Out of the Ashes: Britain after the riots [Paperback]

David Lammy grew up near the Broadwater Farm estate; he spent much of his childhood without his father; he understood, as a boy on a scholarship to a private school, what it was like to be black in a white man's world; and he knew first hand the tensions of living in a deprived area. You might expect this to at least give him an edge of bitterness, or at any rate to indulge in what another reviewer has called 'lefty Guardian hand-wringing'. It is to his credit, and his book's readability, that he has done neither of these things. What one appreciates about this book is the grace with which he brings his own background and experiences to bear on outlining lessons to be learnt from the second social catastrophe in a generation to be visited on Tottenham.

There are insights into the work Lammy does as a genuinely local politician which might make one pause to wonder how the modern MP for a needy constituency is really meant to carry out his work, given current feeling against actually funding a half decent support system. But I digress. The real virtues of this book are the readable and engaging way in which Lammy takes us through the social and political tensions that both gave rise to, and were illuminated by, the 2011 Tottenham riots, together with his range of projected solutions. Certainly some of the solutions may seem to err on the utopian side of practicability, and I personally remain sceptical about the credibility of accurately measuring the repayment potential of social impact bonds. But many of his proposals are rooted in schemes that have already been tried, and could well benefit from a wider roll-out. And there are surprises for anyone who might still want to characterise this former Labour minister as a typical liberal - his firm conviction in the importance of fatherhood and male role modelling is eloquently and convincingly articulated. He is also excellent, in his last chapter, in making a heartfelt crie de couer on behalf of the poor and powerless against the entrenched interests of the parasitically wealthy, using a range of compelling examples. This is how a Labour MP should be talking.

This is a valuable and worthwhile book. I have always considered Lammy to have been a bit of a workmanlike politician before, but if his authorial voice in 'Out of the Ashes' is his true one, then I hope he gives it much more of a public airing and be damned to the chances of political promotion.

With `Out of the Ashes' David Lammy has risen like a Phoenix from the flames in my estimations. Which is not to say I thought he was particularly bad before - it's just I didn't think he was particularly anything apart from not being the British Barack. I knew he'd been a relatively young and precocious MP, that he'd held various government positions under Blair and Brown, and that he was generally well meaning and well liked.

But given that I have never voted Labour, and under `Two Nose Jobs' Miliband probably never will, Lammy hasn't really loomed large on my political radar. However, having come across `Out of the Ashes', and enjoyed it very much - in fact, I found myself nodding and grunting in agreement on the tube every morning this week - I'll be keeping a close eye on Lammy from now on.

The thing is, while Obama's autobiographical treatise reads a bit like the kind of soaring rhetorical wet dream Aaron Sorkin would have had while writing The West Wing, Lammy keeps things simple and sensible. Sure, the book is part autobiography, part manifesto. But as the MP for the same Tottenham constituency where he grew up, Lammy brings an authenticity and a genuine sense of compassion to what could otherwise have been a standard bit of post-riots lefty hand-wringing from Guardian Books.

Lammy talks about tackling the root causes of the riots, not just the symptoms, but you get the real sense that he means it - that this isn't just another politician spouting off with idealistic, unachievable platitudes. Lammy's upbringing in Thatcher's 80s, with proud working parents who were hit hard by the recession (his father turned to drink and then emigrated to the US, leaving Lammy's mother to raise three boys on her own) gives him a keen insight into some of the challenges facing families in Tottenham today - essentially, low paid jobs, absent fathers and no stake in society. And his response is pleasingly robust: he chides previous Labour governments for trying to provide statist solutions ("we have ended up nationalising society rather than bolstering it") and instead urges government to focus on improving the resilience of our society by bolstering its foundations ("rather than try to replace society, government should seek to reinforce society in everything that it does. This should be the golden thread running through its attitude to families, communities, workplaces, our justice system, taxation, immigration rules and the welfare state.")

In my work with a British health charity called Merlin, we are constantly trying to find solutions for societies in need - often these are countries with chronic levels of poverty which have been hit by some sort of additional disaster (earthquake, famine, conflict). At the other end of the scale, by drawing attention to Britain's chronically materialist, hyper-individualist `my rights' culture, and its devastating impact on the family unit, Lammy shows that disasters like the riots will continue to strike our society in the future unless politics becomes more practical and purposeful.

I kind of hope Lammy can emerge from Tottenham's ashes and do something about it.

I for one raised an eyebrow when I discovered that Tottenham's MP David Lammy had released a book about August's riots, only a couple of months after they had happened. Some dismissed it as `shameless opportunism'.
In truth, like Barack Obama's `The Audacity Of Hope', Lammy's `After the Riots' is more part autobiography, part personal political manifesto and explanation of our broken society rather than simply an explanation of the urban uprisings, though there is clearly much overlap.
In the immediate aftermath of the riots I was disappointed with his response in the media, condemning the violence like all the other MPs, and blaming the violence on non-Tottenham residents, so in this book it is good to hear his views argued fully and cogently, rather than the soundbites of PMQ's and Sky News that we usually hear from him.
He gives his opinions on reform of the tax system, immigration policy, the judicial system, and prison sentencing amongst other topics, and with so many good ideas I wonder why his own party leaders are not listening to him.
Lammy comes across well intentioned and full of good ideas in the book, with a good understanding of the problems of Britain's struggling masses, both white and Black. He highlights the policy mistakes of both the Conservatives and his own Labour party, which leads me to wonder why if successive governments (including his own) have been so unwilling or unable to improve the lives of his constituents, he is still happy to be part of a system that patently isn't working.
Lee Pinkerton