Opinion: Charity Cuts Contributed to U.K. Violence

Reduced government support for charities and youth services played a part in this week’s rioting in London and other major British cities, a nonprofit consultant and former member of Parliament writes in The Guardian.

“It is too simplistic to say that the perpetrators were responding” to the government’s sweeping budget cuts, says Tom Levitt, a former Labor politician who now works to build partnerships between charities and businesses, “but the atmosphere the cuts have generated certainly contributed.”

Reductions in direct grants and in local governments’ discretionary spending, which often supported nonprofit organizations, have been “too fast and too large for many community groups to cope with,” Mr. Levitt writes, with a particular impact on organizations that serve young people in areas with high unemployment and a history of tension with the police.