Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Tonight's guest is Howard Jacobson.

He's an author, commentator and columnist with The Independent newspaper.

His most recent book, The Finkler Question, won the Man Booker Prize.

Well in recent days he's involved himself in the fierce argument over the causes of the wave of rioting that swept across the UK last week.

That debate has so deeply divided Britain's political and intellectual elites that Howard Jacobson was moved to write that the "... impatient adversariality of those engaged in the argument actually mirrors the aggression of those who drive cars at whoever stands in their way".

Well he joins us now in our London studio.

Thanks for being there, Howard Jacobson.

HOWARD JACOBSON, AUTHOR & COMMENTATOR: My pleasure. How are you?

TONY JONES: I'm very well. Tell us what you were getting at there.

HOWARD JACOBSON: Well, I think it's very interesting that if you read about what's being going on in the streets, that even those people who are most moralistic about the violence on the streets, about the hoodlum behaviour - and no-one calls it anything else - are themselves almost hoodlums in words.

People are killing one another - I mean, this has been - verbally, in language. This has been going on a long time over here and probably over there too on the internet. I mean, anybody who looks at the internet will have noticed how much more violent language has become. You don't disagree with somebody now, you vilify them, you kill with language.

And of late it's got even worse over this particular issue, so it's very strange to have grown-up politicians and academics trying to put their mind to the violence of the streets and mirroring it in the violence of their own - the intemperateness of their own disagreements with one another.

TONY JONES: Has this really changed over this issue, and if so, what's changed it? Because, I mean, we don't have to think back too far in British history to remember equally passionate debates.

HOWARD JACOBSON: It's - I think - well, it's always dangerous to say that one's hit a new low, and I wouldn't want to say we have hit a new low. And you're quite right: this is - the UK is a country with, you know, a savage sense of humour, with sharp tongues. We actually pride ourselves on the savagery of our literature even.

But at this particular moment, when it would seem to be so important that we try and put our imaginations to work about what's going on, about what the lives of these people must have been for them to be doing this, which is not to say that we're forgiving anything.

We have to preface everything now by saying, "We're not forgiving it, we're not excusing it," and of course we're not. But at this particular moment you would have thought commentators would say, "Let's look at this very calmly and let's put to rest our own ideological differences," because our only differences are not only not going to solve this, they're probably contributory reasons anyway to why we're in this mess, and it's a mess.

TONY JONES: Well we'll get into the mess shortly, but we are seeing to some degree a similar debate being mirrored here in Australia about the riots. And there's a vehemence to that as well, as if the riots themselves have become tangible proof of one social theory or another.

I mean, if you see the cause in social inequity, you're a slave to leftist dogma; if you concentrate on welfare dependency, moral disintegration, you're a hide-bound conservative. I mean, it's - the same thing is happening here.

HOWARD JACOBSON: Yes. I mean, the mysterious thing - this makes me sound like Pollyanna or something - but the mysterious thing is that they won't at least choose this particular occasion to hold hands over it. You might both be right, guys; both parties might be right.

Ideologies never solve anything, but in the core, in the heart of a ideology will be some understanding of something. The problem is when the ideology is pursued to its ultimate extreme.

But if both sets of ideologies would just say, "We actually - a bit of you and a bit of me could make sense of this." This idea that you must - that liberalism must be excluded because liberalism is taking us - has made us go wrong in this, or that authoritarianism must be excluded because it's made us go wrong, is such folly. We actually need both. The two - each argument does not necessarily cancel out the other.

TONY JONES: Is it the nature of modern politics, or as you implied, is it something to do with the internet, the anonymity of blogging in some cases and online commentary, of Twitter and other social forms of media? I mean, do you sort of sense that that is all playing a role here?

HOWARD JACOBSON: Well I think it's playing a role. I mean, one shouldn't exaggerate the role it's played. I mean, I was horrified to discover for example that this was organised by a BlackBerry. I own a BlackBerry. I suddenly thought, "My God, I'm carrying about with me an incendiary device here." Not that I would have a clue how you talk to other people by BlackBerry.

So, these things are only - these things are as good as what you put on them. You know, we've had examples this year in Arab countries and so on in which the social media have helped people to get together in causes which we've decided, anyway, are good ones, and now that people have got together in causes which we've decided are bad ones, you can't blame them.

It's a messenger. But it's clearly a very dangerous messenger.

The sad thing is that meanwhile as we go on fighting, the problem won't go away. We actually don't know what's happened. This is what's fascinating about this.

We keep saying, "It's our comeuppance," but we don't know what's come up. We don't know what actually this is about, how far it's political, how far it's driven by poverty, how far it's about race. And yet you will hear some of these people who complain that they feel that they're being put upon by the police, be racist themselves and say it's all to do with Polish immigrants. Nobody knows what it's about.

The most fascinating part though to me - and I think here we are spotting something and we might get some unanimity - is the degree to which it's about consumerism. Someone called it shopping with violence. And it's been like that to watch that looting. And it's as though they are mirroring - it's like a morality tale.

These are the people who've been told by advertising and television and their magazines that they must have these objects. And it's as though they're saying, "OK, you've told us we must have these objects. These are the objects we must have. Look, these are the objects we keep on telling you which we can't afford, but, here, behold, these are the objects which we now have." If that's not a morality tale, I don't know what it is.

TONY JONES: Well, I mean, you do argue that we - and I presume by that you mean the wealthier parts of society - need to acknowledge in this our own darkness. I mean, what blame could possibly be laid at the feet of a calm, middle-class family sitting quietly at home?

HOWARD JACOBSON: Probably none, and you can't lay the blame either at - you know, at any individual banker who's decided he'd like to have a $9 million bonus this year. That's not how it works. That's not how - anyway, blame is not what I myself think we should be about.

But if we're seeking for an explanation and how an atmosphere is created, how a tone of society is created, then what looks like an absurdity - this banker can't be responsible for that boy stealing a pair of trainers - trainers, for good sake, they're so horrible.

But I have to tell you that living here in the last few years, I have felt the tone of this country has sunk to a new low. It's been - morally, it's been very ugly. We've had politicians with their expenses scandals, we've got the other story which alternates with the hoodlum story, which is the Murdoch and the relation to the police and the relation to our politicians. We've got that story going.

We've got banker's bonuses. We've got financial scavengers affecting the market. Just the general tone of society is not good.

And that doesn't mean - it doesn't matter whether any of these individual looters read the Financial Times or read The Economist and know what's going - that's not how things work.

Little by little, a sort of despondency or a gloom or a greed or an ugliness or a lowness of tone creeps into society, and then we are all affected by that.

TONY JONES: A lot of this appears to be, in the way you're looking at it, about the massive discrepancy in that society and in many others between the wealthiest and the poorest members of the society.

Well, The Economist, as you point out, is pleased to publish an annual rich list. Should they also publish a poor list, with the poorest individuals, the poorest communities? Is that what you're suggesting?

HOWARD JACOBSON: No, I think they shouldn't publish a rich list. I cringe whenever I see a rich list. And I don't just mean because I know I'm not on it. I just think what good does it do to society to know who these rich people are and how much money they've got?

What discontent does it, here and there and little by little, drip, drip, drip, what discontent does it create in the body politic, in the social fabric of a culture? How good is it to know that? How good is it to have television pushing wealth and fame based on absolutely nothing at these kids all the time?

It's interesting to me what it is that they wanted to loot. They wanted teles and they wanted trainers. They didn't - easy to be superior about it - they didn't raid bookshops. And people will say, "Well, there you are: that shows it's not about education," but it is partly about education.

That is what's so upsetting about the sight of those , and also so distressing about the violence, is just that sense of - you can see how dispossessed they are by what they want. Is that all they want?

You need a Dickens. I kept thinking of Dickens seeing those little boys staggering beneath those great, big flat screen television - who needs a 91-inch flat screen television? They could barely carry it. But there they were.

And it reminds me of the beginning of a Dickens novel. That kind of picture of people doing things that's absolutely - they don't know what to do with themselves. They don't know what they want. They're kind of - they're out of it.

But all they know is that these seem to be the desirable objects in our society. And who's given them that idea? They're not born with it.

TONY JONES: Let's - so we don't get taken out and stoned by the advocates of the other side of the argument, let's look at something else that you're quite clear about. And that is that the idea of liberalism lies in ruins. Tell us why you say that?

HOWARD JACOBSON: Well, I mean, I say that because having made my attack on everything else, I want to make it clear that that doesn't mean - to attack where conservatism has taken us does not mean you have to end up on the left. You can reject rightism without accepting leftism. Reject the lot or accept the lot. You don't have to buy one or the other.

But the liberalism that I am complaining of is the thing that we all know, really, that's going on in schools.

We run frightened of children. We're a society that runs terrified of children. Parents are terrified of children, school teachers are terrified of children. You see, some of these kids will say, "If you lay a hand on me - if you lay a hand on me," they say it to their parents, "I'll call the police."

There is this - children - even the roughest of these kids are being - have imbibed a message of their human rights, their right not to be attacked, their right to be - to have respect. They have a sense of their entitlement.

I'm not going to buy the rights without obligations things that Cameron is going on - what obligation do they have to a society that gives them nothing? Just about none.

But the one thing that they do seem to have from terrible parenting, from a society that is frightened of making a judgment about them. They go to school and they don't learn anything.

One of the reasons among many that they don't learn anything - and one of the reasons is that the schools aren't very good and they're underfunded and the rest of it - but also because we have been frightened - liberalism has been frightened over the last 30, 40 years to actually say these are things that you should know.

And I don't just mean right from wrong; just knowledge. This is knowledge you should possess. And kids now feel empowered to say, "Well who are you to tell us what we should know?" And the answer to that is, "We teach you." That's the answer. "We teach you. "You sit down, you shut up and you listen."

And once upon a time it didn't work for everybody, but a strong teacher with confidence as to what he was doing and why he was doing and what he wanted to pass on to pupils didn't turn them into little automata, it actually taught kids confidence.

And one of the things we see now with these - the youth which has been empowered, if you like, to believe in itself and to believe in its own rights, at the same time as it actually has nothing, is that they've got no language. I mean, the gibberish that was ...

TONY JONES: Let me interrupt you on that point to bring you to one of the interesting points - one of the many interesting points you make. The "idiot patois" of these groups as you describe it, is welcomed as - by liberalism as a rebellion against conformity. I mean, are you including in this gangster rap, the sort of things which are so popular among middle class kids as well, by the way?

HOWARD JACOBSON: Yes, I am. Well it shouldn't be. I mean, it's ugly, it's brutalising, it's inarticulate, it's rhythmically monotonous, there's nothing to admire about it at all.

Someone has just got into trouble - the historian David Starkey had just got into terrible trouble over here for saying something which was a bit clumsy in the way he put it, but really he was just trying to get to the bottom of this gangster rap. And he was immediately called a racist.

He made the mistake of invoking Enoch Powell. That's not a good idea. He made the mistake of saying this has been imported from Jamaica, which also isn't a good idea.

But it's impossible now to have a conversation about what that language means. About - David Starkey talked about the fact that white kids are imitating black kids. It's become desirable to sound like black kids on the street. This was called racism.

It wasn't called racism when Ali G had a comedy sketch about it. And Ali G had, you know, every white kid in Staines, or wherever that was happening, wanting to be a black kid. It wasn't racism when Norman Mailer wrote about 50 years ago about white men wanting to be black men. But you can't even have this conversation now. It's a protected area.

TONY JONES: So where did the - so explain to us where the backlash to Starkey came from then?

HOWARD JACOBSON: He said it on Newsnight. He said it on, you know, a program - an English equivalent to yours, I would imagine.

And he said it in an argument with other people, and he was very ill-advised in his choice of language and his - presumably you have David Starkey's history programs over there. His arrogance led him into thinking that he could defeat anybody in an argument, and he was actually beaten up.

It was almost like a mirror image of what was going on in the streets. He was beaten up. And he looked at the end of it a sad, old, rightist man that shouldn't have been involving himself in this subject matter. He was dressed wrong. His accent was wrong and he was saying the wrong things.

But what struck me was the speed with which he was pounced upon for daring to go into an area which we should look at. There can't be any no-go areas in this conversation.

TONY JONES: OK. Well, we're nearly out of time, so I just want to sort of wrap up with some of your thoughts. Because you argue further that liberals don't understand the necessary role that illiberal-ism - illiberalism, I should say - plays in governing society, guidelines, example, authority boundaries.

I mean, doesn't this logically mean that David Cameron is actually on the right path and that the country will actually have to brace itself for an illiberal backlash after this cultural binge, as you call it?

HOWARD JACOBSON: Well it's been pointed out to me that my use of the world illiberal there was a touch rhetorical. I mean, I liked it: liberal/illiberal. And that in fact liberalism contains - a properly informed liberalism contains the possibility of a belief in authority and discipline and the rest of it.

But I don't say that everything that Cameron is saying makes nonsense. I say - is nonsense. I say that much that Cameron is saying it right. I say much that Ed Miliband in the Labour Party is saying is right.

But we will get nowhere if they simply front up against one another and insist that the other is wrong. To a degree, they are both wrong and to a degree they are both right.

TONY JONES: Do you think we'll ever - finally, do you think we'll ever see a single unified theory of why this happened?

HOWARD JACOBSON: No, because there can't be one and I don't want one either because that will be another ideology, a third ideology, which would be - there cannot be one single unified theory of what's happened.

We don't know what's happened. We will never know what's happened because it's happened to individuals, it's happened to several thousand individuals, and each one will have his own, if not an agenda, his own psychological reasoning for doing what he's doing, even if the individual person knows nothing about it.

That doesn't mean it will defy explanation, but it will be a very complex explanation indeed.

TONY JONES: Well good luck trying to deal with it in that case. Howard Jacobson, we thank you very much for coming to join us on Lateline.

HOWARD JACOBSON: Thank you. My pleasure.