David Cameron being ignorant (surprise,surprise)

Clothes, Music and Literature are 3 commodities that since the late 1800s have been seen as increasingly influential in social standing and sub-culture. In the Victorian or Regency era, the Kings were seen as the David Beckhams of their time. Hevaily influential and even more heavily portrayed they increasingly became fashion and culture icons in their own right. 

People wear and listen and read with what the seemingly identify with or what they wish to identify with. In the 1980s Skinheads became a increasingly popular sub-culture within England. The shaven hair style and the popularity of the Ben Sherman shirt and Doctor Martens were coupled with a love for SKA and reggae music - unfortunately - the clothing and the music are often used as a personality identifier as well as an aesthetic symbol and the skinhead “look” became infamous and was seen as synonymous with the rise of the English nationalists such as the BNP.

Fashion itself is reactive, like literature and music. Skinheads preceded punk, and punk the New Romantics and the New Romantics the Chav or Rudeboi. 

An article I read said that “Fashion and music and literature does not determine who you are, but rather what you do” and in the majority I couldn’t agree more. We use these commodities as a way of 'fitting in'.

I’m not saying the London Riots of 2011 started because of 50 Cent or Jay-Z, but the majority of people we saw on our television screens became were armed with intolerable aggression and ignorance but also the staple marks of the “americanised gangster wear” the low-slung baggy jeans, the Flat peaked caps, Hoods up. I’m not suggesting everyone who dresses in this attire is/was part of Plan B’s “Broken Britain” but the fact that they could identify with each other through the way they dressed gave them a uniform and with that a unity. 

Clothing and music has also been used as a tool for a good; Live Aid, Live Earth, Live 8 and countless other beneficiary concerts has seen hundreds of thousands of people descend on parks around the country in a huge cultural movement, to be close and hear their favorite artists advocate incredibly important messages. People in fashion and music are hugely influential on how modern people communicate and think and belong. In a social media driven world, if Lady GaGa tweets something positive (she is a huge supporter of an Anti-Bullying campaign in the USA) over 21 million people see that message, thats more than Barrack Obama, the Dali Lama and the Pope. 

David Cameron therefore saying that music,fashion and literature do not influence the behaviour of the youth of this country is completely absurd. Cameron said a few weeks ago he didn't know too much about British history - he would do well not only to take a trip to the British Library but also grab a box set of Channel 4's excellent This Is England series to show how fashion really effects people.