Every 10 to 20 years or so, as regular as clockwork, the streets of Britain erupt in lawless riots.

Before last weekend’s disturbances, it was the Tottenham riots of 2011, and before that the Brixton and Toxteth rampages of the early 1980s.

Last week’s market meltdown could be the start of something much deeper.Credit: AP

Each time it happens, there is a groundswell of worthy soul-searching as to the underlying causes, from heavy-handed policing in the 1980s through to, in the most recent case, the surge in asylum seekers.

But is there not an altogether more banal explanation that applies to them all?

From time immemorial, propensity to riot has been very much part of the British psyche, with the fringes of society in more or less constant search of any excuse to take to the streets.

To state this reality is not in any way to apologise for the anti-immigrant disorder of the past week. To the contrary, it is to strip the riots of any shred of legitimacy, and call them out for what they are: drunken thuggery, plain and simple.

Civilisation is an extraordinarily fragile construct; it doesn’t take much for the facade to fall, or to stir up the mob. We should be careful not to read too much into the latest outbreak of it.

I couldn’t help but think of this instruction when observing the mayhem that broke out in financial markets last week. The parallels are quite striking.

As stock markets plunged, there was a mad rush to explain the correction by way of the “fundamentals”, and in particular the possibility that the US economy is not as strong as previously assumed and may even be slipping into recession.

It’s all the fault of the Federal Reserve, many pundits said. In attempting to quell inflationary pressures, policymakers had held interest rates too high for too long and are now about to reap the whirlwind........

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