With sick savagery, teenage
tearaways attack a funeral procession in Widnes, smashing the windscreen
of a limousine full of mourners.
In Blackpool, a school is
daubed with paint that will take £20,000 to clear up. The vandals
responsible are between three and six years old.
In Salford Phil Carroll fights for life
after being assaulted by mindless yobs.
Just up the road, teacher Linda Walker was
driven to such desperation by thugs who targeted her house that she
fired an airgun at the feet of a youth she believed responsible. For
that she was jailed and lost her job. Her 'victim' sneers that the
'silly bitch' got what she deserved.
These are snapshots of a moral wasteland. In the
words of a top police officer, reported in yesterday's Mail, feral
gangs with no regard for the law and no experience of parental
control are reducing whole neighbourhoods to fear.
So what is the Government's response?
The Tony Blair who was once going to march yobs
to the nearest cash point (which came to nothing) and remove state
benefits from parents of truants and tearaways (which also came to
nothing) now talks of the need to restore 'respect' and promises
another crackdown.
Fine words. But will his new measures have the
slightest impact, when he so studiously avoids the real issue?
Every society, in every age, has understood that
strong families foster discipline, responsibility and
civic-mindedness.
Yes, lone parents often do a wonderful job. But
human experience and academic research show that children from
two-parent households tend to be happier, better adjusted and less
likely to fall foul of the law than those from broken homes.
But our politicians ignore that old wisdom.
While other countries encourage settled relationships through tax
breaks, successive Governments have removed every incentive to
marriage and promoted single parenthood with a tax and benefits
system that discriminates against couples.
Such is the social climate encouraged by our
politicians that a record 42 per cent of births in Britain are
outside wedlock. And our divorce rate is Europe's highest, with
150,000 children a year suffering the trauma of family breakdown.
Fractured relationships, the lack of male role
models, an absence of discipline and stability in the home...
doesn't it occur to anybody at Westminster that these may have a
bearing on yobbery?
Evidently not. A Government that is forever
trying to change human behaviour in such areas as smoking and diet
won't even consider the same approach on the issue of family
stability.
How self-defeating. How sad.
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