Riots

A STUDENT lies in hospital with a jaw broken by a rioting gang. After this assault he was robbed whilst a couple of passers-by deliberately distracted him.

There is something about this casual cunning that exemplifies the horrors of the recent past even more powerfully than the images of London burning. How could fellow human beings do that to someone so desperate?

There are also the elderly beaten for trying to protect property. The deaths of three young men run down by a car. The businesses and homes destroyed. The policemen injured. The image of a woman silhouetted against yellow-red flames as she jumps for her life from a window — the reputation of our country sullied.

Some say this behaviour is caused by the Government's economic policies. They are wrong. These riots, orchestrated by using Blackberry and fuelled by looting, speak of issues deeper than hardship.

Ask yourself this. Even if the same technology were available in the 1950s would people then have rioted like this? I believe not. And the reason for this leads to the complexities of facing up to the challenges.

What has changed since the 1950s are our values. We have become a society in which instant gratification and X-factor expectation have often replaced consideration and decency, one in which we have shifted from looking to ourselves (and communities) to solve our problems to looking to the state. We have become preoccupied with 'rights' and neglectful of 'responsibilities'.

There is not space here to plunge into the issues that have driven that shift – it is a complicated matter. But if we are to seriously address the issues underpinning the recent horrors then we will need to do better than the short-term chant of 'lock 'em up' — significant longer-term challenges will need to be met.