In a 'rare intervention' into the domestic political arena, from which he has triumphantly ascended, Tony Blair has advised us that the recent riots (predicted incidentally by Nick Clegg before the election, when he was campaigning against, not in tandem with the Conservatives) were not the result (as David Cameron says) of a general moral decline in society, nor (as Blair's successors in the Labour Party suggest) the result of the coalition government's policies and cuts. According to Blair, the rioters are a distinct and discrete canker - the great bulk of society has nothing in common with the rioters.
It is probably true that there are, among the rioters, people from whom most of us would feel deeply alienated and with whom we would find it almost impossible to forge any relationship. Yet one has only to follow the reporting of the riots and of the court appearances since to see that also amongst them were many who were far from being hard-bitten social disfunctionals and who were either almost surprised at what they had done, or whose alienation was almost trivial; people that is who were responding to a social and cultural development rather than creating it through the force of their malign personalities.
Tony Blair's remedy is 'early intervention' - special state 'support' targetted at distinct individuals and families, preferably identified before they actually offend by information gathered against a range of theoretical or statistical indicators. Blair began this in his final years in office; Brown abandonned it; but, Blair now says, "the papers and the work are still there" handily lying in government offices waiting for Cameron to pick up, once he sees the light.
I find there is always something chilling about Blair's approach. Social institutions and relationships are not at fault or in need of adjustment; rather it is malfunctioning individuals who are to receive the specific ministrations of the state to ensure that they fit the social model. It is not that I think people cannot be deeply influenced and changed by encounters with others, but when the interaction is part of an organised programme conducted by a state or social body, one is in different territory. Perhaps there is something of Blair's churchly inclinations here, but it also makes me think of a different model - the supermarkets, those new Jesuits of the consumer society. Our habits and doings are monitored by government data-gathering, like the supermarket 'club card' (this is a club we are "all in together"), but, unlike Tesco amending its stocking and marketing to fit demand, the government moulds the recalcitrant individual to fit society.
