By the second night of rioting you could see the flames from miles away. A phosphorescent glow backlit Liverpool 8, adding a weird beauty to the madness unfolding. My pals and I watched the smoke pluming upwards and outwards, each one of us wild-eyed with excitement at the hue and cry. "Come on," I said. "Let's see if we can get a bit closer …"

That was 30 years ago, but it could just have well have been last night – with one hugely significant difference. The events that unfolded in Granby, Liverpool 8 in July 1981 (nobody called it Toxteth in those days) were triggered by the groundless arrest and manhandling of a local man, Leroy Cooper, by a loathed police unit. That was the spark that ignited the simmering resentment that had brewing in Granby, and which developed into the most prolonged and destructive riots ever witnessed on the UK mainland. Toxteth 81 was not so much a race riot as an uprising against longstanding police malpractice. The troubles that have revisited the area these last few nights are nothing of the kind, though a similar kind of wild-eyed youth are once more in the thick of it.

In all the hours and pages of reportage since rioting returned to our cities last weekend, not one commentator seems to have touched upon the sole unifying factor that fuels and drives such unrest – excitement, fun, teenage kicks. In 1981 I could have cited unemployment (check), low-income, single-parent family (check), experience of police brutality (check) as factors in my participation, but none of the above even remotely came into my thinking then and I doubt it is stoking today's unrest, either.

I went along in 1981 because I was swept away by the mind-blowing buzz of mob mayhem. There's no justifying that – in the crudest terms such behaviour is quite simply wrong – but try telling that to a 15-year-old on a mountain bike. To him or her, it's like a Wii game come to life – a hyper-real version of GTA. You taunt the police until they chase you, then you leg it and regroup. Some of the more radical kids will throw rocks and set cars and wheelie bins alight to get them going, but sooner or later the "bizzies" (police) will charge.

About 7.30pm on Tuesday evening I walked from Smithdown Lane on the fringes of Toxteth all the way down the hill to the city centre. There was barely anybody out on the streets. The city centre, suddenly the subject of blanket media coverage in the expectation of further rioting, had closed down early and people were battening down the hatches. As darkness fell, the first police sirens of the evening could be heard, and then the relentless whirring of the surveillance helicopter. Mobs began to assemble, but what was noticeable were the groups of youth workers and community leaders quickly on the scene to reason with youngsters.

In spite of isolated incidents and the now symbolic sight of purple wheelie bins ablaze, there was nothing one could describe as insurrection. The police were visible when necessary, but seemingly content to work in tandem with the youth leaders, too. If it hadn't have been for the phalanx of reporters, no one would have known anything out of the ordinary had happened.

Speaking to reporters, one of the Toxteth youth workers, Jimmy Jagney, said that while he and his colleagues had been able to quell and disperse kids they knew well from around and about Liverpool 8, they had also identified two large gangs of youths, none of whom they recognised. His assumption was that the youths had assembled in the hope of opportunistic looting, and his team quickly advised them to take off, and take their ambitions for notoriety elsewhere. Just as myself and my mates did in 1981, they felt a bit foolish when confronted and slunk away home.

We live in a time of instant news. Whether it is camera crews sitting in medieval European squares as they wait for football hooligans to get drunk and provide rowdy footage, or plucky frontline reporters with pinhole cameras in their lapel as they maraud with the youth, our media suppliers are fanning the flames. They're making a case, and making a story that doesn't – or needn't – exist. If our politicians wants to know what's really going on, they should give Jimmy Jagney a call. In the meantime, nothing to see here – move along.