Riots - 14th August 2011

I was on a military exercise when I started to get outraged emails about the riots -I always carry my blackberry. So, I had no idea what had been happening, let alone seen any of the TV footage.

The emails demanded all sorts of responses from government that are simply beyond our power to deliver. The rule of law means that the Crown is itself subject to the same law as the citizen: however frustrating it may be, the government may not exceed its legitimate powers. We have no power to order the police to react in a particular way: we cannot make them use water cannon; rubber bullets; or CS gas. Likewise, politicians cannot order the courts to take the gloves off and impose much tougher sentences.

Of course, we could change the law and give ourselves the power to do all these things -but, notwithstanding the public preference for order above liberty, we cannot pretend that attempting to change the law in this way would prove anything but highly controversial and time consuming.

The riots tell us many things about ourselves. First, we should not despair. The human spirit is not crushed: there were individual and collective acts of outstanding heroism. The dignity of Tariq Jahan after the murder of his son deserves to be a defining moment in our national life.

Second, it tells us that the habitual daily misery inflicted by a criminal under class and feral youths cannot always be confined to the blighted housing estates where it breeds and festers. It has exploded into our high streets and we will have to address the root causes which have -over generations- led to welfare dependency, irresponsibility, ignorance, moral turpitude, sexual incontinence, and a almost complete absence of fathers.
Third it tells us that many employed and relatively well off people chose to join in and help themselves, as if entirely unconstrained by conventional notions of right and wrong. This is deeply worrying if we expect life to be anything other than nasty short and brutish. A number of correspondents likened this to the MP expenses scandal, and I think they are right.

I have endured an amount of correspondence from well meaning Christians demanding government action to reduce the temptation put in peoples' way, by tackling the inequalities of life (do not be fooled, tackling inequality is a euphemism for even higher taxes -and more welfare dependency). As if inequality should ever be an excuse for theft. Well, I have a request to them: in addition to telling me what ought to be done by government, they should look to their own responsibility to evangelise society and to confront wickedness. When did anyone last hear the vicar reminding us that the wages of sin is death?