Archbishop joins Mizen family in denouncing 'angry Britain'

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has joined with the parents of murdered schoolboy Jimmy Mizen, in speaking out against Britain as a “country of anger”.

Following the conviction of Jake Fahri, who was found guilty of killing Jimmy Mizen, Jimmy’s father, Barry Mizen said, “We have become a country of anger, of selfishness and of fear… It doesn't have to be like this. Let's together try and stop it."

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the Archbishop said he shared in the anxieties of the family.

He said, "They put their finger on an anxiety that is very widely felt and, to a certain extent, I would share it… The sense that we have got a culture where the expression of immediate emotion and the going with immediate instinct is the first thing.”

"People don't seem to be scrutinising their emotions, their desires, in the way that one would like to think mature people do, very often… And the prevalence of casual violence on the streets, especially the streets of this city, is certainly an aspect of that.”

He added, "We have somehow to recover a sense of what it is to be a grown- up, almost, what it is to be able to look at ourselves with clarity; to value courage, fidelity, all those classical virtues and rediscover something of what it is to be human."