Malcolm Barker: Our old England has vanished, and we can only escape from this mess with the rule of law

This week has seen the descent into anarchy of an England we were brought up to be proud of, making for painful reading and appalling viewing.

Incidents snag the mind, like the story of the poor barber aged 89 whose Tottenham shop, where he had worked for 40 years, was wrecked. Even his kettle was looted.

A furniture store in Croydon, run by the Reeves family for 150 years, was razed to the ground. All this provoked anguish, and a totally unexpected feeling that it would be better not to know the news.

It is not our old England, of course, but a new multi-cultural amalgam of nations. The old disciplines have been abandoned, and authorities no longer command respect. The place may not be Godforsaken (Christians are taught that He will never turn away) but it has plainly forsaken God. The ethical structure has been abandoned; instead we worship consumerism.

Many saw bad times coming, but even the most pessimistic would hardly have envisaged the day when shops were looted and torched with impunity. London burned this week as it has not done since the Luftwaffe’s blitz in the 1939-45 war.

The disorder lapped out like the wavelets created by throwing a stone in a pool, first across the capital. Then fires burned in Birmingham and Manchester; a gang created ruin in Huddersfield.

People of our age sometimes reckon themselves members of the Lucky Generation. We were too young to fight in the Second World War but old enough to endure the rigours, discipline and introduction to wide strata of society provided by National Service.

Mostly, we were reared by loving parents, and experienced the benefits of an orderly upbringing in an ordered society. We then participated in the prosperity that began to seep into life in the 1950s. There was also greater freedom, together with its inevitable companion, laxity. We left school equipped to work, and there were jobs for all.

We may congratulate ourselves on our good fortune, but we should surely also ask how it came about that we frittered away the benefits that we enjoyed.

The trouble begins in the home. During our childhood it was rare to encounter a boy or girl who did not live with two parents.

There was only one woman bringing up a son alone in Harnham Road, Salisbury, where I lived for a time in the 1930s. She was a stalwart, and her lad’s behaviour was held up, somewhat aggravatingly, as an example to his playmates. Now, when immoral behaviour and the consequent break-up of families are no longer stigmatised, many children are reared by a single parent, most often the mother.

Occasionally, it appears that babies are being brought into the world almost as an industry. Another mouth to feed means extra benefit income for mother and whoever her current partner happens to be.

Nobody has yet offered an answer to this problem. Forcing fathers to accept responsibility for their offspring’s upbringing and behaviour may be sound in theory, but it very difficult to put into effect, especially if the father is workless.

Progression to school at five years of age should bring structure to young lives and a degree of discipline. But surely the schools should not be asked to counter the ills of society. They need to concentrate on education, and far too often suffer political interference and meddling. The changes inflicted on them seem endless, and teachers at present have few means of enforcing order in the classrooms beyond their own personalities.

A recent report on a five-year-old was revealing. In two A4 pages of prose there was much jargon and gobbledegook. No marks were recorded, no position in class.

In contrast, a 1941 report on a 10-year-old from Berriew Council School in the depths of rural Montgomeryshire was a sheet of squared paper measuring eight inches by three.

Subjects, marked out of 50, were: Penmanship 45, English Grammar 48, Arithmetic 44, Spelling 45, Prepared Dictation 49, Unprepared Dictation 44, Composition 46, Recitation 44, Reading 47, Geography 45, History 46, General Knowledge 48. The teacher wrote that these marks were “satisfactory” but they only earned fourth place in the class.

The dozen subjects offered a range of building blocks for life, and it would be interesting if it were possible for a class of modern 10-year-olds to sit the same tests.

A problem for schools must be convincing all pupils that learning is worthwhile, that it will stand them in good stead in the world. For those who are unable to get into university, the future is bleak.

Many in their late teens and early 20s are unemployed and unemployable. Somehow or other, a way must be found to enable them to fulfil their potential.

Theirs is not necessarily a lost generation. The brave young men fighting in Afghanistan demonstrate that day after day.

We need to be led out of this mess, with the restoration of law and order. David Cameron may be the man for the job. He looked whey-faced and anxious as he threatened condign punishment for the rioters, possibly because he knew he lacked the means, and perhaps the will, to put his words into effect. The streets must be reclaimed, and, if the police fail, the task will fall to vigilantes protecting local communities. Their emergence has been a rare item of good news this week.

Strength to their arms, and then perhaps I can start relishing news again.

Malcolm Barker is a former editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post.