Elizabeth Braund, who for many years has run Shallowford Farm to help inner London city children, shares her experience.
The riots in a number of cities last summer shocked us all. There were banner headlines about the ‘end of an era’, a constant barrage of grim forebodings from the media, endless political argument and social confrontation. But all this has left us not so much keyed-up to new resolve, as indifferent and only wanting to be left alone to get on with our own lives.
Can we do just that — any of us? We have heard about how we must or must not shape our future society. We have heard a good deal less about how our society has been shaping us. Perhaps if leading politicians had understood this a little better, they would not over recent months have assumed that the people they were addressing are just the same in attitudes as those of even a decade ago. They are not. Attitudes have changed rapidly and radically; and we need urgently to look now at some of the pressures that have thrust in upon us.
