The UK riots seemed to flare out of nowhere and to erupt quickly to an extraordinarily violent level.

Should they perhaps have been foreseen? What were the underlying causes, and perhaps most pertinently, could they happen here?

Frustration, and seeing a World of promise in which youngsters cannot see themselves partaking, is the root cause. To be poor is one thing; to be poor and surrounded by affluence and see everyday “la Dolce Vita” dancing before your eyes in advertising, TV and film an altogether different proposition. This mindless opportunism, and grabbing a chance of a free plasma TV drove the feral mob.

1789, 1848, 1929, 1956, 1968 are years that had tremulous social upheaval in various parts of the World, but each of these had clear, identifiable political sparks; those recently in London – that spread to other large UK cities – did not.

Rather “self-expression” through looting, arson and vandalism seems to have been the root cause, fanned by the use of social media to both establish rallying points and to stay one step ahead of the police.

Why now? Disaffected youth are hardly a new phenomena; the answer lies not in racial identity – a cause that too many lazy observers have leapt upon, but demographics.

The problem of “surplus people”, particularly in the younger age brackets, is a global problem. Populations grew rapidly in the nineteenth century as the industrial revolution voraciously required more and more hands. In our post-industrial world the global need is for fewer and fewer, but far more educated minds.

Yet of course in the last 50 years the global population has exploded from 3 billion to 7 billion; and largely in the developing world though migration and job-seeking, and of course employment opportunities means that the outbreaks of violence can happen anywhere, and indeed are more likely to occur in societies such as Britain where tolerance and light policing are the norm.

The result of this population explosion is that, around the World there are generations growing up with little, or any, prospect of ever finding meaningful employment and therefore we must expect these disillusioned youth to occasionally erupt, and often with irrational violence; indeed the next time it could be here in South Africa. We are certainly not immune and our disaffected, poorly educated and largely unemployable youth sector significantly larger.

That these youth in the UK were predominantly, as we quaintly put it in South Africa, “of colour” is relevant inasmuch as they make up a disproportionate part of the poorly educated, often illiterate rump of society most ill at ease in our new knowledge-based age.

These riots could have happened anywhere. The problem of youth unemployment is the largest problem facing virtually every country on our planet. Were we all sleeping over the past decades when this social problem – driven by a population explosion – happened, and why are we all now seemingly clueless as to the causes?

The question we – and I mean all in the World and not just in Britain and here in South Africa – should be asking is – why did our leaders not see it coming and taken remedial action, and more pertinently what can now be done?

It is clearly too late to properly put the genie back in the bottle, though over the coming decades it will be essential for mankind to bring down present population levels, but some steps can, and must be taken.

The first is to dismantle our present Labour laws that make employing anyone far too problematic.

The second is meaningful apprenticeships and trade training in all those skills that a mining and extractive economy most need.

The third might be a “social workforce” along the lines suggested by the UK Prime Minister; National Service for a prescribed period but on a civil society supporting basis rather than a military-footing.

Perhaps a fourth might be incentivising more people to stay on the land by agricultural subsidies and training to reduce the drift to cities.

We know the problem is going to get worse; not just here but globally; it is intrinsic to our demographic structures whereby our global society is massively overweight in the younger age categories thereby guaranteeing the present population explosion will continue.

The bigger question we should perhaps be asking is, is democracy powerless to tackle the really big issues, such as population growth – perhaps easier to sweep such issues under the carpet, hope they go away and in the meantime make sure that “we” (the politicians) are re-elected?

Tags: #UK Riots