DRIVING around deserted country lanes late last Friday with the purpose of keeping the Jack Russells out of earshot of the Moonlight Parade’s fireworks finale, I pondered on the riots that shook the British nation to its roots.

Keeping two little dogs away from loud bangs that reduce them to quivering wrecks was nothing compared with the terror experienced by the decent people who were subjected to mindless acts of violence by an underclass we must all share responsibility for creating.

In the debate that followed the Toxteth riots in 1983, a commentator referred to a rhetorical Liverpool saying: ‘Is it the pig that makes the sty or the sty that makes the pig?’ Obviously not the latter, in the case of last week’s disorder, because for every marauding, thieving hooligan there were hundreds of decent people ready to confront them.

The British people have taken to the streets to demonstrate, sometimes employing violent means, throughout the centuries whenever they felt there was just cause. The English Civil War, the most middle-class of revolutions, came about when the king lost the respect of the people, but in the main when we demonstrate it is in the orderly British fashion at an appointed time on a given day.

Although memories of the Toxteth and Brixton riots in the 1980s, and the poll tax riots in London in 1990, are still fresh in the collective memory, the outbreaks of disorder that occurred across the UK last week were unprecedented because of the opportunistic copy-cat element.

Notwithstanding that these riots grew from a small peaceful demonstration in Tottenham against a fatal shooting by the police, after that it was violence for violence’s sake on the part of the ‘social media generation’ acting out scenes typical of the gratuitously violent computer games and movies that are their everyday home entertainment.

The pointlessness of it all was summed up in an interview the morning after with two teenage girls, swigging rosé wine from a bottle as they justified their actions. It was, they sneered, to show the rich people and the police that they could do what they want.

Oh, and naturally, it was the government’s (or to be precise, the Conservatives’) fault.

The last excuse almost had me, because as a lifetime Labour supporter I tend to blame the Tories for everything. In a way, it was successive governments’ fault, but the liberal intelligentsia must also shoulder the blame for creating a society in which respect for authority, morals, religion and family life – the bedrock of all Judeo-Christian societies – has been eroded.

When a nanny state becomes so tangled up with taking human rights to an absurd extreme, and also shackles society with rules, regulations and stifling bureaucracy, and in which the rights of criminals are given equal credence to those of the law-abiding, is it any wonder that children run riot?

In the days leading up to the riots, the media were fixated with a ‘victim’ of a previous riot, the student demonstrations of November last, Charlie Gilmour the adopted son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. His parents and their celebrity friends are campaigning for his release from Wandsworth prison.

His crime? Swinging from the flags on the Cenotaph – the national memorial to those killed fighting for the very freedoms Gilmour was abusing – and also attacking the Rolls-Royce in which the Prince of Wales was travelling.

Gilmour junior’s defence argued that he was not culpable for his actions, as he was high on drink and drugs and had just been rejected by his real father. Poor diddums!

We all have bad days when life seems no longer worth living, but 99.9 per cent of the population don’t feel the need to desecrate national memorials or, come to that, resort to looting, arson and beating up complete strangers.

Furthermore, the brief pleaded, his client was not aware of the significance of the Cenotaph. If that were true, what does it say about the British education system that a public school-educated Cambridge undergraduate could be so ignorant?

At times of crisis or when the nation sorely needs reuniting, invariably a ‘hero’ steps into the spotlight with the exact words that capture the public mood or defuse volatile situations. Churchill was a master of the art with his patriotic speeches. More recently, we have witnessed Earl Spencer’s outstanding oration at his sister’s funeral and Colonel Tim Collins’ battle cry to his men as they were poised to invade Iraq in 2003.

Out of the smouldering embers and bloodied streets of Birmingham came a British Asian van driver to end the pointless hostility.

Just hours after desperately trying to save his son’s life, Tariq Jahan made a dignified appeal for those intent on vengeance to walk away. His poignant words crossed the racial divides, as he spoke not just for his grieving family and neighbours, but also for a nation in shock.

A contented and religious family man who woke up on the fatal day expecting it to be like any other was, by the morrow, a national hero to add to a long and illustrious list.

At a time when words yet again have defeated violence, never were those of Edward Burke more true: ‘In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing.’ The British people will learn and move on and hopefully, be a better society because of good men like Mr Jahan who reject violence.