Pulling out the Bricks

Lessening the impact of social structure collapse

Jenga MPs are returning from summer vacations to face a nation of multiple problems from housing small boat migrants in hotels to dealing with a faltering economy.

But perhaps the most pernicious problem with the potential to bankrupt the state is the vast army of idle (in the sense of not being productively employed) workers who live on state benefits. A large proportion of these ‘sicknote workers’ suffer from the general term of ‘depression’. As far as I am aware there are no national statistics available to show causes of this phenomenon. All politicians and most academics avoid the truth which has “stumbled in the streets” of our cities (Isa 59:14). But various studies have shown a strong association with family breakdown, which lies at the root of most of our social problems today.

Family breakdown key driver of underachievement

The GCSE results published last month show a startling connection between achievement levels of children from different family backgrounds. Writing in The Spectator, Edward Davies of the Centre for Social Justice links the achievement of children to family background. He says, “The more stable your home life, the better you do.” The exam results show that children from poor non-white families, where “almost 6 in 10” children live with married parents, do better in school than their white counterparts where only 2 children in 10 live with married parents.

A man-made phenomenon

The chronic underperformance of white working-class children from unstable family backgrounds is a national scandal and a gross social injustice to the children. But it is purely a man-made phenomenon. We are today reaping the harvest of 80 years of secular humanist policies aimed at destroying marriage and family stability. As a senior lecturer in Sociology in London University I have been studying family life for most of that period. Ever since the end of the Second World War, there has been a steady campaign to destabilise society by attacking marriage and family life.

We are today reaping the harvest of 80 years of secular humanist policies aimed at destroying marriage and family stability.

As early as 1946, Dr Brock-Chisholm, the first Director of the World Health Organisation, said: “The concept of right and wrong is a barrier to developing a civilised way of life. This concept of right and wrong should be eradicated. Children have to be freed from prejudices forced upon them by religious authorities and parents.” He said, “Sex education should be introduced for all children; eliminating the values of the elders by force if necessary.”¹

Parliamentary Acts destabilising the family structure

Since the 1950s, there has been a steady stream of parliamentary legislation driven by secular humanists of successive differing Governments aiming to downgrade traditional standards of family and marriage and social morality in Britain.

This began in 1951 with The Fraudulent Mediums Act which abolished the Witchcraft Act and legalised witchcraft that had been banned in Britain for centuries. Then The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 paved the way for publications of an explicit nature through cinema, television and the internet.

There followed a string of liberalising measures, such as the Abortion Act (1967) that has allowed some 10 million children to be killed in the womb since then. The Sexual Offences Act (1967) legalised homosexual relationships between consenting individuals. This was followed by The Theatres Act (1968) that virtually abolished censorship in the theatre. The Divorce Reform Act (1969) introduced the principle of the irretrievable breakdown of marriage as the sole ground for divorce.

Then came the Children’s Act (1989), which removed the traditional rights of parents and gave child welfare rights to the state. This was followed by The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act that legalised the use of embryos for experimentation and legalised abortion on demand for babies with disabilities right up to the time of birth. (In Britain, handicapped children have no rights of protection in the womb.)

Then there followed a number of Acts directly undermining the status of marriage and the value of a mother and father in a stable relationship for the procreation and raising of children. This direct attack began with The Finance Act (1999) that removed the married person’s tax allowance, degrading the value of marriage. The Civil Partnership Act (2004) then gave equal rights to civil partnerships, The Gender Recognition Act (2004) gave equal rights to transsexual people and The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act (2013) redefined marriage, allowing two persons of the same gender to enter legally recognised marriage.

Deliberate manipulation of education

Alongside all these attacks upon marriage and stable family life, there have been deliberate attempts to shield children from learning the truth of what their adults have been doing to destroy stable family life for the past two or three generations. There has been a persistent drive in the national educational system to hide the truth about marriage from children in the nation’s schools. In particular the whole school education curriculum has been designed to resist teaching of marriage in the schools and minimise the importance and significance of that institution.

Marriage is presented as one of a number of equally acceptable family relationships. This is despite many academically sound sociological studies showing the superior value of stable family life for the education of children and for the health and well-being of adults. The studies also show the high level of mental health problems that result from family breakdown – which is what we are seeing affecting the economy and our Health Service today.

Many academically sound sociological studies show... the superior value of stable family life for the education of children and for the health and well-being of adults.

A Gallup poll in November 1996 reported that 75% of the public believed that schools should teach that marriage is a good thing. But just two months later, in January 1997, and the Schools’ Curriculum and Assessment Authority unashamedly adopted the humanist policy of refusing to put marriage on the schools’ curriculum.

It is widely recognised by sociologists that the marriage-based family is integral to a stable society. Any changes in the structure, role and function of the family affect all the other social structures of society. Undermining the family has an inevitably detrimental effect upon the whole of society and the physical health and mental health of the nation.

Undermining our foundations leads to collapse

Moral values are learnt primarily within the family and also, ideally, in schools. The undermining of parental influence and the use of the education system as a tool of social change has been pursued by successive Governments in Britain throughout the past 80 years. We are now reaching a critical point in the stability of the social system.

We are now reaching a critical point in the stability of the social system.

When I was a boy, I used to enjoy playing with a box of wooden bricks. We would construct a tower and then play a game of taking it in turns to pull out one brick without collapsing the tower. The loser was the last one to pull out a brick that caused the tower to fall. This is what our politicians and social reformers have been doing in Britain since the end of the Second World War. They are slowly pulling out the bricks.

We are now drawing near to the point where social order and the whole social structure of the nation will come apart. In purely sociological terms alone, the collapse of the whole social system is virtually inevitable. What is, at the very minimum, essential in lessening the impact of this is a total change of policy recognising the significance of family and marriage in Britain as God gave it to us in the Creation.

You cannot play fast and loose with the basic principles built into the whole of Creation and clearly set out in the Bible.

Notes
1. (From an article ‘Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress’ in Psychiatry Volume 9, 1946)
Image by Nik on unsplash.com

Rev Dr Clifford Hill, 06/09/2025

Feedback:

	(Guest)	05/09/2025 13:11
Clifford is absolutely right to link the phenomenon of ‘sicknote workers’ suffering from the general term of ‘depression’ to the breakdown of family life, But first, it's important to understand how the benefits system works. The main benefit for unemployed and low-paid people is Universal Credit payable at the standard amount. Recognition of Limited Capability for Work by reason of a health condition is written into the legislation, with the effect that your work search responsibilities are adjusted to take account of this. You don't get any extra money of you have LCW (though you used to), but you do get an additional amount of you have Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity. The Work Capability Assessment focuses not so much on your illness/disease/disablement, as on what it prevents you from doing. The other benefit related to sickness/ disability is Personal Independence Payment. Unlike UC, it isn't means-tested and the amount you can claim isn't affected by whether (and for how many hours) you work. The purpose of this benefit is to defray the extra costs incurred as a result of being disabled, according to your mobility needs and your care needs. Many claimants of PIP do work, and they are dependent on this benefit for their ability to afford to work. What we have noticed over the past several months and years is an increase in the number of younger people who claim these benefits. One possible explanatory factor is incidentally reported in Baroness Casey's National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse published in June of this year. Page 93 of the Audit shows a graph showing a time series for children placed on child protection plans per year, by category of abuse, 1993/94 2023/24. The numbers in relation to physical abuse, sexual abuse, and multiple categories have either flatlined or fallen. Since 1993 the number of children placed on a care plan for neglect has risen from about 6,000 to a peak of about 34,000 in 2019. For emotional abuse, there has been a marked increase from just over 5,000 in 2004 to a peak of about 25,000 in 2021. The next largest category for 2021 was physical abuse, at about 5,000. So, it doesn't take a great deal of thought to realise that these children, now grown to adulthood, are suffering from disabling anxiety and/or depression, or more serious mental illnesses, that goes well beyond inability to "navigate the normal ups and downs of life".
	Michael Petek	05/09/2025 15:15
The above post is mine - Michael Petek. The site logged me in as a guest again.
	Jock Stein	06/09/2025 09:15
'Pulling out the bricks' takes me to Isaiah 9:10 - one hopes that when people see the bricks falling today they don't simply try to build back with more of the same only dressed up better.
	Paul M Hendry	10/09/2025 17:00
Clifford doesn't mention the consequences of the Women's Liberation Movement both in society generally and the mainstream churches' adoption of women in leadership.