Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Frederik Pedersen I am a 19 year old student, and it is a great pleasure for me to be here today. Because, I believe that today’s subject and the message that we are trying to send is of a great importance. Therefore I would like to thank the Major of London for taking the initiative to this conference, and by doing that allowing us to tell everyone who participated in the UK riots that we want no more riots.
But I am also here today because I am concerned. Concerned that these riots might be the result of frustrations buried deep inside our society. And concerned that if we do not take the necessary steps to prevent those riots from happening again, we could see something similar in the future.
In my speech I will first tell you something about what happened in those days back in august 2011. Second I will analyze and present to you the reasons why we saw these riots. And finally I will talk to you about what we can do to prevent similar riots from ever happening again. But now first let me sum up why we are here today.
In August 2011 a young black man named Mark Duggen was shot dead by the police in the north of London. A terrible tragedy. But what happened next can only be described as an absolute disgrace. At first young people started protesting. But quickly these peaceful protests turned into riots, riots that quickly spread to Eastern London and eventually to other cities as well. And in many parts of England we did therefore see young people, some of them only 14 years old, robbing stores, burning cars and overall cause major damage to the local communities. And besides the stealing and the enormous damage caused to buildings, streets and cars, the tragedy also ended up costing the lives of three innocent people in Birmingham.
But how could this happen, how could things get so out of place. Well, obviously the police shooting is what did start the protests. But the reason why it escalated is found in the frustrations of so many young British people. Frustrations that has emerged because of the economic problems that those young people are facing. Back when the these riots started the youth unemployment rate were at 19% and increasing. Many had lost their jobs, especially in the poor urban areas where the riots started. And on top of this they could also see how the general inequality in Britain was increasing. So this led to some sort of hopelessness as well as frustrations and a feeling of having no influence and not being heard, which made them enter the streets and commit this unacceptable vandalism. And at the same time as this happened, many of those areas had lost their government sponsored neighborhood social and cultural services, which also meant that many of the younger kids did not have anything to do, so they joined these riots because they found them interesting. And since these frustrations with the government, the upper class and the society were common among youths in many parts of Britain, the riots spread across the country.
The reason why it spread so quickly is off course because of the social medias and the news medias, which first of all allowed young people to see what was going on and to become inspired by that. They became copycats. But second of all using social medias, especially the Blackberry Messaging System and Twitter, also allowed them to communicate with each other and to organize the riots.
At last it should also be mentioned, that many young people unfortunately also saw the riots as a way to earn some easy money and to get some free stuff. People could see on the TV that the police could not handle the situation and they took advantage of that. So therefore we did also see lots of gangs on the streets.
We obviously need to prevent similar situations from ever happening again. But how can we do that. Well, first of all the politicians and the local communities need to create jobs for these young and frustrated people. They need to do more to help them out of their economic problems. And they need to create more activities for the kids, so that they will not be encouraged to go and participate in such riots.
Second of all, the police was not ready for a thing like this. So in the future, if a similar situation emerges, they need to know how to handle it and how to prevent it from escalating. And they must also be able to insert extra forces, for example from the army, if they find it necessary.
Then the parents also has a huge responsibility. And apparently too many parents do not care enough about their children. Because how could they allow their kids to be out on the streets when they knew what was going on. They need to pay more attention to their kids, to take care of them, and to keep their kids away from things like the UK riots, as well as they need to teach their kids that stealing and rioting is wrong. Also, many children who participated in the riots have grown up in broken homes with single parents, which is also a problem that needs to be taken care of. In connection to this the teachers also have a responsibility. Because they do also have a huge influence on the kids, which means that teaching them discipline in school and teaching them what is right and wrong is also partially their job.
The social medias and the news also has a huge responsibility in this situation. But unfortunately this is not something that I believe can be changed.
So just to sum up. The riots, the theft, the vandalism and the violence is a result of frustrations as well as lack of discipline and respect. But nonetheless I believe we can all agree on that these things can never be justified. And many of the involved persons will therefore hopefully be convicted by the police. But by doing the necessary things I believe that we can hopefully prevent something like this from ever happening again. And if a similar situation will emerge anyway, I believe that we will be ready for it and be able to handle it better.
Now thank you very much for coming here today, and thank you for giving your time to listen to what I had to say. And may we have no more riots.