Melvin Burgess: How many rivers we got to cross, before we can talk to the Boss?

A few years ago I began a project that is just coming to fruition this month - my new novel, Kill All Enemies. The idea was very simple; to seek out dispossessed young people, in Pupil Referral Units, on the street, wherever, and get them to tell me their stories. Like most people, they jumped at the thought that their lives might be the inspiration for something lasting, and I spent a remarkable few months travelling up and down the North West, listening to countless stories that were simply full of surprises.

The biggest surprise was this; how many of those kids were real live heroes.

These were young people who had been excluded from school, in trouble with the police, often dealing with situations way out of their depth, often causing mayhem. I've no doubt that many of them, given the chance, would have been there last month, burning and a-looting with glee. And yet, despite the fact that we all know there is a relatively large population of dispossessed people living on our estates and in our cities, theirs are voices that get rarely heard. Perhaps that's one reason why, when they erupted as they did last week, people find it so hard to understand what on earth is going on.

I thought a lot about some of the kids I talked to last month, during the riots. What would they have said? We've heard a lot about crime and retribution since, and the usual confusion about excuse, explanation and understanding abounds.  But the voices of the rioters have been, as usual, absent. But there have been the odd clues. While it was live and they were in the thick of it, the occasional voice popped up on TV.

The one that sticks in my mind was from two young girls, asked what it was all about.

'It's about showing the police we can do what we want. And now we have,' said one of them. There was a real pride in her voice as she said that - not a feeling I guess she was familiar with. It was clearly not the voice of someone who felt that the police - or society in general - were on her side. On the contrary, they were the enemy. How nice to get one over on the enemy! Just for once, she and her mates had the upper hand. It was the voice of the powerless, revelling in power.

I wonder if she's been up before the magistrate yet? I wonder if she's still free, given that there are people who have done no more than go down for a look who are now behind bars. But it was a glimpse into another world where the police are enemies, and where shattering a shop front and looting it is clearly some kind of political act, however incoherent and misguided. Yes, I know it's being said on all sides that this is greed and criminality; so it is. The sheer nastiness of what happened is unmistakable. But it's not just crime. Theft is not political - we all know that - but all big political upheavals begin with the dispossessed trying to take what isn't theirs. Not that I think this is the beginning of a big political upheaval - there are too few rioters, too isolated from too many people with too much to lose; but when people take the chance to flaunt society to that degree, it's political all right.

Remember Bob Marley - 'Burnin' and a Lootin' tonight'? Did you think he was being sarcastic?  I'm sure you didn't. That was a strike back for the poor in his mind, don't doubt it. You can find Marley's explanation of why people go burning and looting tonight in the song of the same name.

'How many rivers we got to cross, Before we can talk to the Boss?'

Bob Marley and Jamaica are a long way off, of course, from Tooting and the Manchester Arndale. But they do have some things in common. There are fewer dispossessed, but like the poor of the ghetto in Jamaica, the one thing they don't have is this; opportunities. There are so few ways out.

The same was true of many of the young people I talked to. Education - forget it. Their schools were rubbish. Even if the schools had been the kind of places that encouraged hard work, most of the kids had tasks - often difficult emotional tasks - to deal with at home. They had other priorities.

I said heroes. I'm thinking, for example, of the girl who brought up her entire family from the age of eight to the age of 11, while her mum was an alcoholic - did everything she could to hold the family of six together. Of course her school work went down the pan. She had more important things to do, like trying to look after the people she loved. In the end, the social services cottoned on eventually. Despite her best efforts, the family was broken up and everyone went into care.  Sometime later, when her mum came out off the booze, the family got tighter together - all except that girl. She was too much for her mum to cope with. I'm not surprised her mum couldn't cope with her, mind you - she was kicking the place to pieces. Fights all the time. She was furious, and you can hardly blame her.

Such tales are commonplace. I could go on - but perhaps it's not the point to talk about hard luck stories. Just listening to those kids taught me that we cannot dismiss people who break the boundaries so dramatically just as thugs. They have a culture - it's often pretty well all they have and they're not going to let go of it unless they have something really good to replace it with  - which is outside the one most of us know.

Almost as remarkable as the kids were some of the people caring for them. I remember one quite small woman coming up to a huge fierce looking lad, who was in tears of rage. 'Come here you - let me give you a big love!' she said. She took him off and did that most basic thing you can do for people - she listened to him.

One thing above all I learned from those young people; behind every story, there's another story which often has a very different feel to it. So why don't we know those stories better? All we ever had to do is ask.

But we never did.

Join Melvin Burgess on his next stop on his blog tour at The Book Memoirs

Read a review of Kill All Enemies

Read an interview with Melvin Burgess from the archive