So, we have Cherie telling us she is frightened for her children on the streets of London one day and the next we get this murder story - a “Woman on Woman” knife attack within yards of the Home Secretary's house!

To top it all, today’s Times has a two page special on the scourge of knife crime. Top policewoman, Barbara Wilding, Chief Constable of South Wales no less, saying

A gang culture based on violence and drugs has become a way of life in deprived parts of many larger English cities and cannot be tackled by policing alone…In many of our larger cities, in areas of extreme deprivation, there are almost feral groups of very angry young people.

And what does she attribute this collapse in society to?

Many have experienced family breakdown, and in place of parental and family role models, the gang culture is now established. Tribal loyalty has replaced family loyalty and gang culture based on violence and drugs is a way of life.

I don’t know about South Wales, but this all rings absolutely true to me living in London. My own kids are frightened to walk down the street – and I do not live in a “deprived” part of England by any stretch of imagination.

I have three degrees in social anthropology. In all my many years of study, I did not come across any society where this kind of collapse was charted. Modern students of the subject have no need to go to live in a mud hut or up the Amazon to study exotic tribes and their customs. There is more than enough anthropological interest for them to look at right here in Blighty.

The Masai know a thing or two about society. The central unit of the Masai is the age set and all boys from the age of about 12 – 25 are in the same set of individually named generations of “Morans” or warriors. Up to the age of around 25 they are more or less removed from the mainstream of society and taught the skills necessary to be responsible adults. Only when they are initiated can they marry and take on leadership roles and own their own herds of cattle.

As I say, the Masai may have much to teach us. 

Perhaps an enterprising Masai PhD student should come over and report on our “customs and traditions”. I am sure he or she would have some very interesting findings – and maybe some solutions.