brit- In a land without morals, it's no wonder children kill each other

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/11/do1101.xml


In a land without morals, it's no wonder children kill each other
By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 2:03am BST 11/04/2008

There's a crisis on our streets, especially in London, and it has
nothing to do with the cost of housing. As the blame game is played
out between ministers and bankers over why mortgages are suddenly much
more expensive, the price of life in parts of Britain's inner cities
has hit rock bottom.

Forget, for a moment, that the property market is dying, and look
instead at the number of murders through unprovoked attacks by amoral
teenagers demanding a perverse "respect". While we obsess about a rise
in payments to the building society, the society we have built is
falling apart.

In two court cases at the Old Bailey this week, details emerged of
killings perpetrated by gangs of youths, some as young as 14,
operating like hyenas. They hunted in packs and slaughtered their
prey.

In February last year, in an affluent area of west London, a group of
feral monsters set about 16-year-old Kodja Yenga with knives, hammers
and baseball bats. The boy, a regular churchgoer, who was studying for
AS levels, died in hospital, having been beaten and stabbed by five
members of the MDP gang - Murder Dem Pussies.

Two months later, on Good Friday, a few miles across the capital in
Leytonstone, 14-year-old Paul Erhahon was walking home when he bumped
into the Cathall Street Bois gang, described in court as a "cult
obsessed with violence". One of the older boys, aged 15, ordered the
"youngers" to attack Erhahon. He was stabbed through the heart with a
sword.

In both instances, the victims were assailed by a rampaging mob,
howling for blood. The culprits appeared to have no fear of being
identified. The Cathall thugs even boasted about their criminal
exploits on YouTube. Brazen? Stupid? Evil? Take your pick.

Yenga's tormentors chased him along a street, shouting "Catch him!
Kill him!" It was eerily redolent of Lord of the Flies, as if a scene
from William Golding's sinister masterpiece had been transported to
W6.

In the novel, a group of schoolboys, stranded on an island, descend
into savagery. They whip themselves into a frenzy, chanting, "Kill the
beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" Then they rip to pieces one
of their own, Simon.

The theme, Golding wrote, is about "the darkness of man's heart". His
plot has become a tale of our times. From the fiction of 1954, to the
facts of 2008.

Crimes of serious violence are rising in Britain. This is not the
creation of a fevered press, anxious to produce eyecatching headlines,
as some ministers claim.

The Government can spin the numbers hither and thither, but the brutal
reality is that knife and gun attacks are becoming an everyday
occurrence. Of the 200,000 violent offences in London last year, 3,459
involved firearms.

Statistics issued by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at
King's College London show that street robberies in which a knife was
used jumped sharply between 2004 and 2007. Deaths linked to knife
crime rose by 18 per cent last year, from 219 to 258. The victims are
more likely to be young people, those living in poor areas and ethnic
communities.

Enver Solomon, the centre's deputy director, said: "The average age of
male homicide victims in the Metropolitan Police area is definitely
declining."

A BBC London poll of 500 youths, aged 13 to 18, across five boroughs,
Brent, Croydon, Hackney, Lambeth and Southwark, revealed that one
third knew someone who had been the victim of a knife assault and 17
per cent knew a victim of gun crime. Three-quarters of those
questioned expected violent crime to go up again this year.

From the curse of coarse behaviour and the blight of litter to casual
violence and extreme physical abuse, there is a pervasive nastiness
rotting away at this country's foundations. Some urban areas feel
wholly dysfunctional.

Apologists are quick to blame deprivation. If only it were that
simple. Quite a few of England's worst football hooligans are earning
fortunes in the City. Their poverty is not financial; it's a complete
absence of worthwhile values - a collapse of decency.

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, sums up the anxieties of
many: "We are living through the death of civility ? Today, it is
commonplace to encounter road rage, muggings, street crime,
drunkenness, lager louts, hoodies, yobbishness and laddishness.
Teachers are attacked in the classroom. Nurses encounter violence from
patients."

The death of civility? I'm afraid so. The liberal revolution of the
Sixties, which separated morality from law, is leading us, says Sacks,
to "a new form of barbarism". The view that "it's legal, so I can do
it" is destroying the fabric of social harmony. Manners are
disappearing, along with courtesy and shame.

The story of Shannon Matthews' abduction tells us much about the state
we are in. Mercifully, the girl was rescued and taken into care. But
the details of her mother's breeding with a multiplicity of partners
defies rational analysis.

Karen Matthews has seven children from five fathers, an extreme
example of what author Tony Parsons called "the blended family", a
toxic mixture for many of the unfortunate offspring who are trapped in
the middle.

The breakdown of the traditional family was likened last Saturday by a
High Court judge, Mr Justice Coleridge, to an out-of-control cancerous
body, posing more of a threat to our futures than global warming.

The family courts, he said, are witnessing "a never-ending carnival of
human misery". So, too, are hospitals and clinics, as the number of
abortions in Britain continues to rise.

When young hoodlums are prepared to hack someone to death in broad
daylight, I suppose we should not be surprised that their teenage
girlfriends switch off unborn life without remorse.

I spoke to a leading female academic who said "more education" was
needed to ease the problem. She was, I'm afraid, making excuses for
many who are comfortable with abortion as a form of contraception.

About 200,000 terminations take place in England and Wales every year.
The numbers have been rising steadily for a long time. Are we saying
that the availability of information about safe sex and reproduction
is diminishing? Hardly. What's missing is a code of ethics.

While Court of Appeal judges fret over the human rights of terrorist
suspects, blocking their extradition in case they don't get a fair
trial, British law is happy to approve the extermination of unwanted
foetuses at 24 weeks.

The state protects Abu Qatada, but not semi-formed babies. Their lives
are no longer precious, not even cheap. They are deemed to be
worthless.

When our legal system loses its moral compass, it is only to be
expected that on the mean streets of Britain many impressionable
children will do the same.


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