Newspaper headlines over the past month have told a story which more or less accurately describes the state of our country under New Labour. Here are a few:-

‘Crime soars’; ‘Crime: the grim toll’; ‘Betrayal of our children’ (in reference to the decision to provide the Pill to girls of 11); ‘Half of young killers to be freed’; ‘Blunkett's reforms to ease laws on gay sex’. We could go on and on, but you get the picture. Britain is simply running out of control. Crime is rising at a sickening rate. Moral standards are plummeting. Basic politeness and civility have largely disappeared: a recent survey found that the British are commonly reckoned to be the rudest people in Europe. And in the face of all these declining levels of behaviour, those institutions collectively and traditionally regarded as representing ‘Authority’ have simply abdicated. Authority is absent in the home. It is absent in the classroom. It is absent in workplaces - today it is almost impossible to fire employees for incompetence, least of all for insubordination. Even in the armed forces, institutions which in the past have most completely epitomised the spirit of authority, every possible effort is being made by politicians and various lobby groups to destroy it.

Above all, authority is lacking in government. No one looks up to political leaders any more. This can hardly be a surprise when we have a government that has virtually capitulated to the IRA and released its terrorists from our jails to murder and maim again.

Jails bursting

Talking of jails, the chances of criminals being sent there are now lower than they have ever been. Quite apart from liberal attitudes on law and order leading to ridiculously soft sentences for offenders, the jails are now so full that there simply isn't room in them for all the people who deserve to be sent there. Now cells in police stations are being used as temporary places of custody - but that's only a stop-gap measure; it'll be no time before they're full up too.

In the short term, the only answer to this problem is to build more prisons. Too little and too late, the Government has announced plans to do this; by the time the new prisons are ready. the convict population will no doubt have increased to such an extent that they'll need many more!

The race factor

Under the heading ‘Crime: the grim toll’ which appeared in the Daily Mail on the 12th July, a report listed the 20 worst crime-hit areas in England and Wales. They were: Lambeth, Hackney, Southwark, Camden, Haringey, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Brent, Lewisham, Ealing, Wandsworth and Croydon (all London boroughs) - to which were added Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds and Liverpool. Now what do these areas all have in common? Everybody knows, but few dare say so. They are all areas of large ethnic minority concentration. In fact former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon and present Commissioner Sir John Stevens - two cops with impeccable ‘anti-racist’ credentials - have both admitted, to their credit, the disproportionate role of young Blacks in London street crime. But we can be quite sure that no manifesto for restoring law and order, whether conjured up by Labour or Tory leaders, will ever take this into account, let alone propose any action to deal with it!