(Not) Book Burning

For ten days the nation has watched horrified as a lawless mob has run riot in all corners of the media, ransacking history, looting sociological and political theories, and jumping every bandwagon that passes. What motivates this lost generation of would-be opinion-formers? Is it a desire to find meaning in their deprived lives? Or simply opportunistic sloganeering?

There's nothing like a few nights of civil disorder to bring out politicians and commentators in their true colours. Explanations for the street violence of last week have ranged from Ken Livingstone's shameless electioneering through to David Starkey's denunciation of Jamaican patois. David Cameron talks of a 'slow motion moral collapse' (surely not long before he blames it on the liberal 1960s), while Ed Miliband suggests that - in the absence of any ideas of his own - we should listen to the people.

My own favourite interpretation came courtesy of a 16-year-old girl from Moss Side in Manchester, who was interviewed on Radio Five Live on Sunday morning. She had no doubt that it was all down to the government cuts: there is apparently nothing for young people to do these days, now that the councils are closing down youth centres and libraries.

Libraries? Oh yes. And perhaps that explains one of the curious features of the looting: the way that every major shopping chain got hit with the notable exception of Waterstone's. Some had argued that this omission reflected the fact that the mobs included a large number of the functionally illiterate. Others - of a more positive frame of mind - believed that the rioters were of the Kindle-generation and had no time for conventional bookstores.

But now it turns out to be simply a reverence for the printed word. Nurtured by public libraries, even the most violent of our youth have no wish to inflict damage on the repositories of civilisation.