Broadwater Farm was built in the late 1960’s as a high density housing project in the Totenham District of London. It was supposed to be an experiment providing 1063 apartments for low-income residents. But it became the center of riots in 1985 and again just this August in 2011.

People speculate that the cause is young, unemployed men and the gang culture, peppered with racial problems with blacks from Africa and other former colonies from the now deceased British Empire.

But that is where I’d look for causes. Remember, this is no longer Churchill’s England where he talked of fighting for both the Mother Country and the Empire. The Empire was not just a glorious thing. It might also have been a safety valve for the ferment that is now convulsing the country. Certainly Australia was a prison colony. But certainly other malcontents must have found their way out of the Mother Country to various points around the world where they could seek their fortune and attempt to make a living.

So no wonder everybody riots and attacks the class system, resenting the “haves” when they are the “have nots”. The Empire that gave them the chance to become a “have” is now gone.