Riots in the street: Leadership in extreme conditions

As those unfortunate enough to have suffered in the riots in London and elsewhere can testify, the leadership skills of those in various positions in society have been tested to the extreme this week. No doubt there will be a lot of soul searching about the immediate and long term causes of the riots themselves but a key question to ask is how well people with leadership responsibility responded to the crisis.

My ratings are as follows:

Politicians Leadership Rating: 3 out of 10
Both David Cameron and Boris Johnson have been tested and found wanting in their handling of the early stages of this crisis. Saturday night’s problems could have been classed as a one-off event driven by particular local factors. However it was glaringly obvious to most of us that things were escalating on Sunday night. It did not take a massive leap of the imagination to see Monday evening was going to be even worse.

A leader in a crisis situation needs to take control of rather than be driven by events. Cameron and Johnson should have been back at their desks by Monday morning to ensure that plans were in place to deal with the anticipated trouble. Had they done so then maybe the damage to Croydon and other areas could have been reduced. They both displayed a lack of judgement by their delay in taking control.

Police Leadership Rating: 7 out of 10
It is important to recognise that the emergency services on the ground did exactly what was asked of them by their leaders and for that they deserve our thanks and admiration even though control of the streets was lost.

My criticism of the emergency services is reserved for the police leadership in London, who got their tactics seriously wrong and failed to quickly mobilise enough police when it became apparent that the containment strategy, used at other protests in the last few years, was just not working.

The guerrilla tactics used by the fast moving and well organised looters over the last few days is unprecedented in modern times in the UK. Historians amongst us can probably cite 18th and 19th Century examples of such behaviour but for me the parallel is more the Arab Spring uprisings where social media was used to great effect to organise people to remove dictators rather than 40inch plasma TV’s.

The police were certainly wrong-footed by the rioters, who simply switched to the next easy target if their way was blocked. It was late on Monday before tactics switched from standing their ground to clearing the streets with sheer weight of police numbers.

I am hopeful that the revised tactics can now fully restore order in our cities. The shame of it is the damage to lives and livelihoods amongst the neighbourhoods trashed by the rioters. Police leadership now needs to review their tactics and acknowledge that abandoning shopkeepers to take their chances with the mob, whilst watching from behind riot shields, is not acceptable to the general public. These law abiding people deserve better.

Community Leadership Rating: 10 out of 10
The leadership heroes of this crisis are those that have organised the people in their communities’ to protect themselves and their property from the rioters and harnessed the energies of local people in the clean-up operations.

These individuals have demonstrated true leadership and achieved what the politicians and police leadership could not – protecting their communities from a serious threat.

I must pick out one of the local hero’s in Birmingham, defiant grandmother Louise Johnson who stood up to the rampaging mob on her own whilst bravely protecting her hairdressing salon. As police in riot gear watched motionless from either end of the street she screamed: “You are not having my shop” at the looters. They listened and left her shop, along with the one next door, untouched.

It is a strong reminder to politicians that leadership in a crisis is as much about leading from the front and displaying courage in the face of danger as it is about your statements to the media.

Let us all hope that the civilised majority can now quickly get on the front foot on this issue.

By Jon Davies | Righttrack’s Digital Marketing Manager