As Calm Returns to England, Leaders Consider Roots of Rioting

After nearly a week of rioting and chaos, a sense of calm has finally returned to the streets in cities across the United Kingdom. What started as a youth protest in North London last Sunday after the death of a London man quickly turned violent. Police struggled to quell the looting and destruction as it spread across London and other cities.

As Britons have begun to sift through the rubble, the country’s leaders have turned to the issue of youth rebellion and the wanton destruction of property by children as young as 10 or 11, a reflection, in Prime Minister David Cameron’s words, of nothing less than society’s “moral collapse.”

“Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations?” he asked at youth center in his home constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire.

Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin, Chabad’s representative to Ilford, an East London suburb, and a 2009 recipient Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), runs Drugsline, a drug rehabilitation center providing crisis intervention, education, counseling, and family support. He agrees with the Prime Minister.

“This wasn’t an issue of race,” Sufrin says. “All communities face the same challenges. We struggle to engage young people be it from the synagogue, the mosque or elsewhere. We must come off our pedestals as preachers and directly engage the youth.”

Though Ilford itself was spared from most of the violence, Sufrin sees the roots of youth “disenfranchisement” as one across community lines.

Sufrin’s organization plans on bringing British youth together in focus groups to directly address their feelings about what happened. Plans for a new curriculum will be put into effect this fall as well.

“We have used this opportunity to carry the moral message of rebuilding family and finding positive role-models,” Sufrin says. “Only through positive reinforcement can we bring greater respect for those we encounter, be they family, stranger or government.”

Despite his belief that the problem is deeply rooted, Sufrin says that the youth involved in last week’s violence were by far only a minority. He points to community members who took to the streets with brooms to clean London over the past few days.

“If ultimately a small group of people can cause so much destruction, one can only imagine how many more can rebuild.”