It's the economy, stupid

Goldsmiths academic Tom Henri has written an article in the Guardian today about the recent Lewisham riots, entitled: "Behind the Lewisham riots: It was all about money."

Here's an excerpt:

"My initial plan was to talk to young people about their motivation for involvement in the disturbances. What came out of the discussions was a rather nuanced discussion about the tactics they employed to avoid the police while looting. When it came to talking about their motivations for this, they were clear – "it was all about money", as one young man succinctly expressed it."

As he suggests, this insight doesn't really provide an answer to the question of the underlying causal factors, but opportunism, rather than anger appears to be the catalyst, something we speculated about here.