I'VE GOT a brilliant idea – why don't we throw a single mother in the village pond and see if she floats? Come on, the single mother is directly responsible for the riots in England, for the economic meltdown and for global warming – if she sinks it's nobody's loss, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
The search for explanations for the English riots has actually been more shocking than the riots themselves. London, like Paris, has serious riots every couple of generations. Unlike us, London has no larger capital to export its young men to – poor old London, eh?
The reasons put forward by commentators for the London riots have varied between white people turning black (the historian David Starkey in a bizarre appearance on Newsnight last Friday), to materialism, to the rise of the one-parent family.
Of these, the one-parent family is by far the most popular explanation for the burning of London. In England there was at least an excuse for journalists writing simplistic rubbish in the heat of the moment. In Ireland, the knowing rush to one-note analysis has been mortifying.
In the single mother we have the whole explanation for the riots in England, the rise in crime, and the ruination of the traditional pint. Look no further, for the liberal feminist conspiracy is a handy catch-all for everyone who hates the modern world and cannot wait to see it fail.
We’ve heard it all before, of course. All those single mothers who were scheming enough to get pregnant on their own, and then started to gnaw away at patriarchy in their spare time.
Next thing you know single mothers are sending their black children out to loot shops and burn cars. Is there no end to the female urge to destroy the social order wherever she finds it?
The rapacious single mother stalks the land, looking for her victims. The single mother slips Rohypnol in some poor man’s drink, she throws him to the floor, she gets on top . . . Oops, just had to pour a bucket of water over a few well-informed media commentators there. They know all about single mothers. Steady, boys.
According to this lot, expert sociologists to a man, it was the liberal feminist conspiracy wot done it. That is, ended the civilised life which, as we all know, existed so blissfully until the arrival of feminism. And liberals. The feminists and the liberals seem to have rocked up together some time in the 1970s. It was liberal feminism that caused that shy woodland creature, the father, to be hunted to extinction. So sad.
The interesting thing is that the people who blame single mothers for the English riots have a parallel grouping in another culture, a grouping which would agree with them about single mothers, the dissolution of traditional patriarchy and the danger of letting women have money of their own. That grouping is the radical Muslims, another cabal of medieval misogyny.
Let us have no talk here about male resistance to monogamy, to contraception or to coming up with a bit of child support. Or about the fact that in our society everybody, from fathers to the official religions, is quite happy that raising children is a woman’s business, be that woman physically beaten, educationally subnormal or an addict.
God forbid we should dirty our hands interfering with the sanctity of the traditional family by offering the mother, or more particularly the children, any help. We only turn to single mothers when some social unrest means we need a scapegoat or two.
Let us have no talk either about the single mothers who were among the few adults with the nerve to challenge mobs of rioters. Of Pauline Pearce in Hackney, leaning on her stick and shouting “Get real, black people.” Or of Louise Smith, who stood outside her hairdressing salon in Wolverhampton and challenged a (female) rioter, who was armed with a hammer, to leave her business alone.
It is at times like these that we really need, not social commentators who can explain the world to us, but Joan Rivers. Joan has watched polygamy sweep through every class and country.
Trust me – as Joan might say – the idea did not come from any female. But it is widespread enough for Joan to make a lot of jokes about. It was Joan who said that the second wife is younger, and the third wife is Asian – as illustrated most recently by the marital history of Rupert Murdoch. Yet funnily enough, you don’t see any of Rupert Murdoch’s children rioting.
I say let Joan come and comment on the London riots: for years she’s been doing routines about shopping with violence. And Joan would surely note, with the rest of us, that superior talk about the materialism which has ruined the lower classes usually comes from people on six-figure salaries. Discuss.
And it may also be worth remembering that the most convinced feminists are often men. Either they are the fathers of daughters or they are the sons of mothers who had to manage on their own. Noel Browne, with his Mother and Child Bill, falls into both categories. So does Barack Obama. But then we all know why Barack Obama turned out so badly.