Last week there were four nights of rioting in London and other English towns and cities. I was shocked, but not surprised. The sense of incipient violence and a breakdown of society were high on my list of reasons why I left London and immigrated to the United States three years ago.

Among the casualties of the riots was 68-year-old Richard Bowes, a resident of Ealing, the west London suburb where I lived as a child and went to grade school and high school. He was severely beaten by a mob of young men, apparently because he tried to stop them setting fire to a large garbage can. Taken unconscious to hospital, it took police a couple days to identify him because the mob had stolen his wallet.