IN THE SURREAL
political climate that comes between the end of the annual party conferences
and the opening
of the new session
of Parliament, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary held a joint
press conference announcing a dramatic new initiative against ‘anti-social’ behaviour.
New laws were promised; a police clampdown was assured; we were asked
to believe that the Government thought the problem was worthy of ‘priority
action’.
Perhaps of greater interest was the accompanying rhetoric about society
needing to take the blame for the present crisis and how the ‘community’ must
not expect the Government to do it all.
There was much talk about education, local community initiatives, citizenship
awareness and -wait for it! - ‘family values’.
At the same time there is much media speculation about Government plans
to radically reform family and divorce law. It is hinted that cohabitation
after two years could confer the same status as marriage and that a form
of registered civil partnership equal to marriage could be available for
gay couples.
To say that the much-heralded crackdown on anti-social behaviour was
greeted with public cynicism would be an understatement. Firstly, much
of what
is now called “anti-social behaviour’, that is abusive language,
noise nuisance, harassment*, vandalism, public drunkenness etc. is already
a criminal offence.
The problem is getting the police to show any interest. They will either
say the offenders are too young to prosecute (even if they are not) or
claim they don’t have the manpower (or the more politically ‘correct’ ‘human
resources’) to take action.
There is also the underlying problem that anti-social behaviour is largely
a result of the breakdown of the traditional family and its accompanying
social values and community responsibilities.
No modern government is willing to admit a) that the traditional family
is under attack and in decline or b) that yobbish behaviour in the young
has any connection with a).
So what is the Government doing to restore the family to which it pays
such lip-service? And will the proposed changes to family law make things
better with regard to the anti-social behaviour menace?
It is no coincidence that crime has increased in almost direct proportion
to the decline in the traditional family and the widespread attack on the
traditional roles of the various family members.
Poverty alone is not to blame. Even allowing for the recession of the 1980s,
since the end of the war we have enjoyed the highest standard of living
in our history. Even the unemployed today know an affluence that surpasses
that of most pre-war workers.
Yet our prison population exceeds 70,000, half of all marriages end in
divorce and a quarter of all children are born to unmarried parents.
Discipline has collapsed in schools, and our streets at night are more
dangerous than at any time in the past century.
Is there a typical ‘anti-social behaviourist’? Yes. He will
be male, under 25, and increasingly likely to be under 16. The product
of a single-parent family (i.e. almost certainly an unmarried mother) or
living with his biological mother and a man other than his biological father.
The household’s principal income will come from social security
benefits.
He will be semi-literate with no interest in religion, politics or participatory
sports. He will probably graduate to more serious criminal behaviour later
in life and produce children by someone to whom he is not married, in a
relationship which will not last, and whom he will not support financially
or retain contact with.
Such people have always been with us. It is, of course, dangerously unfair
to say that all, or even most, single-parent families produce such men
and boys; but most such men and boys are the products of the single-parent
family rather than the traditional family, that is mum and dad married
to each other, dad at work to support his wife and children with mum at
home looking after the household. In such a family boys learn more about
self-respect, discipline and social responsibility than a whole army of
social workers could hope to convey.
The economic cost to the country in crime alone makes the breakdown in
the traditional family unit a disaster. It does not stop there. Other factors
to consider are: the cost to the legal aid system of the tens of thousands
of divorces and other court actions regarding child custody and access,
the social welfare bill for the support of the single-parent family with
no regular wage-earner to rely on, and the cost of social housing and housing
benefits as separating couples find it is impossible to create two households
out of one family home without public assistance.
The national crisis in public sector rented housing is almost entirely
caused by relationship break-up. To this we could add the cost of lost
work due to the stress-related illnesses that so frequently accompany a
bitter separation.
We are constantly being told the cost of fighting the last Gulf War, what
it would cost to join (or not to join) the euro, what alcohol abuse or
drug addiction costs Britain every year. Why do we never hear how much
the collapse of the traditional family is costing the country? Is it beyond
the wit and wisdom of economists to calculate? Perhaps the Government just
do not want us to know.
Since feminist dogma first started to pervade all aspects of our legislative
and social policy there has been a semi-official war against the traditional
family. The economic cost to the country has been massive.
The cost in terms of sheer human misery comes close to that produced by
a major international or civil war. We might think there are fewer deaths,
but let us not forget the appalling suicide record for which the CSA is
responsible, nor the many embittered and estranged fathers, the alienated
grandparents and the heartbroken children. There are millions of lives
touched, even blighted, by separation, almost as bitter as death itself.
Half a century ago Nazism ruined lives in this country by the evil of
war. More recently feminism has caused a not dissimilar level of pain
and distress
as it encourages men and women to make war on themselves in the name
of ‘equality’ and
causes the law to undermine the very values and institutions it once
upheld.
Those who espouse, or who have ever espoused, the false doctrines of feminism
now shoulder a terrible responsibility for their actions.
Will making co-habitation equal to marriage or establishing gay marriages
change the serious situation we now find ourselves in? Will ‘divorce
reform’ (i.e. quicker, easier and cheaper divorce) remove the bitterness
of separation?
Would even doubling the number of police on our streets cure the social
consequences of the breakdown of family values? Not a hope!
Those families that stay together, that respect one another as individuals,
and their equal (but different) roles within the family unit, are the families
that prosper, in both economic and personal terms. They hand on their legacy
of decency and prosperity to future generations.
Countries where such families are the norm are countries that progress,
politically and economically. When such families become rare, the country
goes into moral and economic decline.
Which path will our country choose to go down? |
.
. . giving men a voice
