Isle of War: England's social collapse.(violent crime wave)

For many years, Britons consoled themselves for their loss of global influence with the reflection that at least they lived in a civilized and relatively crime-free country, unlike the all-conquering Americans, whose savagery and violence was the subject of condescending self- congratulation. In like fashion, Americans tended to think that Britain was an admirably law-abiding and honest society, unlike their own.

Things have changed dramatically in the last few decades, though perceptions lag behind. From being one of the most crime-free societies that have ever existed, Britain has gone straight to the top of the crime standings. Figures recently published by the United Nations show that Britons are now several times more likely to be the victim of every kind of violent crime, with the admittedly important exception of murder, than Americans. No house is safe from theft, no car, no possession whatsoever.

One sign of the general reign of insecurity in Britain is the traffic jams on our roads in the mornings and afternoons during the school year. Ninety percent of British children are now driven to school by their parents, all other means of going there being too dangerous. During school vacations, our roads are much freer of traffic.

Of course, it is the poorer sections of society that are most affected by the crime tsunami. (Burglars are lazy or stupid or simply poorly supplied with transport: They mainly burgle the houses of people who live near them.) It is extremely difficult to get this rather elementary fact into the heads of the British intelligentsia, which for decades has preferred to believe that, by siding with the criminals rather than with their victims, and by promoting measures that have made it ever more difficult to catch and punish criminals, it is expressing sympathy for the poor. In fact, the poor need the protection of the police and the law far more than the rich do.

Large areas of Britain are now effectively beyond the reach of the law. My patients not infrequently relate that their houses have been broken into three times in a year. The criminals are merciless and have no respect for age, or compassion for the unfortunate. They will rob people in wheelchairs and wait outside banks for the elderly and infirm to emerge. An old working-class patient of mine, who lived through the Depression and lost members of her family during the war, both in the armed services and during air raids, has been robbed and burgled so many times that she now treats all her possessions as temporary or disposable. The mentally handicapped are favored prey, as they cannot fight back and hardly even realize what is happening to them. If there is honor among thieves, I have yet to see it.

The level of violence in British society beggars description. Last night, the body of a man who had been shot dead was unceremoniously dumped outside the door of my hospital. When I was in training as a doctor -- not so very many years ago -- I would be called to the emergency room to see a man with a stab-wound because it was felt by my teachers that there would not be many chances for me to see another such injury, so rare were incidents of violence at the time.

Casual violence is now woven into the fabric British life. No baseball is played in Britain, and it is all but impossible to buy a baseball here, but sales of baseball bats are extremely strong, as weapons against one's neighbors. Whenever a young man tells me that he has suffered a head injury such as a fractured skull, I ask, "Baseball bat?" to which the answer, nine times out of ten, is yes.