Just one thought – I seem to remember Alan Clark getting into trouble for shrugging off football hooliganism because that was the spirit that won us the war. So Right and Left can both find reasons to get dewy-eyed over those glassings at Milwall..!

I’d also agree that the problem with the reliance on intrusive social controls has been their unintended consequences – that while dealing with a particular problem, they create others. I do remain to be convinced though that those social controls don’t result in a net reduction of levels of violence ceteris parabis. That’s not to say those controls are therefore good policy (there are other factors to consider – enforcement costs, compliance costs, etc.), but it is to warn against the view that all we need is to set people free and they’ll live in peace and harmony (with a brawl only for those who’ll want it). My sense is that those controls are a poor response to a problem – but that the problem is still very much there.

violence becomes more random over time – in previous years, yobbery was more concentrated in particular places (football stadiums, perhaps) which you could avoid if you wanted, but now flare-ups happen in more general settings.

Start a ruck at a football match these days and see how far you get. (There you go – it’s all the government’s fault for stopping those poor ickle hooligans from having their fun. Why yes, I do read the Guardian…)

Seriously – I don’t go to football, so I guess it’s easy for me to look back on the good old days of getting glassed by the Millwall massive (as they almost certainly weren’t called). But I do think you can liken football violence to prescription heroin – it’s not good, it doesn’t seem like anything the state should condone, but it responds to a demand which isn’t going to go away, and it may be better (more controlled, more localised) than the alternative.

I think the issue here is (as Eddie started out and Andrew reminds) about a creeping shift, away from civility and towards a more coarse and brutish social landscape. Another aspect of this is that violence becomes more random over time – in previous years, yobbery was more concentrated in particular places (football stadiums, perhaps) which you could avoid if you wanted, but now flare-ups happen in more general settings.

Nor do I, but I do think that it has become more nihilistic, violent, and overt. That’s the problem.

I’m no disciplinarian – you may have gathered that from the post itself. I’m just talking about a failure of the processes of socialisation, something which until now I feel we have taken for granted.

It sounds like you’re having a Road to Damascus moment. You’ll be a hanging and flogging blue rinse Tory in five years time.

But we have to accept that there is a growing problem. Whether you call it a decline in respect, a growth in anti-social behaviour or the horrendous word “yobbery”, most people agree that certainly something is changing out there.

I used the example of Solihull – which was until recently rock-solid Tory heartland. It is very affluent, and yet there has in recent years been a surprising rise in low level crime and “anti-social behaviour”. Garry’s example of an Aberdeen suburb is also very interesting. I can also add the town of Beverley in North Yorkshire to the list based on my experiences… another Conservative area.

Something certainly is going on. The reasons vary throughout the land, but at the heart of it is this failure to communicate ideals and lines onto one another. I’m no disciplinarian – you may have gathered that from the post itself. I’m just talking about a failure of the processes of socialisation, something which until now I feel we have taken for granted.

Purely anecdotal but:
My parents have lived in a reasonably wealthy suburb of Aberdeen for the last 15 years. I visit often. The main shopping centre is now populated by yobs every weekend. And I mean yobs. There has been a steady increase in antisocial behaviour. Shutters have had to be installed on all the shop windows as they were constantly being broken. There are now a large number of CCTV cameras. If I go to the shops in the evening there is a 50/50 chance that a large group of neds will ask if I will buy them booze or fags. None of this was the case 10 years ago.

I agree that New Labour plays on these issues but I believe they are there all the same. I was no angel as a teenager (in the 80’s) but we took our pleasures more discretely.
BTW, the suburb is pretty much exclusively middle class. It is not working class neds who are breaking the windows or vandalising the cars.

I find it odd to be agreeing with Andrew against Eddie, but I guess that’s what this blog is for! I was a teenager in the 1970s, and I really don’t buy the idea of a long-term growth in yobbery or decline in ‘respect’. What there has been, particularly since 1997, is a continual extension of the arsenal of social control, fuelled by government-endorsed moral panics and leading to the effective criminalisation of increasingly broad ranges of behaviour. It’s the divisive edge of New Labour communitarianism, sharpened recently by the Project’s loss of any positive content.