For Britain to undergo such a radical change in about 50 years, from low crime to high crime – and the same for violence, alcoholism, family breakdown and so much else – something must have ‘happened’.   Here are our thoughts on the issue.  We would be very interested to know yours. 

War and peace

The Second World War had a massive impact on British society.  The dislocation of war was almost total, with many women having to work in factories or on the land for the first time, children evacuated, a quarter of a million homes destroyed by bombing, not to mention a quarter of a million killed, and six million mobilised in the armed services (often away from home for years – and witnessing unspeakable things).  All this brought great pain, fear and trauma – which so many simply couldn’t speak about in later years.

Then came peace, albeit marred for years by rationing and continued economic hardship.  So when, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, things started looking up, there was a widespread feeling of impatience with restraint and a desire for the fruits of freedom.

Influences from across the Atlantic

Meanwhile, American influences were coming in big-time, with all the brash confidence of ‘modernity’ (nylon stockings, coke-cola and rock’n’roll) and the excitement of the new.  Good or bad (and damaging influences mixed with much better food, and some great music!), the old really did look old in comparison!  Britain’s gently traditionalist society, with its taboos and stiff-upper-lip shyness seemed foolish.  Our love for tradition, long admired as a secret of British strength and stability, was now seen as an impediment to advance.

The advent of television, following on from Hollywood’s world conquest, gave us different role models, different values and comparisons that made “this is the way we’ve always done things” seem like an embarrassing position to hold.  In other words, we lost confidence in our own culture – even while the rest of the world (generally less stable than ourselves) continued to admire it!  It was not at the time imagined by many that our relatively peaceful way of life, and even the very structure of the family, would come to be under threat if we ‘lived it up’ a bit.  There was certainly a strong feeling that we needed to let our hair down and enjoy life.

Undermining of the old ways

The underpinning of Christian values – faith itself – which might have created a stronger bulwark against the new winds, was itself greatly undermined by the suffering caused by two world wars.  Many found it hard to believe in a loving God, following such tumult and loss.  So that, as new forces looked attractive, there was less confidence in the old ways.  Anglicanism in particular, so long ‘part of the furniture’, almost subliminal in influence and non-assertive as it was, was a poor match for the more aggressive features of modernity.

The generation gap

It is notable that the student rioters (across the Western world) of 1968 and the hippies of that era were mostly born in the late 1940s, to a generation of parents who had just gone through the trauma of war.  How might this have affected their parenting? Suppressed pain and trauma commonly manifest themselves in the form of anger, a short fuse and rigidity.  Could this have helped create the unprecedented ‘generation gap’ that emerged in the 1960s, where the old had little understanding or sympathy for the new – and the new had little time for the old?

At any rate, the generation gap made a new generation cross the old boundaries running!  The values of previous generations were rejected as being authoritarian and prudish.  Experimentation was the rage and following established norms, let alone parents, was to show weakness.  This was an age of self-discovery and excitement.  Rather than seeing a gradual change in values, the 1960s went instead for revolution.  New was good and old was foolish and repressive – period.

It was the atmosphere of conflict between the old and the new (and parents and children) that led to such a wholesale change in values.  Conflict breeds absolutes and abhors compromises.  It is hard to imagine now that the generation gap – the spectre of ‘teenage rebellion’ – was unprecedented.  Before that time, in most of history children had largely followed the mores of their parents.  In the 1960s, something was released that made youngsters feel that they had to do the opposite, for the sake of it, of what their parents wanted them to do.  One might call it an ‘anti-authority spirit’ and one could maintain that this has been the spirit of the age, ever since.

The retreat from communal values

Of course, not everyone was a hippy (far from it) and the old values lived on.  But the spirit of the age (a reaction against any authority as being hypocritical and repressive) meant that a move to reassert values at the communal level would be met with a “who do you think you are, telling me how to live?” charge from many.  How to combat that charge?  The easiest way was not to combat it at all, but to accept that values are a matter of choice, a private decision, and not a communal matter at all.  This line was gradually helped along by the idea that Britain was now a multi-cultural and multi-religious society, in which no norms could legitimately be imposed.

The retreat from ‘communal values’ had two effects.  First, ‘British values’ could no longer be reinforced, because to reinforce them was to reassert that there were communal values after all.  Thus, if there was no reinforcement in the values that most people still held, the result would be that they would ebb away over the following decades, which of course they did.  No values can survive without reinforcement.

Second, as the new culture tested the limits of what was ‘acceptable’ (through increasing levels of whatever might shock in movies, video games and so on), there was no UK basis on which to oppose this.  After all, without common values, how can we say that anything is ‘wrong’?  ‘Wrong’ is surely a matter of private judgement.  This meant that repeated hand-grenades could be thrown at established values, without any capacity to fight back.  And so things that were ‘shocking’ (for example, ever more on-screen brutality) were able to push back the boundaries a bit further, year by year, because ‘shock’ was defined as a personal matter – and a person can always find the ‘off-button’.  However, society as a whole had thrown away its off-button!  With a doctrine of ‘anything goes’, it had given up the right to say what kind of society we want to be.

At least, it had given up that right until the results of ‘anything goes’ might get so extreme that we would simply have to think again; until we were prepared to throw out the doctrine of “anything goes” and say “there is such a thing as society”.  We believe that time has now come!

It is also time to say "there is such a thing as community".  Consumerism has, effectively, driven us apart!  That is to say, in a society where it seems to be "all about me", the emphasis has come to be on building up what I can and then enjoying it (as best as I can), but very possibly on my own.  Isolation has reached alarming levels (see Why community?) and yet we don't want to impose on others (who are presumably 'doing fine' in front of their own plasma screens) and they don't want to impose on us.  So we have come to live separate existences; and the affections and moral obligations we used to feel towards one another ('love thy neighbour') have quietly waned.  Community has become more of an expression than a reality in so many of our streets.  And yet  community (of the real kind) was always a crucial seed-bed, in which values such as serving the needs of others were generated.

Deprive values of their communal seed-bed, and of any reinforcement at the national level, and it will not be surprising if they wilt.  If values wilt, the impetus to pay attention to our neighbour will also wilt in the next twist in a vicious circle that is causing true community, and the values that sustain it, to drain away in tandem.

Next: Driven by money?