I watched an old British film from 1961 the other day, set in London. The landmarks may still be the same but everything else has changed drastically in the almost 50 years since. In particular, the old social bonds have weakened dramatically. In those days neighbours knew each other; the local butcher and baker greeted you warmly in the morning and families watched the same TV programmes, simply because there were only two channels.

Nowadays, one child is on an internet chat room, the other is on his mobile, the parents watch soaps on separate TVs while gorging themselves on a microwaved meal. We have too much choice and not enough family activities. You could call it a kind of privatisation of leisure, which, by the way, has been another factor in the weakening of socialism over the years.

London in the 1960s may have been ruled by the Kray twins, but mindless acts of violence perpetrated against old people in any part of the country would have been unthinkable. If an authority figure remonstrated with a group of misbehaving youths, the offenders would have stood to attention at a mere raised word, not punched the man in the face as happened to a Conservative MP recently in Bournemouth.

Why is it that in Mladost (my suburb of Sofia) you don’t see gangs of marauding youths attacking passers by? Too often we have skirted this issue or made excuses for British violence.

In any country there has to be a higher purpose to one’s existence rather than just scrambling to make money. An individual must feel wedded to something: his family, his country, his church or his local community centre. If you don’t feel that then a surrogate "family" takes over, often in the form of a gang. Why did this sense of belonging disappear in Britain? Instability must be the key.

My wife’s family have lived in the same block in Mladost for 35 years. Most neighbours have also lived there for a similar time span. So the much vaunted social mobility in Britain could be a double edged sword. I moved seven times by the time I was 18. In doing so you lose connection with the people around you.

The huge immigration in the UK created urban ghettoes, displaced youths and triggered white flight on a huge scale. Meanwhile, the liberal establishment promotes the benefits of "diversity" from deepest Dorset or leafy hedge rowed gardens in Richmond and Wimbledon. And their children go to all white private schools. They don’t walk the talk. Not that violence is confined to immigrants at all.

No way. Britain can be a barbaric place; new arrivals quickly discover that the Britain of the bowler hat and Roger Moore-gent is a myth, so they adjust in the only way they know how. The children of Roma in Belfast have already learned the hard way that keeping a low profile is no guarantee of acceptance.

They will adapt in order to survive by cultivating the behaviour of those around them. Too often the price of admission and acquiring "respect" - that ghastly word which has been so misappropriated and taken on a sinister urban connotation - is to become violent. So I ask again, who’s better off - the children of Mladost or the children of Belfast or Islington? I know the answer.