London in flames – but why?

What a miserable summer:  the return of famine in East Africa, the murder of demonstrators in Syria, the Eurozone crisis, the collapse of share prices around the world – and now rioting, looting and burning in more and more parts of London and even other British cities.

As someone who has lived in London for 40 years and is proud of the city and its ethnic diversity, I am stunned by and ashamed of what is happening. Even one of our own local shopping centres – Ealing Broadway – is the location of mayhem.

At a general level, I guess the dividing line between order and chaos is a thin one, even in developed societies like ours. More specifically, we have to address the sense of disconnection and even alienation that many young people – out of school or college in the summer or out of jobs for so long – appear to feel. But nothing justifies the wanton violence that we have seen where people are trashing their own communities with no cause or provocation.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 11:57 am and is filed under British current affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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