I have not seen many attempts to discuss the causes of the recent (ongoing?) riots across England which haven't seemed either a bit simplistic, or a bit too partisan, one way or the other. As a precaution, therefore, I am definitely not going to say anything at all about the bigger picture, but I do want to note a wee argument in response to one particular line of thought I have seen advanced.
A couple of people I know and like have been suggesting that the paper linked to here shows that there is at least some connection between the recent rioting and the government's wildly popular program of cuts to public services. "Anyone who says the riots don’t have anything to do with the cuts should have a read of [this study]" says the man from the London Review of Books.
The paper may well show, as it claims to, that "austerity has tended to go hand in hand with politically motivated violence and social instability". Many (even most?) major riots are explicitly politically motivated, or at least follow on from demonstrations which were. That category of thing being strongly correlated with fiscal contractions etc would not be surprising. But taking this as evidence for the political motivation behind a particular riot is only plausible if you accept the premise that the incident in question belongs in the same category. To advance this correlation as evidence that the recent riots are connected to the government cuts is to beg the question.
I don't want to sound too dismissive of that sort of connection in general - I expect even the most rabid conservative loyalist would accept that the temper of the times has at least something to do with the rioting. But if they didn't, the evidence presented above wouldn't necessarily give them any reason to change their mind.
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