The trouble with blaming the parents is that you risk blaming people who have coped far better than you would have
Margaret Thatcher's famous remark, "There is no such thing as society," is often quoted out of context. That's a shame because, in context, it is even more absurd than it appears when naked and alone. Thatcher offered her observation in 1987, during an interview with Woman's Own: "There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate." Yes, That's right. There is living tapestry, all woven together to make a big picture. Some people even call that picture "the big society", I hear.
Thatcher continues: "… we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for time, for understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty."
Oh, dear. That bit is not so easy to ridicule, is it? That bit is quite right. It is appalling to have children and then to abuse or neglect them. There is no excuse for it. Not even the excuse that you were abused and neglected as a child yourself – an explanation not being the same as an excuse. We are all agreed on that, broadly?
Good. By agreeing that Thatcher is right in that second assertion, one proves that she is wrong in the first one.
If there were no such thing as society, there would be no such thing as criticising others for their own sovereign and individual behaviour. There would be no social norms, no agreed ethical standards. There would be no loom, no warp, no weft, no tapestry. That is the trouble with rightwing individualism. It is always poking its snout into other people's business to remind them that … well … that other people's business is not their business. The baleful Conservative paradox is that you go into public service to dismantle it, into government (ostensibly) to disempower it.
I recalled Thatcher's homilies on parenting as I watched a recording of David Cameron doling out similar blame-the-parents "wisdom" the other evening, at the start of Olly Lambert's excellent documentary, My Child, The Rioter, which interviewed parents of young people who had taken part in the summer riots, sometimes alongside their children, sometimes not. All of those parents were people who had tried to do their best. (No takers for going on telly to announce that you had neglected and abused your offspring and couldn't care less what they got up to, of course.) All the parents rued the day their children had got involved, except for Ryan's parents. All the children, in some way or another, expressed regret, except for Ryan. Ryan had no regrets at all, except that he had failed to take the opportunity to wreak more havoc.
Ryan, significantly, was the only child who claimed to have looted for political reasons. "There is such a thing as committing a crime for the right reasons," said Ryan. He wants to riot again, "because nothing's changed." Ryan isn't stupid. He is at Salford University, doing a course in "Culture, Power and Identity". Nevertheless, a lot of people agree that repeating the same action, and expecting a different outcome, is the very definition of stupidity.
That is exactly why Cameron's repetition of Thatcher's opinions grated so much.
Ryan, again significantly, was also the only young person in the group who had not been arrested, charged and convicted. At the time of writing, he still hadn't. But it would be no surprise now, after his televised confession, if that were to come. So why are his parents allowing him to risk arrest, six months on, by publicly admitting to have taken part in rioting and looting?
It is because they are proud of him. "He's out to make a difference." He is a political protester, in their eyes, and his, not a criminal rioter, and the family is frustrated that this message is being buried, because the establishment does not want to look at "deeper issues, social injustices, all that".
It would be easy to mock Ryan, and his parents. People have done so. Lambert says that Ryan has been very shocked by the vitriol with which their television appearance has been condemned. Ryan is right to be shocked. He is right to be hurt at the criticism that has been directed at his parents. Because, despite their indulgence of their son's romantic ideas about the political sophistication of smashing stuff and nicking stuff, Ryan's parents are in some respects both exceptional and admirable.
Each admits to having been "poorly parented" themselves, Ryan's mother by a violent, alcoholic father, Ryan's father by a violent, alcoholic boyfriend of his mother's. Ryan's father says he was out on the streets, smashing things up, committing crimes, by the time he was five. The pair have brought up their family determined not to repeat this pattern. "I'm just trying to get things right as a parent now. Break the cycle," Ryan's dad asserts.
Ryan's parents, broadly speaking, are doing the right thing, a thing that is notoriously hard to do. They are refusing to pass on a legacy of neglect and abuse to the next generation. They have not looked to "the government" to change things. They have taken the initiative to change things themselves. No doubt they have not always found that to be an easy task.
Like so many of us, Ryan's parents accept their responsibilities (in their own idiosyncratic way), but see wider societal problems that need addressing too (even if I don't agree that encouraging your child to riot is the right way of going about it). They have certainly made their own contribution to society's improvement. In one generation a self-admitted "feral child" has brought up a university student. (Ryan isn't Gandhi, it's true. But he's engaged and discursive and almost perilously secure.)
Perhaps, as parents, Ryan's are making their own mistakes. We all do. The mistake of encouraging your child to believe that opportunistic rioting is a mature and politically useful undertaking is a mistake that is greatly preferable to the "mistake" of beating and brutalising him.
Indeed, Ryan's parents' mistake is no worse a mistake than bringing up your child to believe that if there is a profit in it, then it is the right thing to do (which one could be forgiven for thinking had been the guiding principle of the life of Thatcher's son, Mark). The trouble with blaming the parents is that you risk blaming people who have coped far, far better than you would have, given the same start in life. Worse, like Thatcher, you risk believing that you know what's best for everyone, when you don't even understand that "everyone" needs a collective noun: Society.