Dalrymple: The West case - loss of family is loss of protection

The [Fred and Rosemary] West case revealed how easily, in the anonymity of the modern urban environment, and in the midst of crowds, people may disappear;  and how such disappearances are made all the easier by a collective refusal - in the name of individual liberty - of parents to take responsibility for their children, of neighbours to notice what is happening around them, of anyone to brave the mockery of libertines in the defence of some standard of decency.  And the various public agencies - the police, the schools, the social services, the hospitals - proved no substitute for the personal contact that families were once supposed to have provided, but that, in a permissive climate in which tolerance all too often shades into indifference, many provide no longer.  The failure of these agencies was not accidental, but inherent in their nature as bureaucracies: the state is not, and never will be, a substitute for an old-fashioned mum and dad.

Our Culutre... p271