COMMENTARY

England Riots: Blame permissive parenting & indulgent leadership 

By Michael Ozioma Samuel

Michael Samuel

To come to terms with the recent mayhem and wanton criminality in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol, England, is an agonizingly emotional paralysis. Britain, in spite of its perplexing share in leading the quarrels of our civilisation, as I judge, more than made up for it, and as Benjamin Vaughan would intone, “added so much to the fair side of a life otherwise too much darkened by anxiety and too much injured by pain”. 

This is the England I carry with me. And though this beautiful land of freedom is scarcely all of a piece, it has had not a pittance of goodwill among its admirers, and a steady stream of enviable blessings even as it gives  hope to the despondent and dignity to the crushed in spirit- otherwise consigned to the plaything of degrading existence in their nativity. Which begs the question, why is a society that has devoted itself to the freedom of man been itself exposed to being the victim of its own pursuit and struggle?

The events of the recent past seek to address this enquiry. To explain away the orgy of looting and frenzied torching of property that has engulfed the nation, in which 100 families have been made homeless according to housing minister, Grant Shapps, attempts have been made to lay the charge at the door of the impassive culprit: a fleshed-out economy. This hurried stance to establish a scapegoat has shifted the focus away from the primary cause, namely, poor parenting and the almost limitless latitude of governance and policy makers to indulge a society that shuffles to the edge of explosion.

The prime minister’s diagnosis of the situation, recalling that over 1000 have been arrested and 371 charged, on the statistics of the Metropolitan Police,  and himself terminating his holidays in Italy and equally recalling Mps from their summer break for an emergency debate on the riots, is no less apposite: ”a fraction of the British society, he laments, is sick.”  But how does David Cameroon arrive at such sober assessment, and on whom does the onus of responsibility lie? Put simply, where are the light-bearers?

To be certain, any defence of the gory incidents in Britain, in which 26 police officers were injured and two remain in hospital as a result of the fatal shooting  by the police – of Mark Duggan, 29, a supposedly no-gooder, having been implicated in drug related  offences,  offends all sizes of commonsense and legitimate reason. To pilfer away at the labours of others and deliberately torch them is, indeed, a shameless overkill. But for the police to allow the rampage into its fourth night at a stretch is even more shameful. It is a bonus to primitive pillage. And that, certainly, was not a very generous incentive by the authorities.

The overindulgent attitude of the western leadership which parallels the permissive manner in which parents raise their children set the tone for the erratic behaviour among the youths and periodically evokes a re-enactment of the sad events we have just witnessed in England.

A civilisation that caters not to the minds and hearts of its people is unsound and teeters on 3 legs.

Suffice it to say that in contrast to the prime minister’s assertion that a fraction of the British society is sick, in reality, it is the system that is truly sick. And it can only be felled by a fragile push. When a society is largely empty of the faintest modicum of any core ingredients that define the human spirit, that society, notwithstanding its accolades in the conquest of sea, land and sky, is in dire need of taming itself. Otherwise it risks being poured out.

Parents other than channelling their efforts at the upbringing of their children into a museum of haves should strive to awaken that humanity that lie dormant in each of us and for which we all yearn. Its path may be tortuous but the dividend it yields is far more gratifying and refreshing- like dews on a scorched land. When one ponders over the fact that many of those that were involved in the rioting, looting and burglary were hardly into their 11^th birthday, a shaking of parental responsibility clearly looms larger in the mind. One then comes round to the issue that it is not

“a fraction of the society that is sick”, but a fraction, indeed an entire culture of parental do-it-as-you-please that sits in the dock and which stands to be pilloried.

The second problem, no less jarring is the western legal system which treats serious felonies with kids-gloves. The entire system of western legal culture, at best, seemingly rewards crime and seldom confronts misbehaviour with the discipline it calls for. How does one digest the eagerness of

many individuals to wilfully commit certain crimes that will send them to jail because they find their incarceration glamorous and comfortable as opposed to the daily demands which the conscience of a society asks of them!

In Sweden, immigrants from Poland wilfully break traffic laws to find themselves in jail where numerous facilities await them, to their advantage. In many Scandinavian countries, going to prison is an emotional holiday where the prisoner’s every whim, in the name of human rights, is attended to with such religiosity that offends even the sensibilities of a monk.  The result is, rather than shy away from the consequences of infringing on the law, many in Europe look to prison with fervour.

They couldn’t exchange a system that humours their criminal intents for any other body that will hold up their accountability and this emboldens the youth to repeatedly kick at the institutions that nurture them. To this end, an overhaul of the legal system in Europe is timely- including its penal system. Serious offenders should be allowed to feel the full heat of the law and such latitude of freedom as is given offenders must be withdrawn to discourage them from re-living their crime. It is not enough to send a criminal to jail.

 It’s the conditions in prison that help strengthen or detract the crime. The events in London mirror the moral crisis in which our age has been enmeshed. It challenges parents everywhere to once again assume the traditional role as educators and sincere disciplinarians. And it’s an obligation that cannot be shared nor passed to our youths.

To rebel against the authority of parents is not an answer for a clear guide to mud through life.

John Stuart on “Our Children’s Future” echoes the same sentiment when he maintains that “if youth has learnt to question the wisdom of its elders, it has so far found nothing to replace it with”.

Michael Ozioma Samuel teaches Communication in English to professional adults. He wrote in from Budapest, Hungary