Theodore Dalrymple has an article in this week’s issue of magazine (non-subscribers can buy the Spectator from just £1 an issue), on the nihilism of the young. Roy Kerridge came to very similar conclusions during the Brixton riots of 1981.
Here’s what he made of them:
A day in Brixton, Roy Kerridge, The Spectator, 18 April 1981
Some years ago I noticed that all was not well with some of the teenage children of my West Indian friends. After reluctantly being pushed out of their schools – where they really did spend the happiest days of their lives, going on treats almost every week – they simply went home and behaved as if they were children on holiday. Their twentieth birthdays came and went, and there they were, raiding their mothers’ handbags and playing records at one another’s houses.
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