One unexpected result of the rioting in London and other British cities recently has been a remarkable degree of agreement by commentators on the root cause. They put aside economic disparity, racial marginalization, cultural integration and policing as possible reasons. No, the root cause, they say is a lack of morality caused by the breakdown of the traditional family. Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, said the riots are the direct result of “a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.”

“. . . most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socializes children and turns them from feral savages into civilized citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.

“Of course there are many lone parents who do a tremendous job. But we’re talking here about widespread social collapse. And there are whole areas of Britain, white as well as black, where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon.” The same cry from the heart comes from Max Hastings, also in the Daily Mail.

Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.

So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass. And it comes too from American commentator, Ann Coulter:

England's welfare state is fast returning the native population to its violent 18th-century highwaymen roots. Needless to say, Britain leads Europe in the proportion of single mothers and, as a consequence, also leads or co-leads the European Union in violent crime, alcohol and drug abuse, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases. What then has been the cause of this family breakdown? Commentators seem to agree on this as well. Here’s Mark Steyn, writing in his new book, After America:

“For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population.” There are many more examples I could quote, but the message is the same: government policies that weakened, or destroyed, the traditional family unit are the key factor in producing Britain’s new class of amoral, self-centred, feral children. Welfare that promoted dependency, promotion of single-parenthood, taxation that forced both parents to work, day care that allowed for absentee parenting and the general sexualization of society that devalued sex as a benefit of marriage; all these things and more have now accumulated. Taken together, this attack on the traditional, two-person, one-wage earner family has virtually destroyed a generation of British young people. The Christian Heritage Party has, for a long time, been presenting better solutions on the issues of abortion and homosexuality; it has been advancing the wisdom of home schooling and traditional parenting; it has developed policies addressing the disciplining of children and stiffer sentences for criminals. The analyses we've read about the London riots confirm that CHP's Better Solutions are not "fringe" ideas from one political Party. Canadian society has now seen the future if it doesn’t change course. Canadians have now seen where ‘Progressive’ family, education, and justice policies lead: to anarchy. The Christian Heritage Party can now say, and point to proof, that failure to follow traditional moral childrearing can ruin this country even as it has Britain. That’s the lesson of the British riots: that CHP policies are correct, worth following, worth supporting, and worth voting for.