The police in Birmingham, Britain’s second biggest city, have announced an initiative to try and persuade young people in inner city areas to reject the pressures that lead them into gang membership, and then further into gun and knife crime.
As usual, this is an example of the system burying its head in the proverbial sand, and then talking out of its arse to persuade the nice-but-dumb denizens of Middle England that it’s addressing a problem which they find uncomfortable.
Inner city areas are not in the same world as that occupied by Middle England. It’s a totally different culture with different rules, expectations and lifestyles. And it isn’t the same world as that in which the politicians and policemen live, because politicians and policemen are among the staunchest citizens of Middle England. I would hazard a strong guess that there’s hardly an MP in Westminster who’s even entered an inner city neighbourhood, apart from maybe the odd manicured and well-orchestrated official visit, so how on earth can they ever begin to know what makes it tick? The police go in there of course, but only, by their own admission, as far as they have to. And, if my experience of three years working for an inner city charity is a reliable guide, when they do go in, they take with them a default attitude set firmly on ‘hostility.’ They regard it as enemy territory, which of course it is.
Ironically, the culture of inner city neighbourhoods was created by the same system that politicians, policemen and the rest of Middle England believe in and defend so vigorously. There’s little doubt that the major contributory factor in its creation was the move towards an aggressive and competitive free market economy led by Mrs Thatcher. America has had the same problem for much longer than we have, and for the same reason. We had the same situation in Britain during the Victorian period, and for the same reason.
If we really want to lead young people away from gang culture and its related problems, there’s no point in having ‘initiatives.’ We have to change the whole bloody system.
2 comments:
You sure about that? Hong Kong and Singapore have aggressively competitive free market economies yet are among the safest cities in the world.
There's a limit to how sure anybody can be about anything, GB. But it's a firmly held opinion based on the coincidence of timing and the sort of stresses that occur when the 'losers' become segregated into ghettos. Britain's inner cities were certainly a lot safer before Thatcher.
Maybe there's something about oriental cultural conditioning that makes a difference in Singapore and Hong Kong, because the same could probably be said about Tokyo. Or maybe it could be to do with which parts of the city are taken into account when measuring safety levels.
Post a Comment