A riot on my own - the failure of "New Labour"

It has been a week since the riots started in London and other UK cities. Analysis of "why" has begun, following the knee-jerk "lock-em up" and "birch 'em" responses - and that's just from the average Guardian reader. So, the consensus runs, young people riot because they feel "disconnected" from their communities. OK, I know the Tories have hacked away at public services in the last 12 months or so, and the amount of services for young people have been sadly destroyed, along with other local community services and voluntary groups - BUT this leaves another problem: for the previous 10 years the Labour government poured millions into regeneration schemes that has as a major theme running through them, engaging young people in their communities. The evidence is that these schemes all failed: Millions of pounds spent on short-termed projects that only provided a short-term solution. Voluntary sector groups spending thousands of hours chasing money attached to schemes already doomed before they started: SRBs, Neighbourhood Renewal, Children's Fund etc. etc. Meanwhile, the youth clubs that were shut in the 1980s didn't re-open, the community centres remained shut and the buildings sold off.

"New Labour" provided patchy crap that only held communities together by the precarious strings that were and are the hard-working individuals - workers and volunteers - who really work for their communities. Almost certainly the same people cleaning up the messes in Tottenham and Hackney at the end of last week. In the 1980s Thatcher destroyed a lot of local community structures by undermining local government powers and finances. Instead of reinvesting in these structures that had provided youth clubs, community centres, art centres etc. Labour threw money at consultants and regeneration schemes, and missed the opportunity to put things back where they needed to be. Instead, a pathetic structure was invented, that hasn't even managed to survive one year of Tory-ism. What a shame. And another shame is the "New new Labour" appears to be offering little else. So whilst the Tories stay in power, and no long-term investment is made in local, sustainable community structures things are unlikely to get better. Locking kids up and taking away their benefits sounds like a recipe for only one thing - more riots.