The madness of mobs
There was once a city famous for its diversity, for its mosques and churches, a crossroad of cultures where intermarriage rates were as high as 34%. That city was Sarajevo in 1990.
Pre-war Yugoslavia had both high levels of integration and large numbers of people who didn’t even identify strongly with the groups for whom people killed and died. A family friend of ours emigrated to New Zealand because she was Catholic and her husband Orthodox, which made them Croats and Serbs, identities they didn’t feel huge attachment to as Yugoslavs.
For all the media talk at the time of ‘ancient hatreds’, a major factor in that tragedy was that authority had broken down, as Stephen Davies wrote back in 2018,
If there is great hostility and historical enmity between groups you would not expect widespread intermarriage (as happened in Bosnia for example). You don’t typically marry someone you hate. That comes afterwards. The problem with the second argument is that mixed (multi-ethnic or multi-confessional) societies can hold together for a very long time and this has to be given explanatory weight. If all mixed societies are inherently unstable then why are they historically so common and why do many keep going for hundreds of years in peace and rising prosperity?’
All groups will have within them some people whom we may describe as bigoted idiots. I am sure that we are all familiar with people of this kind, hostile to people different to themselves and ready and eager to employ violence against them. Normally, these people are checked: there are mechanisms that control them and prevent them from following their instincts and inclinations. In particular, the legal system imposes severe and exemplary penalties against them if they should do this. This leaves the rest of the populations who range from feeling mild dislike to positively friendly sentiments towards individuals from other groups to do what they want.
Sometimes however, for various reasons, this breaks down. The most important thing is when the overarching authority stops punishing bigoted idiots who commit violent acts. (The punishment does not have to be severe, the main point is that it is certain). At this point, things rapidly go to hell in a handcart. The bigoted idiots on all sides act according to their inclinations and commit various atrocities. The sensible, moderate majority find it hard to cooperate together because they are numerous, dispersed, and varied, and face very high coordination costs.
Serbian violence was often driven by football hooligans, many of them from the dregs of society; indeed one of the sparks for the conflict was a riot during a game between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade.
It is not hard to picture some of the rioters from the last week engaging in the same sort of horrific violence witnessed in Yugoslavia. Some of what we saw resembled a pogrom, or the communal violence against market-dominant minorities in post-imperial states like Zanzibar, with hooligans targeting shops owned by foreign nationals and minorities. The images of people attacked simply for being Asian were especially disturbing, which for many people – and especially media commentators of a certain age – will bring back chilling memories of growing up in the 1970s and 80s.
Historically, mobs have tended to target two groups – figures of authority, and foreigners – and this is found whether the protests are notionally left or right-wing. What is now called the Peasants’ Revolt – referred to as the ‘Mad Multitude’ by chroniclers - began as a protest against tax and had some radically egalitarian leaders like John Ball, but, once inside London, the mob attacked both officials of the crown and every foreigner they could find, chiefly Flemish migrants.
A generation earlier the Flagellant movement descended into violence as crowds in a state of delirium attacked both churchmen and Jews. The mobs unleashed by the French Revolution targeted royal officials but also sought out foreigners, especially the English. Pogroms in Tsarist Russia were not led by the authorities but, while they turned a blind eye or even cheered them on, those same mobs would often then turn on landowners.
It doesn’t really matter if those engaged in mob violence do not ‘represent’ the community, as people have repeatedly reassured themselves after the recent violence, because it only takes a relatively small percentage of the population to take advantage of a breakdown in order to bring society to the brink. Even during the Troubles, in a society far more divided than England today, majorities of both the Protestant and Catholic population opposed the UVF and IRA, voting for the mainstream anti-violent Official Unionists and SDLP. That was why, in the late 1970s, the British Government changed their approach by treating the paramilitaries not as community representatives but as criminal gangs.
Mob violence is especially dangerous because it can escalate quickly and feed off itself like a blaze. A small number of people will use the breakdown of norms to do their worst, including targeting members of different communities. It’s because a small minority are violent that anti-racism norms are important (although where liberals have a blind spot is that they don’t see that this tendency is universal).
Another coping mechanism is that these riots are orchestrated, the work of outsiders bussed in to disrupt happy, peaceful communities. This is a common, comforting belief in any society where order collapses, but again here it was untrue, since suspects facing riot charges are mostly locals, with seven out of ten from within five miles. As history has repeatedly shown, many people will attack neighbours if given the chance.
There is a debate to be made over whether this is just hooligans who’ve spotted an opportunity or the bubbling over of pent-up resentment about immigration, as well as unemployment and deprivation.
All are true, although I feel like an under-commented aspect of the root causes debate about riots is simply that they’re fun. People don’t trash libraries because they bring people together and empower them – they just like doing it. People enjoyed the 2011 riots, and these people looting phone boxes in Liverpool were similarly having a great time. A lot of it is related to alcohol and, I suspect, cocaine, as well as hot, dry weather.
But a big factor is the breakdown of authority. Predictably, many of those being charged in Sunderland and Liverpool have multiple previous convictions, and if there are any good outcomes from these riots, it is perhaps an appreciation that defunding the police is not a good idea and that we need more prisons. Since repeat criminals are responsible for a vast amount of crime, I would be prepared to bet that large numbers of jail sentences will lead to significant improvements in those cities affected by riots in the next year as repeat offenders are incapacitated at last.
Another factor driving the riots is surely the decline in police numbers since 2010 and the fact that over half of all courts in England and Wales have been shut. Compared to 2011, when Britain last experienced riots, the prisons are now full and the courts have two-year backlogs. As Home Secretary, Theresa May confidently predicted that we could cut police budgets without provoking violent unrest (the same Theresa May who also banned use of water cannons).
In Bloomberg, Adrian Wooldridge wrote about the crisis of confidence in law and order, and that ‘the complaints need to be addressed by reforming institutions and improving public policy. Less than half the British now have confidence in their local police forces, down from 63% ten years ago. The continuing flow of asylum seekers across the channel is straining national resources as well as people’s patience. Riots will undoubtedly recur if the government can’t reduce the flow of refugees and speed up the process for dealing with them. Though some people have called for Parliament to be recalled, this would be a pointless gesture, as Britain needs swift action, executed by ministers, rather than more talk.
‘It’s also up to Starmer to do more to address the sense of hopelessness in many working-class communities, particularly in the north, which feel marginalized by economic and social change and then ignored by the British state. Let’s be tough on riots, by all means, but also let’s be tough on their causes.’
Clearly immigration is a factor among those causes, and a majority of all voters cite it as a cause, although below others. In particular the last governments’ decision to place asylum seekers in hotels - often in poor towns where it is notable that the main hotel has been taken over by unvetted, mostly young men from abroad - was wildly irresponsible.