Just before I went away on holiday, I was involved in a discussion about the state of the country and the person I was talking to predicted that in the not too distant future, there would be large scale riots in our major cities based on the increasing disparity between wealth and poverty. It came as a shock therefore, when, after several days’ news deprivation, I saw an English paper bearing headlines about wide scale rioting in London, Birmingham and Manchester. The more I read, however, the more unclear it seemed to be as to what had caused this outbreak of sometimes tragic criminality – tragic for those who were injured and whose shops were wrecked, and tragic for those for whom the consequences of their actions may permanently alter the course of their lives.
. The reactions from left and right seemed predictable but in terms of actual explanation, little more than huffing and puffing. Economic, educational, and social factors all seem to play their part as is always the case with such unrest, but will this particular manifestation of mayhem and violence make any difference to the way in which we analyse the state of the nation and the way in which political parties pursue their own agendas? And in the end will we be left feeling that no-one really has anything seriously new and intelligent to say about such things, which will just go on happening as our society becomes more and more fragmented, and morally and spiritually deprived?
Does the solution lie with more government or less, with centralised or local solutions, with increased government spending or greater involvement by the private sector, with free market policies or tax based redistribution of wealth? Or perhaps some complex combination of all of these things and more? Or does it first lie with the intelligence to look deeper, the labour of assembling as many facts as possible, and the patience to probe the real relations of cause and effect.
As I write this we are hearing of a 20 month prison sentence for the theft of an Armani tee shirt by someone who gave himself up. Strict, boundary holding sentencing may be a proportionate and exemplary but maybe it comes too late when boundaries are being flouted at all levels of society; cartoons which juxtapose urban looters (in gaol) and corporate looters (in the Seychelles) are not inappropriate.
It is all too easy to produce large scale explanations which offer no help in finding practical and local solutions, but I couldn’t help putting together various recent headlines and producing an image of a depressed and increasingly lonely society of people who feel they are only cogs in a system, without much hope or confidence in the future. As a result our society turns to material compensations which make it both physically obese and obsessed with external images of health and fitness. In such a society these obsessions are further encouraged by competitive and instrumentalist (where this will get me) education systems. They are both caused by and further undermine the break down of community and the loss of civic and neighbourly values. Such values only continue to exist in places where people have known one another for some time, enjoy the environment they live in, and have a common interest in preserving the shops and amenities they use together. And perhaps we might add where they worship together, and where they value schools as places of learning as important in itself and not because of where it may lead. In his speech in the House of Lords special debate on the rioting, Archbishop Rowan, spoke also of an education which is concerned ‘with a building of virtue, character and citizenship’ and with ‘ a deepened sense of our involvement together in a social project in which we all have to participate.’
The riots are yet one more example of the extent to which we lack these things but it will require a society of prophets to keep the right questions at the forefront of our minds (and newspaper headlines). We need a debate not so much about ‘big society’ but about the virtues which foster community and civic responsibility. And in the end that debate can only be stimulated by very unusual politicians because it is not ultimately a political or social debate. It is a debate about has to do with what we believe about being human; it is a debate about where our most fundamentally creative and nurturing relationships are to be found; it is a debate about where we locate a transcendent reality which supports all our other values of justice, mercy, peace and loving kindness and which also keeps us humbly and patiently open to finding new solutions to old problems, inspired by wisdom that may come unexpectedly from the past.
With my love and prayers,