Britain is in need of radical change. The riots that beseiged Britain between 8/7/11 and 8/14/11 were a manifestation of the evils of creating a dependency state and class society; and Britain’s religious retrogression. This Dependency State was solidified in the 13 year Labour era until 2010 and the class society is evolving more obviously under the Coalition era mainly with Conservative ideas. Religious retrogression has been steadily going on for a number of centuries and unfortunately the youth have taken most of the consequences.
The Labour party set out to create a welfare policy designed to “create beholden voters rather than independent people”. With a majority of voters being from low income families or former immigrants, a vigorous integration and benefit dependency system was put in place to woo these vast voters by presenting Labour as a party that catered for the well-being of the ordinary person. These policies mainly disabled other than liberated people.
By 2007, one in three households across Britain was dependent on the state for at least half its income with more than seven million households getting most of their income from government handouts. A huge gulf was also created in welfare dependency between single parent and two-parent households. Single parent homes escalated, as it was rewarded more by the government.
The Labour Government created a benefits regime that actively dissuaded millions from bettering their position as it provided for their housing, council tax, general maintenance and for that of their kids; a fit that would not be achieved by a hard working family on minimum wage. As such the concept of hard work and self-reliance was removed from many low earning families as they were better off staying at home than working and this has created generational state dependency.
A UNICEF report in 2007 on the 21 richest countries on Children welfare ranked Britain as the worst country to raise these kids. Britain came last in 5 out of 6 key areas on the way young stars are treated. Their health was rock bottom and too many left school after 15 with no hope for a job or a skill. They had low rates of life satisfaction and came last in family, peer and behaviour relations with high levels of drunkenness, teenage sex and pregnancy.
By 2010, a Conservative-led coalition came into power and most of their ideologies have widened the gap between the poor and the rich and sought to quickly take away privileges bestowed by the Labour government from the poor. An increase in the University fees left several young people disillusioned. Charities catering for minority communities funding were cut or withdrawn, Libraries are closing in many places, school play grounds closed and built on, housing benefits capped and many minority communities told to migrate to cheaper places if they can not top up for the ‘privilege’ to live in some areas. Promises to get several kids apprenticeships with the Olympics have not come through and we are left with a majority under class whose young kids mainly have no jobs, dropped out of school, are skill less and have no hope for the future but to depend on the state.
The riots as such were a reflection of moral and cultural degeneration, family breakdown from generation to generation, lack of aspirations and the failure of successive governments to address these issues. The younger generation do not have role models with many fatherless families, politicians abusing their positions; youth human rights that soften police rules of engagement and let young kids get away with looting and no proportionate sentencing due to prison over-crowding mainly due to their cosiness and offenders seeing them as paid holidays from the rigors of stressful under-class life.
The absurdity of the riots was that at the bottom of the British society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations; they simply exist. Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present. With the borders opened to the European nations and an easy immigration system, Britain has become the most multi-national/lingual nation in the world and lost its identity. While most affluent British seek a life else- where in mainly Spain, New Zealand and Australia, migrants struggle for the occupation of Britain and in this broth any sense of Britishness is lost. With over 300 languages spoken in Britain, mini communities have sprung out all over with no unifying goals but target working and getting whatever they can from Britain as opposed to giving back.
John Stuart Mill wrote in his great 1859 essay On Liberty: ‘The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’ Yet every day in Britain, this vital principle of civilised societies is breached with impunity. The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young under-class. The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.
The under-class youth have become useless to society; because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions. Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential. My belief is they are victims of a derisory social ethos, which blindly upholds personal freedom, and denies the under-class the reality and tough love which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the grasp of dependency in which they live. Only a concerted effort by the politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our life, education and the return to religion can provide a way forward and a way out for this generation.