FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Lord of the Flies

Rant Number 453 25 August 2011

‘It is neither the French Revolution nor the Watts riots. It is more like Lord of the Flies’ writes Sion Simon in Newsweek about the recent riots. Events that delighted eminent world statesmen like Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Assad. Justifiably so. PM ‘Bland Dave’ Cameron and his sad-faced, non-gay Foreign Secretary Will Hague proudly promote their democracy as a model for Arabs to imitate. Yet, patently this much vaunted system isn’t working. If it did, why would so many British youth burn down and loot ‘their own communities’, as the cliché goes? Something is rotten in the state of Ukania.

I wonder whether Mr Simon has read William Golding’s masterpiece. The novel’s young boys stranded on a desert island do not come from the same ethic groups and social strata as the hooded youths that terrorised England two weeks ago. They are dainty public school children, white-skinned and pink-faced, whose affluent parents annually paid thousands of pounds to give them an expensive private education. Even the posh, quaint way in which they speak betrays their privileged background. Compare them with the rough, inarticulate and mostly etiolated youths who have wreaked havoc in English cities. Like comparing apples and pears. It grieves the priest to say so but, no, they are not the same kind of children.

Nor will, pace Mr Simon, boredom do. The boredom of kids on school holidays with nothing to do. Boredom is perhaps the proof that existence is meaningless, as Schopenhauer believed. It is not, however, either a sufficient

or a necessary cause for mass rioting. First, today booze, drugs, TV, computers, mobile phones, spectator sports and general shagging take care of boredom – those things occupy most people’s lives pretty massively – no need to get bored anymore. Second, I have myself known bored youths who would have never dreamt of destroying the Asian shop next door. Sorry, boredom does not fit.

‘Teenage nihilism’ is another phrase ex-MP Simon trots out. Nihilism. One of those words that linger on men’s tongues, generating almost an inward glow – like a pint of Lager - or something like that. I myself confess to a weakness for the word – I read philosophy, after all. But nihilism just sounds the right thing to say. That does not mean people understand what they are saying. Nihilism comes from the Latin wordnihil – nothing. So a nihilist should be someone who revels in or upholds nothing. That seems potently philosophical. But the rioters were not fanatical students of Heidegger. They did not pursue das Nichts. They were after something. Namely the stuff of the shops they looted. The rioters sought not nothing but things. Even Mr Simon writes of ‘shopping riots’. Shopping, whatever it may mean, is not about nothing. It is about something. Of course, a fussy soul might point out that the good old name for ‘shopping riots’ is stealing, robbing and plundering. Never mind. The point is that highfalutin words like nihilism, while perhaps impressing some readers of Newsweek, contribute nil to explaining the hell too many kids unleashed on British cities.

How did it start? With the killing by the police of a black man in Tottenham. The police first claimed he had shot at them first. It was not true. They failed to liaise properly with the local people, to explain their actions. A race riot followed. As rioting spread to other areas and cities, it lost its racial element. Whites, blacks and in-betweeners all joined in the happy ‘shopping’ spree – a truly multiethnic, mass criminal undertaking. Does that call for celebration? Perhaps. Meanwhile the cops just looked on, fearful of stirring up racism. The mob ruled.

Yes, it was serious. So serious the BBC felt morally obliged to arrange an emergency session of that apotheosis of political correctness,Question Time. Too boring to watch in full. (Did it cause anyone to riot, I wonder?) I just got a glimpse of the ludicrous, moon-faced John Sentamu, the stunt-pulling Ugandan who is supposed to be Archbishop of York. He bleated pious platitudes and vigorously refused to blame anyone, rioters and police alike. Don’t know why, but watching clowns like Sentamu makes me feel very warm towards atheism, may Christ forgive me.

Who, what is to blame? Have a go. Your pet cause will of course reflect your own predilections, your fads and ideology. Fatherless kids, broken families, unemployment, government cuts (they haven’t even started yet!), deprivation, stupidity, racism, bad schools, or a melange of all of them. A witches’ brew all right. But...is there anything missing?

Let’s go back to the Lord of the Flies. What does it mean? Who is this Lord? Easy. Baal=Lord. Flies need no explanation. But thinks now of Beelzebub. In the Gospels he is the prince of the devils, the very Devil himself!

Baal az-Zhubab. Arab speakers will know azzubab means flies. Beelzebub was the contemptuous name the Hebrews gave to a pagan deity. ‘Lord of Filth’ they rightly termed him. And out of the Lord of Filth only filth can come.

So, maybe Mr Simon was not far off the mark. The Devil is the author of mischief on God’s earth. Golding’s novel is meant to be a parable or allegory about original sin, about the potential for evil lying dormant inside every child of Adam and Eve. Does Beelzebub’s finger explain the riots, then?

Yes, in a way. But blaming the Devil isn’t good enough. It should never result in exculpation of the rioters. If every sinner said ‘the Devil made me do it’ and felt thereby absolved of his sin, it would make nonsense of human freedom and responsibility. Neither bad nor good angels are the authors of human actions. Human beings alone are.

Remedies? The Church should be the great healer, of course, but, to be quite brutal, Anglicanism is a failed church – it cannot even heal itself. The Catholic Church could do it – maybe. The State? It is impotent, bankrupt in retreat. What’s left? Islam? Quite possible. Maybe that is Ukania’s future, who knows?

Personally, I wonder about the Sikhs. The brave turbaned guys armed themselves with sticks and swords, and scared the muggers off.

Hmmm...how does one join the Sikhs, I wonder?