We are at a political watershed, and are hungry for initiatives that will remake our world. But not since the 18th century has Britain’s intellectual cupboard been so bare. – Dominic Sandbrook, New Statesman, 2009
Ever since the riots in Britain shocked the world earlier this month, the British prime minister and other leaders have been literally running around like headless chickens, helpless as to what should be done to “fix broken Britain”.
The general feeling that permeates the British society, after the riots that caused over $300 million in damage, is that the country is in the middle of a “slow motion moral collapse”.
A Christian social policy group has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to re-engage with the “broken society agenda”. According to www.christiantoday.com, “we must put special emphasis on tackling family breakdown and the crisis of fatherlessness”.
The British leader believes that the riots have drawn attention to the kind of family life children in Britain have. As he put it, “without a functional family, children and young people will be more vulnerable to the appeal of the surrogate family of the gang which will be able to provide an alternative, a deeply destructive sense of identity belonging and purpose”.
Another instance that reflects the prime minister’s frustration and almost fearful anxiety is his remark to a youth group that “bad behaviour has literally arrived on people’s doorsteps”. He is promising tougher rhetoric from ministers and officials as he seeks to tackle “social problems that have been festering for decades, that have exploded in our face”.
Mr Cameron is threatening “to combat a broken society in which fathers have abdicated responsibility for their children, schools had given up on discipline and crimes have gone unpunished”. He threatens further that “the security fightback must be matched by a social fightback”.
To fix broken Britain, the prime minister has gone as far as threatening to “take away welfare benefits from anyone convicted in the riots, even if the person is not sent to jail”. Such is the state of panic into which the political leadership of the British society has been thrown.
Without being presumptuous, I wish to make some suggestions as to how Prime Minister Cameron might start the tedious, long term task of “fixing broken Britain”, if at all it can be fixed.
My late mother was among thousands of West Indians who comprised the exodus of human souls who went to England in the 1950s. In fact, some of my siblings were born in Britain and were raised West Indian-style because of her determination that the state could not tell her how to raise her children.
Mr Prime Minister, how do you intend to correct the state of fathers abdicating their responsibility, when your social system policies encourage single parenting? How do you intend to teach responsibility when ‘sciving’ is financially more rewarding? Isn’t
it a fact that the state pays young women to breed? Isn’t it a fact that the more children she has, the greater are the benefits?
My research tells me that as long as the state continues to pay council tax for young mothers, provides child benefits, provides housing and free medical services for single parents, many of whom abuse it, they will never be motivated to get up off their butt and get!
If broken Britain is to be fixed, the state must reverse the situation which has seen parents being forced to relinquish their God-given responsibility for raising their children to the state. I am not at all advocating that parents must be allowed to abuse their children or wards.
The seed for responsibility in adult life must be planted by parents in the homes. Father Davidson, writing in BarbadosToday, notes: “The murderer on death row, the rapist serving time, the young man locked away because he was caught with a gun or drugs can all be traced back to home.”
The British society is now paying the price of having castrated teachers, turning them into powerless eunuchs most of whom are overwhelmed by the extent to which students flaunt their rights while having no awareness of their corresponding responsibilities.
When the teacher-student paradigm is tilted to allow students to shout at teachers, to tell them off, to “cuss” and even hit them, then we have a problem. Britain is broken because the state has empowered children and students while castrating parents and teachers.
How can British youth be responsible if parents can protest teachers giving extra homework? If a child tells a good enough lie that he or she is being abused, if bruises, self-inflicted or otherwise, show up on their skin, social services can chastise the parent or even haul them before the court.
Mr Prime Minister, fixing “broken Britain” is going to take much more than knee-jerk policies and misguided threats. What needs to be fixed is the fact that a fabric of society has crumbled, leaving at its margins an underclass, where life is characterised by dependency, drugs and alcohol addiction, debt and family dysfunction and a failed education system.
There is where you might begin, Mr Prime Minister.
