MICHELE NORRIS, host: As we heard from Eric, people in Britain are wrestling with a question that is both simple and complex: Who are the rioters that created so much mayhem in the streets? James Harkin attempted to answer that question today in The Guardian newspaper. He's based in London, and he joins me now. Welcome to the program.
JAMES HARKIN: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: So you set out to answer this question. What did you find? Who was on the front lines of these riots?
HARKIN: Well, I was there on Monday night at a particular riot in Peckham. And what I saw really were people - very scarily young people, between the ages of about 10 and 20 - who seemed to be in the thick of this. So I would say, really, young and underemployed people, both white and black, between the ages of 10 and 20, are you might call the ringleaders. There was the odd middle-aged man who was simply opportunistically taking advantage of this in order to steal things. But really, the people in this are very young.
NORRIS: In the beginning, many of the people who took to the streets to protest the shooting of a young black man last Thursday were largely black. But over time, the protest took on more of a rainbow quality. Is this in some way about race?
HARKIN: It's a fascinating question. And I think this is, you know, what I saw in Peckham were people rubbing along incredibly nicely together, both black and white; lots of black people because it's a largely black area. In fact, many of the people throwing the stones and being most aggressive were white. There was no sign of racial tension at all. And I don't think there was at the beginning either, even though Mark Duggan was black. This was simply a kind of anger, a kind of badly expressed anger.
NORRIS: So you're saying if race has been downplayed, is class at the center of this?
HARKIN: Yes, and it's very unfashionable to talk about class. I mean, really, the only thing that unites these people is that they're young, underemployed, working-class people. It's very indigenous. It's very local.
NORRIS: The politicians, as we just heard, are trying to figure out who's behind the rioting and really what sparked the violence. I'm curious about how people who live in these areas are responding to this. There is a video that has now gone viral. It's a video in which a woman who is standing in the middle of the mayhem. She's leaning on a cane, and she's imploring the rioters to get real, to fight for a real cause. And maybe we should listen to just a moment of this before we go on.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
PAULINE PEARCE: This is about a (bleep) man who got shot in Tottenham. This ain't about having fun (unintelligible) and burning up the place. Get it real, black people. Get real. Do it for a cause. If we're fighting for a cause, let's fight for a (bleep) cause. You (bleep) off. I'm ashamed to be a Hackney person...
NORRIS: That's Pauline Pearce, we've learned. She is an activist, and you could hear she was using rather salty language to describe her feelings about those rioters. Does she speak for many people in Britain?
HARKIN: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, even when I was down on the front line of a riot in Peckham, you know, with kind of policemen with shields standing 20 yards away, half of the people beside me who would have been considered to be gawkers or spectators or somehow involved were shaking their heads. And they were saying, you know, why has it come to this? There's a great deal of anger, I think, in many local communities.
NORRIS: Did you talk to people who were engaged in the rioting? What did they say about what they were doing?
HARKIN: Well, and I mean, the little boys who were simply throwing stones at shops and getting inside wouldn't have wanted to talk to anyone. Older guys in their 20s were prepared to talk, and I spoke to a few of them. And they simply wanted to give the police a bloody nose for all sorts of reasons. So I think the reasons for this are very complex and very cultural, and they can't simply be explained by money.
It's more a sense that people really have no stake. And it's a sense that either people are underemployed, or if they're 11 years of age, they simply don't have very much to do. I mean, the spectators that were standing with me, and many of them were young black girls of about 13 years of age, many of them were handing out sweets to each other as they watched these shops being set ablaze. And for them, it had the feel of a kind of particularly rowdy, open-air cinema. And I think that's rather sad. Maybe they should have more means of entertainment than that.
NORRIS: James Harkin, it's been good to talk to you. Thank you very much for your time.
HARKIN: Thank you so much, Michele.
NORRIS: James Harkin is a reporter for The Guardian newspaper. He's based in London. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
