Thank you, Oliver Letwin, for making Tory views clear

What a fine row has blown up following publication of Cabinet papers from 1985.

The controversy has focused, in particular, on a memo signed by Oliver Letwin and a colleague. It advised the then Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher, not to respond to that year’s riots by increasing investment in black communities, because the money would be frittered away on the “disco and drug trade.”

Those bright young men apparently viewed the proposal for a £10m communities programme aimed at dealing with inner-city problems, as little more than a means to “subsidise Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops”.

Tottenham riots in 1985

To discover that the Tories were racist in 1985 is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. It would be much more interesting to be told that they were still racist today, but we’ll no doubt have to wait a couple of decades or so to have that suspicion confirmed.

What makes this memo interesting is that Oliver Letwin is still firmly in politics, an MP and Minister, and a leading adviser to the present Prime Minister David Cameron, as he was to the Prime Minister back then.

It isn’t even the comments on black communities that I find most interesting. What he has to say about whites is, in many ways, far more illuminating still. He was clear that blacks oughtn’t to benefit from the riots, in particular because “lower-class unemployed white people had lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale.”

What’s so striking about these words is that Letwin clearly meant them as a compliment. It’s a good thing, in his world view, for people to accept life in “appalling slums.” They know their place, no doubt, and don’t disturb their betters by complaining to angrily which, in contrast to those nasty black rioters, makes them fine people. Not actually fine enough for a Tory government to want to help them at all, but fine enough to win applause, in a slightly condescending way, from the betters who keep them in their slums and are pleased not to be bothered by them too much.

It’s become something of a commonplace of English politics in recent years to assert that not enough is done for the white working class. There’s a lot of truth in that statement, if it’s taken at surface value – taken to mean exactly what it says. Unfortunately, it’s often code for “we really ought to accommodate the xenophobic and often racist views that certain elements within the white working class express.” Organisations like the far-right UKIP like to draw on that kind of bitterness. Sadly, however, many on the right of the Labour Party would like to counter UKIP by pandering to its anti-immigrant policies.

The approach that would allow Labour to remain true to its roots is quite different. And Letwin’s remarks show us the way. He talks about “lower-class unemployed white people” living in “appalling slums.” What does that suggest for Labour? It points us towards both a positive and a negative message.

The positive message is that we should push forward our commitment to build an economy that doesn’t leave you unemployed, or even unable to live adequately in a job, as happens today. And a commitment to building more, decent, affordable housing so that no one is forced to settle for a dire slum existence.

The negative message? That Letwin has let the cat out of the bag. Labour needs to hammer the point that the Tory Party’s perfectly happy to leave people unemployed, living in squalid slum environments. So if you want Labour to help you out of those conditions – stop voting Tory or UKIP and elect a Labour government to help us all.

Good of Letwin to have made that clear.

When the streets of England exploded

It’s touching to have received messages of sympathy from abroad, even if at least one of them was a little supercilious, during the last four days of – what shall we call them? – troubles on the streets of British cities.

Firstly, let me say that I know exactly as much about them as anyone who reads a paper or watches news about Britain abroad. My commute to work takes me nowhere near any of the affected areas so my total exposure to the troubles was through the headlines in the papers of my fellow travellers and the lurid descriptions on the TV news.

Funnily enough, I’ve been in this situation before – when you’re actually in a ‘trouble spot’ there’s every likelihood that you’ll notice absolutely nothing about it. One such incident was on 5 February 1992, when five people were murdered in a betting shop on the Ormeau Road in Belfast; within an hour of the incident I was in a taxi that took me at one point within a mile of the place, and it wasn’t until I got to the airport and saw the news that I realised that the incident had even taken place. It was all a bit spooky.

Secondly, let’s come back to that question of the name for these troubles. One word that I’ve heard no-one pronounce in comments has been ‘revolution’.

Certainly there was nothing like revolution going on here – no strikes, no armed action, no serious or sustained threat to the status quo.

But a word that has been used, a lot, is ‘rioting’. But doesn’t the word ‘riot’ suggest some kind of political content? Well, at least if it’s not being used for rather a good party.

Whatever else was going on these last few days, it certainly wasn’t political.

Those lads weren’t setting fire to cars and debating the relative merits of David Cameron or Ed Milliband as national leaders; as they put their bricks through shop windows, they weren’t comparing the relative merits of quantitative easing and fiscal measures as ways of stimulating the economy.

No, they were just looting.

The fact that rather a lot of young people suddenly decided to go out looting has led to a bit of soul-searching. Only a bit, mind: it quickly led to identifying a few usual suspects and blaming them. The police were slow to react. Society is sick. Parenting is to pot.

Now, it’s quite possible that parenting is terrible. I'm ready to believe that any parenting outside my own family and those of my relatives and friends is pretty hopeless. To be honest, I'm not that sure about my relatives and friends. But did parenting really suddenly take a huge turn for the worse just recently? Why exactly did these badly brought up kids, so similar to the badly brought up kids of the last decade who never took to the streets, suddenly decide to turn into looters just now?

Perhaps it’s the other explanations that we have to turn to. Perhaps Britain is a sick society. But you’ve probably all seen the photograph of Monika Konczyk jumping for her life from her flat in a burning building in Croydon. The friends who’d gathered below to catch her had forced their way through the police lines to get there; policemen joined them to help.

Monika Konczyk being rescued: what's sick about that bit of society?

Did you see the photographs of the people who turned out with their brooms in Clapham to help clear their streets the day after the looting there? A sick society? Well, hardly. Those two incidents show humans behaving in just the way I would wish us all to behave. Some people behaved badly, but others behaved well. A great many behaved well.

Brooms to help the clear up in Clapham

And as for the police, they've avoided killing anyone and the situation is back under control. It took three or four days. Seems pretty impressive as me.

So that leaves still looking for the answer to the question of why did it happen now, why did these particular young people take part in such mindless criminality?

Commentators have pointed out that these are the worst street disturbances for thirty years. And maybe in that statement, unbeknown to them, lies the answer to the question.

Who was in office thirty years ago? Why, the deeply divisive government of Margaret Thatcher. It deliberately pursued policies of disenfranchising the poor, the young outside a narrow circle of privilege, and ethnic minorities. And the disturbances that started thirty years ago went on sporadically over the next decade.

And who’s in office today? Why Thatcher’s heirs, David Cameron and his cronies.

I rest my case.

Finally, what about the looting itself? Things have all gone quiet. And why? A lot of police have turned out, and that’s helped. But also the weather has broken. It’s been raining. Kids don’t like to go out in the rain.

See what I mean about not being real riots, and certainly not a revolution? Can you see Lenin saying ‘hey, it’s chucking it down out there. Let’s stay inside and have a few drinks instead.’

So without wanting to belittle the achievement of the police, let's not understate the contribution made by that most reliable of Britain’s characteristics.

Yep, our lousy weather came to our rescue.