Don’t blame single mothers when youngsters run riot and cities burn

MY esteemed colleague Terry Prone made the point in this space yesterday that the hardest question to answer, in the face of the riots that engulfed Britain last week, is why.

Why did you do it? Why did it happen? How did so many people, without apparent leadership or motivation, go so crazy at the same time?

There is no easy answer, was Terry’s conclusion. And of course, as she usually is, she was right. Trying to get inside the mind of someone from a respectable background who commits an act of mindless violence, seemingly on the spur of the moment, is impossible. Most of the time, the people who did it have themselves no clue as to what motivated them, or why they acted in ways that are often entirely out of character.