Peter Bills
Blackheath, on the south-east side of England’s capital city London, is a genteel, elegant and prosperous location.
Houses in its leafy environs very often run into the millions and, even in this recent recession that has battered Britain’s shores, restaurants and pubs have continued to do good business.
Blackheath boasts the world’s oldest rugby club (established 1857) and, going further back into the mists of time, once witnessed an extraordinary social event. Amid the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the leader of the protesters, Watt Tyler, camped with his men on the heath, a wide expanse of Crown-owned land which offers a vast and pleasant public acreage high on a hill just outside the inner London suburban sprawl.
Those fortunate enough to live in this exclusive area had no reason to believe the days of Watt Tyler might actually be recreated one day. But that is exactly what happened on Monday night this week.
Into the charming “village” area, with its fashionable boutiques, coffee shops and pubs, came a mob of 20 or 30 youths, rampaging down the hill off the heath. They came dressed for combat, masks and hoods obscuring most of their faces. They faced no opposition, save for some shocked residents who gawped in disbelief at the scene that unfolded before them.
For in the middle of one of London’s most delightful suburbs, the mob began to wreck and destroy. Shop windows were kicked in, glass shattered. Bodies slipped in through the broken windows to loot and pillage. If they found themselves unable to do either due to security measures, they destroyed.
And so it went on. Burglar alarms shrilled in the night air, but no police came for an hour or more. In the meantime, the mob ruled the streets.
Of course, what happened in Blackheath this week was comparatively minor compared with the serious, full- scale rioting that broke out in inner-London boroughs like Tottenham, Ealing, Clapham and Haringey.
In Croydon, a furniture business in the same family for 168 years was torched. It had survived two world wars including Hitler’s V-2 rockets. But within an hour it had been burned to the ground by the mob.
A general sense of bewilderment invaded the law-abiding members of London society. “What is the reason for this, we just don’t understand” were common statements. But they should have known, ought to have grasped why parts of London went up in flames this week in the worst social unrest and violence in living memory.
In these columns just a few weeks ago, admittedly in reference to another issue, I wrote of modern-day Britain having kicked away the great pillars of its society. By that, I meant that most of the younger generation no longer have respect or fear of the police, their parents, teachers, the church and the government.
I said then that this was an uneasy relationship between young and old and held disturbing omens for Britain.
Bewilderment at this week’s events cannot have been an emotion felt by those capable of observing these social trends and weighing up the gross imbalances in modern British society.
Barely a mile away from private Blackheath homes with their beautifully manicured gardens and elegantly dressed children at their private, independent schools stand ghastly council estates where drug taking is rife, unemployment a widespread reality and hope a long since departed element of life.
This disturbing contrast in Britain’s social structure is to be found in just about every overcrowded major city or town of a land where mass immigration has fuelled the difficulties. The divide between the haves and the have-nots of British society is alarming and has been a growing concern for some time.
Wealthy city dealers might share the same train to London in the morning with these financially troubled, depressed fellow humans from broken homes, but in reality, their lives are as different as the outback man in Australia to the chief conductor at the Sydney Opera House.
Politicians, seen now in most sections of society as intent mainly on feathering their own nests, express their horror and outrage. But on the streets, they excite only sneering cynicism.
The major breakdown in British society in terms of family break-ups through divorce sowed the seeds for this urban unrest. A feral generation grew up, largely unsupervised and unloved, with no respect for the traditions of society, its rules or regulations. It was like a cancer that was allowed to grow, unseen and un-checked, in the body of Britain.
Too many young people, doubtless many of them who went on the rampage this week, feel betrayed by Britain and its fractured society. They have no values and see no value in their lives. With unemployment an everyday fact of their lives, hope is at a premium for this younger generation.
Thus thieving, taking what you can, destroying and venting your fury on property and the police, have become their modus operandi.
Fixing up a few broken buildings is the least of Britain’s problems this weekend.
How to mend a broken society is a far harder question.