So what caused the riots? Watching the appalling scenes from the comfort of my sofa I felt there’d been an invisible hurricane – a moment of breakdown in civilisation – as seething mobs of feral seemingly subhuman life committed dreadful acts of robbery and violence. This cannot be tolerated but it must be understood.

One of the first places to start the search for answers is the astonishing body of evidence gathered by The Equality Trust on the effects of income inequality. Again and again international comparisons show that the more inequality there is, the higher the rates of violence and community breakdown, and the lower the levels of trust.

Figures clearly show that the UK is the most unequal country in the world after Singapore, USA and Portugal. The richest 1000 people here have, between them, assets of £353 billion, about double the national deficit. The gap between the richest ten per cent in the UK is now a hundred times that of the poorest.

Rates of divorce tend to be higher in more unequal societies, with family splits and fatherless children the result. Reckless violent behaviour most often comes from young men at the bottom, deprived of all markers of status, usually brought up without a positive father role-model.

So is it really surprising that riots have broken out in the heat of August 2011, perpetrated by people mostly in their 20s, with no prospect of getting a job, nor a chance of buying their own home, getting married nor being able to afford to have children? When the aspiration of a young person wanting to go to university would leave them over £50K in debt? When bankers have been seen taking home bonuses of thousands or millions – even in the wake of the crisis they caused, leading to a massive contraction of simple ‘public good’ services such as buses?

‘Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.’ Frederick Douglas, Speech on the 24th anniversary of emancipation, Washington DC, 1886.