Young People and Gang Violence: Thoughts

Two of the most recent murders of youngsters by youngsters in London have taken place within a mile of my house: one in the little street where I used to live, and one in the tower block where I used to visit my then partner. Bringing up three sons in Hackney, one just a few years off teenage, certainly focuses your mind on the issue.

For a long time, the left has left the political terrain of 'crime' to the right wing, as though it is not our natural territory. I tried to address this in an article some years ago and I hope that many of its arguments are relevant to the situation today. But I guess that more needs to be said.

With this latest issue of gang violence, mainly with knives, it seems that not even the right wing are confidently declaring their solutions - maybe even they baulk at the idea of capital punishment for screwed-up youth. I don't think I've ever seen so many political rabbits caught in headlights.

Much of what response there has been has focused on ridding the streets of guns and knives. I wouldn't particularly protest against this on principle - initiatives such as amnesties seem reasonable to me. I'm rather less keen on the idea of compulsory searches at schools and elsewhere, as I can't help but think that even if they might confiscate a few weapons, they may also create a siege mentality, resentment and 'challenge' to the worst offenders to get round the system and so worsen the problem in the long term.

Around a year and a half ago, I witnessed the police searching passengers travelling through Bethnal Green tube station, selected 'at random'. Funnily enough, I wasn't collared and marched through the metal detectors: somehow, I don't think that middle-aged white women were on the target list. I stopped and watched for ten minutes, and every single person they pulled was a young ethnic minority man. So I challenged the head copper, who denied it all and made sure a couple of white people were pulled too.

It is also notable that the use of ASBOs, dispersal orders or other new powers created by New Labour has not prevented the outbreak of gang violence.

Gang violence is certainly linked to poverty and inequality. Having no space of your own in a cramped home, on a rundown estate, unable to afford constructive leisure activities, parents out working long hours because they have no choice, unable to aspire to or afford higher education, all while fat cats ostentatiously profiteer at our expense ... On top of this, the lack of resources to public services for working-class people contributes too. Large classes in over-stretched schools mean that some pupils don't get the attention and support they need. These are obviously all factors in driving some young people into violent behaviour.

But equally obviously, it is more complex than this. Not everyone brought up in poverty ends up stabbing someone, and not everyone who stabs someone can not afford entry to the local sports club. We have to ask ourselves more complex questions.

If you join up because the gang has 'got your back', then why do you feel that no-one else - community, family, the authorities that are supposed to protect you - have your back? Why, similarly, do those not give you the sense of belonging that a gang provides?

If it is true that the random, unprovoked killings may be some sort of gang initiation, then why is it that gang would require someone to prove themselves like this, and what exactly is it that they are proving?

What sort of definition of masculinity has our society established when for some boys, extreme violence is part of the process of becoming a man? But on the other hand, why are girls getting more and more involved in this sort of thing too?

And what about parenting? "We blame the parents" has always been the refrain of the right. But parenting is pretty much the hardest job in the world, carried out by rank amateurs with no training and precious little support, and only the amateurs who brought them up as role models. Parents do remarkably well in the circumstances, but if some mess up, that's hardly surprising.

With economic crisis looming, the crisis of youth violence may also get worse, and may be both fuelled and harnessed by a resurgent fascist movement. There may never have been a more urgent time for the left to get its act together, both in understanding and addressing these issues and in fighting for a reinvigorated labour movement, so that young people want to join our gang instead.

Satisfaction Survey

The Tribunals Service has written to me asking me to take part in a survey on my experiences of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal.

Ha ha ha.

Bosses' 'Blacklist'

Have a gander at this. It seems that bosses are getting together to conspire to refuse jobs to workers who may have been accused of wrongdoing.

Yes, that's right, accused. Not even found guilty. Even if you were exonerated - even if the accusation was malicious - employers are preparing to have it follow you around forever and ensure that you never darken their morally-superior doorsteps with your demand to work for them and help them make profits.

None of that bloody 'innocent until proven guilty' lark round here, no sirree. You might have to endure that woolly liveral nonsense in a court of law, but when it comes to allowing members of the capitalist class to pick and choose who they exploit, no such standards need apply.

Mind you, while there will hopefully be an outcry against this persecution of the innocent, let me also say that this is outrageious treatment of the guilty too. Someone who has in fact been dishonest or nicked from their boss may well expect a punishment, but they also deserve a second chance. There is such a notion of 'paying your debt' and then being allowed to move on and have a fresh start. In my experience, bosses give themselves and their gopher managers second, third and thousandth chances on a regular basis.

Conspiring to permanently exclude a person from gainful employment for eternity seems to me the most effective way possible to enlist them in a life of crime.

A better class of gun crime under Boris ?

For a more considered response click here.

'Immigrant Crime Wave' Revealed As Lie

This week, a police report showed that immigrants are, in fact, not the bunch of criminals that some right-wing rags and ignorant bigots would have you believe. It seems that even in the few crimes where a disproportionate number of perpetrators are foreign, the same disproportion of victims are also foreign. It’s bad news for the BNP, but hey, the truth sometimes hurts. Bad news for the Daily Mail too, but here’s betting it won’t stop them reporting immigrant crime as though it is some sort of rampaging foreign disease threatening to overwhelm us Brits.

I’m old enough to remember that until about the 1980s, newspapers regularly used to refer to a criminal’s race, but only if they were non-white. So you would read that ‘a black man mugged an old lady’, but if a white man mugged an old lady, he would just be ‘a man’. But by twenty or so years ago, a steadily increasing howl of protest had put a stop to this particular brand of racist reporting.

These days, though, I regularly read in the rags that ‘an immigrant’ or ‘a failed asylum seeker’ has been apprehended for drink-driving, or burglary, or assault, or whatever. I never read that ‘a native Brit’ has committed an offence. So the form of reporting that became unacceptable about race and colour in the 1980s is still acceptable about immigration status.

Not only does this fuel presumptions about an immigrant crime wave that this week’s report proved to be false, it also shows that racists who can no longer parade their prejudices about blacks can still direct them against immigrants. And the fact that they prey on people’s genuine fear of crime may get them an audience but is actually sickening.

Going Walkabout

After the Home Secretary said she would be scared to walk around Hackney at night, local MP Diane Abbott took some fellow politicians for a stroll in the borough.

All well and good, except that they went for their walkabout in Stoke Newington! Not much to be scared of there, unless you nurse a fear of literary types beating you about with polysyllabic words, or live in terror of being knocked over by a local yummy mummy taking Hugo and Poppy for a power-push in the latest three-wheeler buggy. Honestly, the worst fight you are likely to see on Church Street is Mark Fischer, Dave Osler and Clive Bradley arguing over the last bottle of Shiraz in Clissold Wines.

Ok, so she also took them to the Smalley Road estate, site of a murder last year. But what about visiting the Pembury, or 'murder mile' in Lower Clapton, or numerous other places? Or how about walking around without a camera crew following you? It's not like most attackers like to be caught on film, is it?

Or how about encouraging a constructive discussion on tackling Hackney residents' fears, rather than some cheap publicity stunt?