A wide ranging inquiry into this week's riots and disorder in London, English cities and towns is needed, of the kind now being called for by Labour leader Ed Miliband. A House of Commons inquiry conducted by the Home Affairs Select Committee will not have adequate scope to deal with all the contributory factors in this week's outbreak of violent unrest and looting, although it will no doubt have an important role in considering police intelligence and actions. A Royal (or Public) Commission may be a more suitable vehicle for the wider inquiry which will need to examine larger societal issues, such as the use of digital media technology and networks, as well as important area-based factors, including local deprivation and inequality, in the civil disorder.
Prime Minister David Cameron must not shy away from an in depth examination of the state of the national psyche, because it is precisely the shadow side of his "Big Society", in its tribalism, existential status anxiety, greed, absence of individual volition in the face of peer group pressure, addictions to quick fixes, and propensity to mass hysterias which needs to be confronted at the present time. These shortcomings are by no means confined to those young, and older, people who actually participated in criminal activities this week, but are increasingly part of wider socio-economic behaviour, and colluded in by business, the media and political classes.
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