UK Riots
Cutting through the predictable political claptrap, it is clear that last month’s riots in Britain were not a freak event, but the precursor of even more serious developments in future.
Their roots lie in fundamental social problems that have been allowed to fester for decades, encouraged by wrongheaded policies – including “soft” policing forced on the police by the political classes.
At the core of the defective society lies an educational system that fails to inculcate the right values and build the foundation for responsible personal behaviour, concern for others and material achievement.
One consequence, Harriet Sergeant writes in The Spectator, is that “63 per cent of white working-class boys and just over half of black Caribbean boys at age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below.” When they leave school, they are unemployable.
One reason is poor teaching. Just 12 teachers out of a work-force of 450,000 have been suspended for incompetence in the past nine years. The teaching unions are a politically formidable vested interest that opposes the changes needed to reward excellence and punish poor performance.
Another reason is lack of classroom discipline. Bad behaviour largely escapes punishment sufficiently severe to re-shape pupils’ ways because there is an obsession with human rights, which has been taken to extremes.
Bad parenting is another part of this problem. Parents are too concerned with their own lives to insist that children do homework, and do it properly; to interact with teachers to improve their children’s social behaviour and academic achievement.
Many parents are too concerned with their own financial survival – or personal pleasures – to give their children the attention they need.
To some extent, this is a consequence of a general decline in social values, and in particular the erosion of traditional values that has come with the decline in marriage and similar personal commitments to family and the broader community. Selfishness has strengthened.
Far too many children grow up in homes without the presence of a male parent. One reason is a welfare system that encourages girls least suited to parenthood to have babies and live off the public purse, whose benefits seem a more attractive option than working for a living. Not surprisingly Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.
Another consequence is that children – boys in particular – lacking a male role model at home, find it on the streets. There’s been the steady rise of gangs, hundreds of them in London alone, whose anti-social behaviour pollutes the quality of life in so many residential areas, and frequently takes the form of criminal acts.
However, economic change has also had a major role in fostering the development of the under-class.
Thanks to globalization, many of the jobs have migrated to the Third World.
Technological change and well-intentioned but foolish policies such as minimum wages have eroded work opportunities. Employers, rather than hire labour that is poorly motivated as well as poorly schooled, and therefore inefficient given the pay and conditions that have to be provided, prefer to mechanize.
Or to employ immigrants, who generally work harder and are often better-educated. One consequence of European integration and disastrously-managed immigration control is, as Sergeant reports, that according to official statistics “of the 1.8 million rise in employment over the Labour years, 99 per cent went to immigrants.”
None of these problems will be solved easily, and even if seriously addressed, none will be solved quickly.
Although a few of Britain’s finest politicians, such as Iain Duncan Smith and Frank Field, understand what needs to be done and are fighting for it to be done, they face huge opposition to bringing about fundamental change.
CopyRight – OnTarget September 2011 by Martin Spring
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