Forget the rhetoric - the fact's say we have a shattered society. Accept the truth and ask what we should do.

Julian Dobson looks at the manner in which the tragedy of Fiona Pilkington has been used by pundits and politicians to provide the basis of arguments in support of particular policies or positions. And Julian focuses on the ‘Broken Britain’ analysis that informs much of the current Conservative leadership’s thinking on social and welfare policies.

Julian Dobson’s analysis is right is one crucial respect – using the specific to make judgements about the general is a dangerous activity in any field and especially in the field of policy-making. Yet this is the default position for much research in social policy – show me an MA dissertation in sociology or social policy that has a quantitative basis and its a rare exception! But, grumbles about the basis for policy-making aside, Julian’s “it’s not broken” argument doesn’t bear much scrutiny – unless of course you take the narrow and rather partisan starting point of 1997.

It seems to me that Ian Duncan Smith’s argument doesn’t solely reflect the failings of the current labour Government but represents a far wider critique of the welfare state as it evolved from the early 1970s to the present day. And Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice makes a compelling case – even for those of us who worry about the muscular Christianity that underlies much of the motivation for those doing that research.

On crime, indictable offences known to the police have risen from around 20/1000 population in 1970 to almost 100/1000 population today. By anyone’s assessment that is a major shift – there is a great deal more crime today than when Julian and I were young! (It is interesting to note that over the same period that crime has increased five-fold the prison population has merely doubled). (source: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900, House of Commons Library)

In the case of male economic activity we see the same trend – roughly a fifth of the male working age population is not economically active today compared to only a tenth back in 1971. There is a great deal more unemployment – systemic, intergenerational worklessness – than there was when Julian and I were young.

I could go on I’m sure and show how levels of teenage pregnancy, single parenthood, divorce, abortion and substance abuse have risen considerably since the 1970s. What we should conclude is that that prescription of new Labour – the promise of New Deal, Sure Start and “Neighbourhood Renewal”- has not resolved the issue. Nor have ASBOs, curfew orders, CCTV cameras, DNA databases or the rest of the surveillance state.It may not be worse but for sure it isn’t better.

Last Friday an innocent, well-brought up young man was kicked nearly to death in a Northern town – it doesn’t matter where this happened but I ask just one question. Should we treat that incident as a single, isolated case? Should we deal with its tragic consequences as one event unconnected with other events on the same Friday elsewhere in England? Should we carry on suggesting that such a young man was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or should we conclude that – along with a legion of other assaults, insults, intimidation, bullying and dissolution – we really do have a broken society. And until we address the challenge this poses – to instill that sense of social responsibility, to remake good manners, to encourage self-discipline, to challenge bullying and exploitation – until we let the good values of the majority be enforced, we will continue to read of tragedies like Fiona Pilkington, of cruelties like the killing of Baby P and of the senseless injury to young men who committed the terrible crime of going out for a Friday night drink with their mates.

We can no longer afford to trim and parse, to excuse and explain the failings of our society – it really is a mess. It’s probably broken. And we certainly can’t afford to claim that there is no problem – or not the problem the statistics describe. We can’t go on as we are now with lives destroyed, families ruined and children abused – all because we can’t face up to the need for people to be responsible and our continuing failure to enforce such responsibility.