Causes of group violence in British males ?

[wanderingscotsman]

There are several related ideas going around in my head, and so the title is only partially accurate - I am curious as to what scientific reasons there could be for the abundance of violent behaviour amongst British males (And a smaller percentage of females more recently) in public situations, especially when fuelled by alcohol.
Similar behaviour exists in many other countries and parts of the world of course, but I am particularly interested in comparisons between Britain and a couple of other European countries.
I lived in Bulgaria for several years, and despite the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, there was no need for fleets of police vehicles to patrol the streets of cities at night to deal with widespread aggressive behaviour.I also lived in Spain, and found a very similar situation with lots of younger people out having fun, but not the need to watch your back and be ready for an outbreak of fighting, as is so often the case here in Britain, where every large town and city has problems every single week.
Each of these countries has it's own fairly distinct ethnic population, so I wondered if any of you on this site who study this sort of thing, can think of a reason related to genes in order to explain why there is such a difference in behaviours ?

 

[Coriolan]

I've noticed this strange phenomenon too. Most Europeans drink alcohol socially to facilitate communication and relax the atmosphere. But with the British alcohol is most of the time associated with loud speaking, loss of self-control and violence. Maybe they don't have the genes to digest alcohol properly.

 

[firetown]

I will tell you what I think: Having worked in tourism for years and encountered thousands of young Brits and men from many other nations, the British kids often were too polite during the day and turned into beasts when intoxicated. I believe young men in Britan have an unreasonable amount of repressed anger or social discomfort compared to the males of many other nations. It didn't look fun when they were drunk. It was just negativity emerging until it became uncontrollable. I had to deal with police a lot on their behalfs. On the other hand I was surprised that when one gotten arrested, the consulate would send representatives to my business and ensure they were ok and often gotten them out of jail very quickly while the ones defending themselves against them remained in for another 24 hours. I have seen similar British behavior in other places as in Asia, Amsterdam and especially Eastern Europe where many towns are visited often because of the party scenes and the low alcohol prices.

 

[Highlander]

Given as British are composed of Continental ancestry [Vikings, Anglos, Huguenots, migrants, etc.] it can’t quite be the inability to digest alcohol properly. Nor is there a widespread prohibition in England or countries of British background [America, Canada, etc.]. If we were talking Asian versus European that’d be slightly different as Asians do have some issues [either biological or cultural] with alcohol.


I think it widely has to do with socio-economic & cultural influence.

Firetown mentions most of the British he encounters are 'repressed' individuals. It is something two close friends in tourism can in a way confirm as they’ve said the most problematic British individual is often of a certain type [7 to 8 out of 10 times working class].

It’s bad to generalize, I know, but one can very likely say that such boozed-up-angry individuals where “taught” by their parents or their peers/relatives that alcohol & certain behaviors [loud talking, fists, etc.] go “hand in hand”. Cause if it was a widescale British phenomenon British raised in predominant non-British countries should act the same as their UK peers.