The disgraceful images of wanton destruction, theft, arson and plain old thuggery we’ve witnessed across many of England’s major cities are abhorrent to all decent, law-abiding members of our society but – I would respectfully suggest – not in the least bit surprising.
One of the most harrowing scenes involved 20-year-old Malaysian student Mohammed Ashraf Haziq, who – as some of you may have watched on YouTube or last night’s main ITV1 news bulletin – was robbed in broad daylight during the Hackney rioting by a feral gang whose constituent parts had earlier helped him to his feet in what appeared to be an act of compassion.
Having played at being ‘The Good Samaritans’, those involved then proceeded to steal Haziq’s mobile phone and wallet from his rucksack as the poor lad stood bleeding, disoriented and helpless.
How on Earth did our society come to create people like Mohammed Ashraf Haziq’s assailants? Swathes of morally-bereft individuals who think – and most times do – what they like, when they choose and to Hell with the consequences (if, indeed, there are any).
Young adults who are illiterate or innumerate – or both – save for the ability to find their way around a mobile phone keypad and generate ‘text speak’.
Something, somewhere in the notional ‘system’ that defines our social fabric is failing us all… and in an extremely bad way.
No justification for the mayhem
At this point the libertarian lobby’s wailing is tangible. ‘These people have been marginalised in society,’ they cry. ‘They don’t have a job, and their employment prospects aren’t great. They live in a rough area. They reside in dysfunctional and often one-parent families.’
All of which may be true to a greater or lesser extent, but absolutely none of which can be used to justify or excuse the mass criminality wrought since the weekend.
Criminality which, in some instances, will surely force businesses to close for good and has already left innocent, decent citizens terrified to venture forth within their own neighbourhood (or, worse still, homeless and with no possessions bar the clothes in which they stand).
‘You reap what you sow’ is an old adage and, at this present moment, it’s so very apt as a pivotal phrase that could be justifiably used to underpin what’s perhaps best described as our ‘public pavement anarchy’.
Apparently triggered as a result of 29-year-old Mark Duggan being shot dead by police in Tottenham last Thursday, the subsequent rioting in London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester and elsewhere – with long-established businesses burned to the ground and ill-gotten gains brazenly displayed on social media websites – is more the by-product of several factors prevalent in ‘UK 2011’.
Those factors are what many commentators believe to be a woefully weak judiciary out of step with the realities of everyday life and a social malaise seemingly set in stone among certain tracts of our society.
On top of that, there’s a short-in-number police service boldly attempting to do its job with one hand tied behind its collective back by those who have governed us and – speaking of same – a long, snaking line of feckless politicians afraid to offend while only too willing to appease.
Judicial side of the equation
Addressing the judicial side of the equation first, then, it’s plainly obvious to most that there’s no real deterrent in place for punishing those intent on the types of criminality (not to mention even more serious offences) being perpetrated on our streets at present.
For years and years, hordes of convicted offenders have been handed down ‘Sentencing Lite’. Mere ‘slaps on the wrist’, if you like.
How many custodial sentences are actually served to the full term? How many criminals are being let out on to our streets early only to reoffend in either the same or even a more aggressive way?
We’re always being told there aren’t enough prisons to house offenders. Well, there are plenty of construction workers looking for employment. If we can find vast sums of money for all manner of spurious ventures that invariably turn into White Elephants, why can’t we generate the cash needed to build more penitentiaries?
Crucially, how are the ‘Youth of Today’ ever likely to learn the genuine difference between right and wrong – and the gravity of what they’re up to – if they’re never brought to book in a meaningful fashion for stepping over that accepted imaginary line that separates good from the despicable?
While considering this subject – and if you’ll permit me to escalate matters a stage further from the present discourse – when is a life sentence for murder actually going to mean life?
If it’s proven that you have deliberately brought to an end the existence of another human being, surely all that you deserve is to pay by having your own freedoms removed for good (by that I mean incarceration until you shuffle off this mortal coil)?
To be blunt, some might say that cold-blooded murderers have waived any future access to their Human Rights.
No respect for any kind of authority
Back on central topic, we appear to live in a society wherein far too many ‘parents’ – and I use the term loosely here – of a certain age are singularly failing to instil any kind of respect for authority in their offspring.
These parents are predictably swift in blaming teachers for their own children’s lack of basic manners and any kind of moral compass when, in truth, this form of educational guidance is the preserve of the home environment and the mother and father: the role models (or at least they should be).
By common consent, lack of a moral compass generally means zero susceptibility to either notions of guilt or feelings of shame. Most likely, that’s what characterises this week’s band of yobs.
In my day, teachers were allowed to rebuke pupils for bad behaviour (be it unsavoury language or even, God forbid, physical violence). Now, the parents of Johnny Disinterested might well file a law suit if any action is taken against ‘their boy’ for proven wrongdoing, and the teacher could then lose his or her livelihood when guilty of no offence. There’s something fundamentally awry with that scenario.
Without wishing to tar all teenagers (and early 20-somethings) with the same brush, it must be said that plenty are ‘savvy’ and ‘street wise’. The anarchy-bound among them know what a police officer can and cannot do in terms of restraint and arrest because they’ve made it their business to find out.
It’s certainly a ridiculous state of legal affairs when a police officer cannot even grab one of these ne’er-do-wells by the collar for fear of the parents – or the individual themselves – taking out sanctions against him or her for alleged ‘assault’.
In microcosm, it could be said that this is the end result of widespread emasculation of the police service in the face of overwhelming – and stubbornly held – liberalism.
Actions speak far louder than words
Previous Home Secretaries – among them Jacqui Smith, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke – have threatened to ‘get tough’ on the ASBO types (the car thieves, the corner shop robbers, the arsonists, the knife-wielders, the verbal and physical aggressors) who continue to menace UK communities of all shapes and sizes by day and under cover of darkness.
In truth, its never really happened, has it? The public walk has never matched the political talk. It’s nothing but hugely spun rhetoric, for the most part dutifully belted out on the hustings merely to secure your vote immediately prior to a local or General Election.
We’ve been continually fed the line that criminality in Britain per se is on the decline. However, to these trained eyes it would appear those statistics have rarely matched the gravity and sheer plethora of horrifying stories we view and read across the national news media on a daily basis either on TV or online.
Speaking after a COBRA emergency planning meeting held earlier this week, Prime Minister David Cameron stated that a “major fightback [against the looters] was working”.
As of yesterday, there had been over 750 arrests, with a huge police operation in place to apprehend further culprits “picture by picture”.
Sentences are now being passed round-the-clock on the rioting, robbing miscreants, with courts sitting through the night on Tuesday of this week to prosecute some of those involved.
What kind of sentencing has been dished out, though? Are we going to be told the full facts?
According to our political leader, any continued violence is “unacceptable”. Tell us something we didn’t already know, Mr Cameron.
The Prime Minister has also called for “a clearer code of responsibility” – whatever that may mean – to fix the pockets of what he describes as “a broken and sick society” in which tracts of youngsters exhibit no allegiances (except, maybe, to the gang mentality), are bereft of goals in life and harbour little if any comprehension of holding down a 9-to-5.
Is the dependency culture a root cause?
Is the extent of the welfare state to blame in all of this lawlessness? The ‘something for nothing’ brigade does appear to have held much greater sway this last decade, that’s for sure.
People today want maximum reward for minimum outlay. Sorry, but real life just doesn’t – or shouldn’t – work that way.
Rather, the culture of ‘effort equals reward’ ought to be the dominant phraseology that’s outwardly manifested across the piece.
For anyone to blame these riots solely on the Government’s Austerity 2010-2011 measures is, frankly, risible.
“It will not do for a moment to claim that the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution,” writes political commentator Max Hastings.
“Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang,” he continues.
“This is not, however, because they are the victims of neglect. It is because it’s fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because no-one makes them be anything different or better.”
In praise of the Boys In Blue
Just now, all police service leave has been cancelled. 16,000 sworn officers took to the streets on Tuesday night to put themselves in harm’s way, and they are to be commended for doing so.
Indeed, chief constable Meredydd Hughes (ACPO’s lead on uniformed operations) is quoted as saying: “We should all pay tribute to the bravery of the police officers who have faced extreme danger throughout the disorder of recent days.” Amen to that.
“In the face of this violence and aggression, they risked their own safety in order to maintain the peace and protect their fellow citizens from harm,” asserts Hughes. “They have shown great professionalism and courage in the face of some difficult and competing challenges, and they are to be thanked for their commitment to their communities. We wish those that are injured a speedy and full recovery.”
Again, chief constable Hughes is 100% on message.
Returning to Westminster, David Cameron has stated: “We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by, and tougher penalties if they cross the line. Restoring a stronger sense of responsibility across our society, in every town, in every street, in every estate is something I’m determined to do.”
Fine words indeed, but that’s all they are right now: fine platitudes. Frankly, we’ve heard them all before.
That’s all prefaced by the Prime Minister’s statement: “Whatever resources the police need, they will get” (including, apparently, contingency plans for water cannons to be made available at 24 hours’ notice).
Politicians, judges, the police and teachers
Parliament is being recalled today for one session amid the summer recess in order to discuss developments. Given the overt politicisation of policing (notably since the mid-2000s, and no better defined than by New Labour’s ‘target culture’), and their central role in combating this latest fracas, the Boys In Blue will surely frame a large part of the House of Commons debate.
What price now, one wonders, the proposed 20%-25% cuts in policing budgets put forward with such fanfare by Cameron and Co?
If this week has taught us anything it’s that current UK policing numbers simply don’t stack up.
Similarly, what price the perceived primacy of criminals’ rights over those of the law-abiding majority?
The politicians, judges (and other legal mandarins), teachers, social services representatives and the police must thrash out in tandem what needs to be done to tame a society that, for numerous reasons and on several levels, has undeniably ‘gone wrong’.
In short, it’s time our political masters walked the talk.
Brian Sims is Editor of Security Management Today Online and Group Content Editor for United Business Media’s Security Portfolio