally.  Last week I went to a reception in Clapham Junction for local business people and others who were affected by the riots there.  Clapham Junction is a very diverse community where relative deprivation exists alongside considerable affluence.  The event was held by HSBC, which had been broken into by children aged 10-14 and looted.   The dominant response amongst those at the event was not one of anger or revenge but thoughtfulness about why the riots had happened.  One woman, from a voluntary organisation working with young people, said she had predicted the riots back in the spring, based on the mood of desolation in two local deprived housing estates.  Many at the event were interested in how to better support and work with those children and young people.  Some people I spoke to would like to help, perhaps giving time or money, but no-one was sure where to start. 

I suspect there are many others who want to help but don’t know how.  In the midst of the riots and immediately afterwards, many people who would not normally think of themselves as social activists stepped forward.   At Clapham Junction, where the police were nowhere to be seen as rioting and looting took hold,  a human cordon was formed by local people to stop rioters going into Northcote Road where many small shops, restaurants and bars exist.  The next day many people came out with brooms to clear up.  Graffiti started to appear on the boards protecting broken windows, which became a local message board read by numerous passers by.  These were typical sentiments:

“Our Community will not let this happen again!”

“Incredibly sad to watch, but inspiring to see our community pull together afterwards.  Clapham Rules!”

But how do you harness this positive energy?  Who makes the first move to get things going?

One message that came through from the extended Today programme discussion  in Birmingham about the riots was that, rather than re-inventing wheels, there was a lot going on in communities already that needed better support, from the fire service working with young people; to former gang members helping to turn young people away from crime - to name but two.  Much of it is based in the voluntary sector.

It might be natural to look to local voluntary and community groups to start to bring people together in new ways – recruiting new volunteers, talking to local businesses and schools and young people about what went wrong.   However,  in reality, these groups are disparate and extremely hard-pressed, with little time or resources.   Realistically,  to get the ball rolling, there’s a need for some cross-sector leadership – starting nationally and extending to local level - involving central and local government, the voluntary sector and business leaders. 

National leaders might start by calling for local discussions – perhaps based in schools – with children and young people, their parents, voluntary groups and local businesses about what went wrong and how to stop it happening again:   young people need to be part of the answer if they are to develop a stronger stake in their communities.  If they like the idea, local leaders might work together to set this up on the ground.

We also need to look at the infrastructure which stops this sort of thing happening in the first place and see what can be done to support it.  The Government should undertake urgently a national audit of the services  that support vulnerable children and young people and their parents,  to see if  those services have been seriously damaged by local authority cuts, as many claim.   For example, the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services estimate that £100m had been axed by local authorities from youth services by April this year; and other critical services are also likely to have been hit. 

If that audit demonstrates a need, the Government should establish a national fund to invest in that infrastructure, putting in money themselves but also inviting donations from banks and other businesses and charitable trusts.  

Throughout, central and local government should talk about priorities with the voluntary sector and charitable trusts both nationally and locally.  From their grass roots contact with local people they are likely to know where the problems are and where new investment is needed.  A very good starting point, following on from the NCVO meeting with Nick Hurd on 14 September, would be for the Office of Civil  Society  and the Department of Communities and Local Government to convene a working group to talk to the sector in more depth about why the riots happened and what should be done.

Working together, government, the voluntary sector and business could be a real catalyst to help learn the lessons and strengthen communities after the riots.

Caroline Slocock is Director of Civil Exchange, a think tank set up to help civil society and the government work better together.

I thought I’d share this – the latest edition of our magazine, Urban Clearway, as it’s all about the sector’s response to the riots.

There are perspectives from Hackney and Croydon and a great piece (I am biased!) from urban forum’s head of policy and research comparing the recent riots to those in the 1980s.

http://www.urbanforum.org.uk/clearway/latest-clearway/

Cheers

toby

Toby Blume

Chief Executive

Urban Forum

E-Mail: toby@urbanforum.org.uk  Web: www.urbanforum.org.uk

Tel: 020 7253 4816                     Fax: 020 7253 4817

Urban Forum is the trading name of Diverse Cities, a company limited by guarantee, number 3418682, and a registered charity, number 1096131. Registered address: 33 Corsham Street, London N1 6DR.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/tobyblume/ 

The August Riots highlighted an undercurrent of discontent running though our society, a lack of community felt by many, and a sense of being ignored.

Much discourse has taken place in the past few weeks regarding the causes and motivations behind the riots.  Less considered is the position of those now picking up the pieces of their fragmented lives. The riots have left the front pages and the real struggle for those affected begins now. What do you do if your house was burnt down, or your business premises looted? How do you continue to pay your mortgage, your rent? How will you put food on the table? What will you do if you were not fully insured? Where will you live? What happens when you run out of savings? How do you plan for your future when your present has been so harshly brutalised?

These are the issues facing many victims of the riots. Insurance, employment and housing are the three key areas of legal concern to victims.

In response to the civil unrest we at LawWorks have launched RIOT HELP, a support line for those made victims by the disturbances who now need advice and legal help in order to rebuild their lives.

Riot Help facilitates the provision of legal advice to those unable to access legal aid and unable to afford legal representations.

Riot Help aims to work not only with individuals affected by the riots but also with small businesses and not-for-profits. This ensures that all parts of the affected communities are given the opportunity to seek redress.

For more information visit our website at www.lawworks.org/riothelp

Or contact the helpline directly on 020 7092 3949 or riothelp@lawworks.org.uk

Following August 2011's riots across the UK, this paper reviews JRF's back catalogue of research. Over the last 20 years JRF has looked at social and economic conditions, community engagement, regeneration and partnership in poor neighbourhoods, using evidence from hundreds of estates and neighbourhoods across the UK.

This summary gives a picture of life in poorer neighbourhoods:

o                the problems that exist in these areas;

o                the challenges of living and working there;

o                the misconceptions and stereotypes that need confronting;

o                questions about representation and participation in society; and

o                the need to provide appropriate services.

Click here to download The riots: what are the lessons from the JRF’s work in communities?

As the dust settles on the riots that swept our cities recently, attention turns to understanding and responding to them. The Prime Minister and his Ministerial colleagues have, along with sections of the press and, it’s fair to say, sections of the public, been using highly emotive language to describe what happened. Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, recently described the rioters as a ‘feral underclass’. Describing anyone as ‘feral’ is simply dehumanising – something the Nazis and other early 20^th century eugenicists were particularly fond of. [And no….I’m not saying Ken Clarke is a Nazi. Just making a point about the practice of using language that suggests people are ‘sub-human’]. Although the Justice Secretary goes on to make some salient points about the failure of the criminal justice system, this type of language undermines whatever else he might have to say. It is hardly the sort of mature politics that are required in times of social stress.

The concept of an ‘underclass’ has long been a contentious battleground for political scientists and philosophers – coming to the fore in the UK during the late 1980s when US libertarian sociologist Charles Murray published ‘The Emerging British Underclass’. Murray suggested that an over-generous welfare state is giving rise to increases in violent crime, labour market drop-out and single parent families. [He subsequently went on to say – in The Bell Curve - that black people had lower IQs than white people – sparking further controversy and accusations of racism]. The similarities between Murray’s thinking and many of the comments made by politicians in the wake of the riots is striking. Have we somehow gone through a timewarp back to the 1980s?

The combination of ‘feral’ and ‘underclass’ seems to conjure up a picture of uncontrollable animals roaming the streets. Perhaps that is the intention. But it also has the effect of distancing responsibility – since the rioters operate on purely animal instinct and cannot be reasoned with like you or I. But even if we put to one side the philosophical and semantic overtones of the term, the existence of a section of society so alienated from society and so disaffected that they riot and loot cannot be something we view as simply someone else’s fault. Blame for society’s ills rests with society as a whole. We cannot separate ourselves from the causes or effects of society. Like the popular environmental saying – you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

We cannot absent ourselves from being part of a society that (in small numbers) took to the streets to riot and loot.

David Cameron has talked about a ‘slow motion moral collapse’, suggesting we need to renew our morality and ethics.

I’m not particularly opposed to this idea – in fact I share the Prime Ministers concerns about a lack of ethics and commons social values. However I think our views on the causes of this and how you address differ markedly.

Where do the values and ethics of a society come from? In part they are formed by the influence of our families, peers and social networks. But they also come from the opinion formers and influencers of public life – politicians, the press (or perhaps more accurately those who control the media?), celebrities and the leaders of business and civil society.

When David Cameron talks about moral collapse is he alluding to the lack of morality displayed by MPs and Peers in Parliament over the expenses scandal? Does he mean the greed that fuelled the banking crisis? And what about the (illegal) invasion of personal privacy by the press in order to sell a few more papers? If he does, it’s far from clear.

And yet for many people who are neither MPs, nor bankers, nor rioters, they don’t seem so radically different. There seems to be a distinct lack of appreciation of the social norms and morals that guide the lives of millions of Britons in all instances. You can argue about the degree to which they have ‘stepped over the line’ but few would dispute that they have all acted unethically. What appears to differ significantly is the language used to describe the people involved and the prescribed remedy. I don’t recall hearing any Ministers talking about ‘feral bankers’ (perhaps you could argue that Vince Cable has come closest!) or ‘out of control parliamentarians’….but maybe I missed it.

The tough punishment handed out to the looters and even to those (unsuccessfully) inciting unrest is in stark contrast with the treatment of the powerful.

Take Sir Fred Goodwin, erstwhile CEO of RBS, who oversaw the near collapse of the biggest bank in the world – saved only by the injection of billions of pounds of public money. And his ‘punishment’ for contributing to a worldwide global banking crisis and unprecedented public spending cuts? To walk away with his £16m pension pot in tact – belatedly bowing to public anger by voluntarily agreeing to reduce it to just £350,000 per year (on top of the £2.7m payout he’d already taken from it). Of course one can argue that, unlike the looters, Fred Goodwin did not break the law and so ought not to be punished. Of course that’s true, but we are talking about morality, and it rather overlooks the fact that laws are made and as such determine the social norms and ethics that govern society. If our political leaders decided that excessive risk taking motivated by greed in the banking sector was illegal (as well as immoral) then Fred Goodwin (and others) might have gone to jail. So, while the distinction between bankers and looters is a fair one, the finger points firmly at our political leaders to act, where the laws fail to reflect our social norms and values.

Similarly, the expenses scandal that shrouded Westminster resulted in over 350 MPs (that’s well over half of them!) being told to repay expenses totalling £1.2m. These were, in all but a tiny number of instances, simply ‘mistakes’. Indeed many of them were…grave errors of judgement. And yet only a handful of parliamentarians have faced criminal proceedings. And the remedy? Changing the system for claiming expenses. Not blaming the parents. How strange.

Politicians seem to like using terms like ‘moral compass’ but it appears as if many of them missed out on their Scouts or Girl Guides orienteering badges.

The riots require a measured and ethical response. Moral leadership, some might call it. But how can our politicians be expected to provide it when they have so patently failed to address a lack of ethics in corporate and political governance? [And I’ve barely mentioned the illegality and corruption at the heart of our press and police…we’ll see how the current investigations on these fronts progress].

At a recent meeting I attended, Children’s Minister Tim Loughton dismissed the possibility of their being any link between the riots and Douglas Hogg’s moat (a point I was quick to challenge him on). Of course there were probably rioters who’ve never heard of Douglas Hogg – but that misses the point about the exposure of the expenses scandal in general. In the eyes of many many people, unethical and immoral behaviour is the same whether it’s inner city looters or MPs in the shires.

Until politicians get to grips with this ‘feral overclass’ they can have little moral credibility in responding adequately to the riots.

The need for greater Community investment has been starkly highlighted this week and we have issued a challenging call to action to our members. The experience of BITC is that the issues of education, enterprise and employment are central to many of our members’ community engagement strategies, with their employees contributing significant skills and talent.  These areas continue to require support, focus and positive action from the business community as our evidence is that positive action can create extraordinary outcomes.

We will continue to bring business together to share expertise and knowledge to increase the scale and impact of their community investment. Business in the Community stands for responsible business. We know that our members are keen to do more. We will continue to support our members to play their part in transforming their communities into safe, prosperous places to live and work. One of the very practical ways in which we are working with our members is through our new Business Connector initiative – this will see secondments from businesses working in local communities of particular need to assess and address specific community need with local business resource. We believe that having Business Connectors in every area could have a profound impact in building the strong, prosperous communities which we all desire.

Here are the details of our immediate organisational response

-          Our immediate imperative is to support the communities most affected by events in recent days and John Varley is chairing our Business Emergency Recovery Group (BERG) in his capacity as National Ambassador for HRH The Prince of Wales.

-          We are working with community leaders to understand the underlying issues that may have led some individuals to become involved in the riots; and to identify the best way for businesses to help address and begin resolving the root causes.

-          We are reaching out to all affected Local Authorities and Enterprise Development Offices to offer our support. Through Marsh UK, for example, we have arranged for Direct Group to provide independent insurance advice to Haringey Council that will help local businesses in Tottenham to make their claims and begin trading again.

-          We are offering support and issuing a call to action to each and every one of our 850 members. Please let us know how and where we might best support you to connect with local communities who have been most affected.

-          We have issued a response to the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament clearly articulating the role of responsible business with regard to recent events Click here (and also below). We are offering our support Downing Street in to ensure that responsible companies are at the heart of the national response.

-          We are also offering support to relevant Secretaries of State, Ministers and government departments responsible for coordinating the national response.

-          We are writing to all local MPs representing affected areas to inform them of the business support available and how BITC can provide a useful conduit of information and resources.

We are committed to working together with our partners on longer term solutions, particularly given businesses’ unique ability to transform communities.

The violence and criminality we have witnessed on the streets of Britain over the past few days has been both shocking and saddening. This behaviour undoubtedly has had a serious impact on the livelihoods of hundreds if not thousands of hard-working people and reinforces the social and economic challenges faced by communities who are already struggling with deprivation.

We see parallels between the current unrest and the civil disturbances in Toxteth and Brixton that prompted our formation in the early 1980s. Our founding businesses understood that high streets can only prosper when our communities and back streets are healthy and vibrant.

We recognise the effective investment that many of our members already make in your local communities and the 30 years of campaigning, resources and local support that we have delivered together. Despite our successes, the events of recent days have shown that significant challenges remain.

We need to work together in the short, medium and longer term to support education, create employment, foster enterprise and facilitate greater connectivity between businesses and their local communities. Our movement must be at the centre of the rebuilding and transforming communities into safe, prosperous places to live and work.