WALKING around Manchester at the weekend, I struggled to discover the political motivations of the looters who had rampaged through the city centre four nights earlier.

Among others, I spotted boarded-up windows at a branch of HSBC, a Tesco, a Thomas Cook and the Blue Parrot Bar and Grille on Portland Street.

So it seems last week’s Mancunian mob was made up of disgruntled taxpayers, anti-capitalists, extreme xenophobes and some really hard-line teetotallers.

Either that, or they were just scum, to use the phrase of the moment. “Sick” members of society to quote the Prime Minister. Mindless thugs, criminals, feral youths.

I don’t have a particular problem with any of these labels to describe those who carried out last week’s violence in towns and cities across England – including right here in Huddersfield.

The people who attacked the fire crew in Sheepridge last Tuesday probably are scum. They certainly deserve the harshest punishment allowed under the law.

And I hope the looters who terrified supermarket workers at the Bradford Road Asda are also dealt with severely, to say nothing of the people who robbed that poor Malaysian kid in London or those responsible for killing three young men in Birmingham.

“Scum” is not my kind of word, but I wouldn’t argue with describing any of the above criminals in this way.

My problem is not with the label but with the way it is used to bring an end to any debate, as in “there’s no point trying to understand them, they’re just scum”.

The rioters may well be scum, but they didn’t become scum overnight.

I am always suspicious of people like David Cameron who are keen to close down debate in this way, by describing last week’s rioting as “criminality pure and simple”.

There is never a time to stop asking questions, to cease enquiring why something happens. The mind must always be inquisitive – that is how we learn.

In my experience, there are two types of people who refuse to question the underlying causes of social problems.

Firstly there are the genuinely incurious who settle for the “give ‘em the birch” solution because it’s the one which requires the least thought.

And then there are those, like our dear Prime Minister, who don’t want questions asked because the answers might embarrass him.

Questions like: How come Andy Coulson deserves a second chance but the looters don’t?

You may wish to hang and flog the rioters who tore across England last week, but the fact remains that they grew up in this society, they went to this country’s schools and they took in the values of the culture.

They are British – or rather, they are English.

It was interesting to note how last week’s unrest went from being described as the Tottenham riots, to the London riots to the UK riots as the violence spread.

But then, round about Wednesday, the label contracted as disgruntled Celts pointed out that no Scottish or Welsh cities were ablaze. So the disturbances were renamed again: the England riots.

Perhaps the geographical limitation of the unrest provides a clue to its real cause.

Neither Scotland nor Wales is an oasis of peace. They contain cities like Glasgow and Cardiff with their own rich histories of violence.

Yet both countries were quiet last week. Why was that? Could it be because the Celtic countries are a little more egalitarian than their Anglo-Saxon neighbour?

The culture of bling is not quite as firmly established in Scotland and Wales as it is in England. The yawning inequality is not quite as wide in the Celtic countries, the social fabric not quite as threadbare.

If England is moving towards the level of social division you see in the US, then Scotland and Wales are tilting towards social democratic Europe. The gulf between the countries of Britain is not huge, but it was enough to make the difference last week.

So what’s the solution? Should England become more like her Celtic neighbours, a little more equal, a little less materialistic?

That’s part of the answer, I would humbly suggest. As well as a complete cultural shift in the attitude to teachers and teaching, a move away from rampant commercialisation and a fairly serious redistribution of wealth and – more importantly – opportunity.

Oh, and while we’re at it, the political, financial and media elites – all of which have disgraced themselves in the last few years as much as any hoodie – will have to be fundamentally reformed.

It’s going to be a long hard slog. You can see why “send in the Army” or “bring back hanging” seem so attractive to many people.