Major part of last week saw how London city was burning. There was total chaos and destruction in many areas. People could not move out of their houses and offices freely, fearing the gangsters. The security forces remained clueless and inactive. The major political leadership was vacationing elsewhere during the earlier part of the unrest. Thus, as precious time was lost in reinforcing the security forces, violence and looting spread to other towns such as Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, etc. The whole world witnessed with shame how the lawless anarchists plundered and looted on the streets of this otherwise orderly, civilised and tolerant country.
While the immediate causes of this violent outbursts and looting are hard to identify, a deeper analysis of the scenes would reveal some hard truths. It is easier to write it off as people’s natural reaction over the prevalent unemployment, recession, cut in government spending, poverty, etc. But it does not require an extraordinary brain to understand that such acts of lawlessness can only worsen the prevalent scenario. By burning down huge departmental stores as well as small businesses, they have deprived thousands of people of their jobs and their only means of livelihood.
The events on the streets of England show the moral and intellectual decay that is eating up the western society. Prime Minister David Cameron hit the nail on the head when he called for a return to the traditional values. It is simply the symptom of a society that has dug its own foundation of family, marriage and lawful children, religious and moral practices. People, in their materialistic pursuits, greed for wealth and passing gratification, have abandoned the bedrock of age-old values that keep any society stand erect and move forward. There is a dearth of strong spiritual and moral leadership that the young people can look up to for guidance and direction. Parents are separated, and live with their own partners; children are left to themselves to find direction for their lives and often they end up in the hands of gangsters. According to records, a quarter of British children live with only one parent. A whopping 900 children are expelled from British schools each day for violence and abuse. But this situation is typical not only to Britain; in the whole of western world we have been witnessing a kind of lawlessness and chaos as far as these bedrock institutions are concerned. This situation naturally leads to lawlessness on the streets, inner cities and schools. It simply shows that no society can afford to do away with the basic institutions of traditional marriage and family, disciplined choices in relationships, moral, religious and intellectual training of body, mind and spirit. The whole world needs to learn from these incidents and return to the traditional values of life.
