This Misguided Nation
As a nation, the past few years we Brits have become pretty adept at getting wound up by things that, in the grand scheme of things, are not really that important. The march against the Iraq War was one of the few instances in which the British people did get something right. But since then, we’ve hardly done anything, and a lot of people have been naive enough to believe Tony Blair that Iraq really is better now. Such people need to consult Today In Iraq.
But this post isn’t about Iraq. Iraq is the only exception to the thesis I am about to launch into. I believe that Britain has a problem. It’s not one that people will be prepared to admit to, and it appears to be something buried deep within the psyche of the nation. The symptom of this problem is responsible for some of the problems we see in society in terms of a small minority of people (not just children) who have no respect for the law. On top of that, we have people who like the law only when it is on their side. But underneath all this is one of the problems: Britain’s obsession with abuse; that violence solves all, and feeding a general culture of misguidance.
Let us begin with speed cameras. Adults crave for respect to the law. Yet, see a speed camera – or better yet a speeding fine – and most adults blood will boil. “It’s just another government stealth tax!” they yell as they slip a cheque for £50 in an envelope to pay the fine. Once caught, most adults don’t reform. Fines are a blunt instrument. We just resolve never to get caught again. Who hasn’t driven through speed camera zones to see a remarkable reduction in speed just for a short while only for the engine to start revving again once you’re out of danger?
So immediately, most adults have no right to preach observance to the rule of law while being hypocrites in their spare time. Law is not selective. It is, once passed, an objective standard or criteria by which officers of the law and the judiciary cast judgement. Speeding is breaking the law. Not wearing a seatbelt is breaking the law. Using a mobile phone while driving is breaking the law. You have no excuse if you are caught. You are a criminal.
It’s those last four words that rile people. “I am not a criminal!” they shout. The aggression builds. How could you possibly be a criminal? You pay your taxes. You keep your garden tidy. You don’t attack people in the street. You’re the model citizen!
You aren’t. Much as it pains me to say it given the experience of the poll tax, if you want people to respect the law, you’d better take a look at yourself first. If we accept that our government is legitimate, and it has the authority to act on our behalf – and we do – then we should not be surprised if we choose to take on that authority and lose. Building “respect” in society as part of the processes of socialisation start at home. There are far too many parents these days, and we’re not just talking about inner-city parents here, who wash their hands of their children. The schools are there to do the educating! I have work to do feeding and clothing my child with the best hoodies. I’ll let them work out what’s what.
You’re wrong. And that’s the first step. Neglect. Neglect is abuse. In my last post I complained about the fact that we seem unable to engage lower generations in any kind of conversation. This problem starts at home. The rise of the two-income household is not inherently a bad thing. I have no problem with two parents in a household working hard and earning a living. The only problem is what follows on from that. Children within such families have a habit of disconnecting from their authority figures. The parents are too tired to deal with problems. That “problem” might even be just helping with homework. The stress levels in work are too high… you don’t want to go home to have to engage with your adolescent (and now increasingly pre-adolescent) and demanding offspring.
Our problem is that we are forgetting what it was like to be young. From the ages of 10 onwards, children begin to realise that there is life beyond the home. Things start to get a bit complicated. A lot of wires in the brains are not fused yet to deal with adulthood, yet adulthood and its values are foisted and expected from such individuals from this increasingly early age. To guide you through this process of mental maturation – something far more important than physical maturity – we need support. We need our parent(s) to be there for us. Someone who can share their experience, give friendly advice, set clear boundaries, show what is expected of you, being flexible to situations and allowing more as the years go by. In other words, children need mentors and role-models.
Do you think the stressed out, exhausted workaholics in this nation can adequately supply that? Children and young adults naturally will get into trouble. There will always be some problem. And when that challenge arises, the adult’s response to it will have a long lasting impact. Wave your hand and say, “I’m watching EastEnders!” and suddenly the child has been rejected. A rejection is a permanent black mark. Children will always bring problems, and more than likely at the most inconvenient time. If you can’t be interested in your protégé’s problems, and aren’t prepared to drop everything at a moment’s notice – thus setting an example of how we should interact with each other – then why should they give a damn for your authority? The seeds are sown.
In the meantime, the adults watch the news. They see a story about a police officer driving 159mph who gets away with it. Hoho! How bad is that? They shout abuse at the TV screen – “it’s one rule for us and one rule for them!” they roar, conveniently forgetting their own selective interpretation of the law on speed. Children witness it… more disrespect is cultivated. It now looks like it’s OK to oppose authority? If my parent(s) are doing it, then why should I? After all, these are the people who I look up to the most. I get it now.
Meanwhile, we miss the story demonstrating for all to see just how the police like to fit people up. But that doesn’t matter. The kid probably deserved it. The police are normally right.
Bzzt. Error in logic. On the one hand we don’t really care about police brutality. Some of us secretly crave that the police come decked out with AK47 assault rifles. We want the police to have the authority to implement their own version of justice out on the streets with their batons and stun guns. Some of us even want the army to do the police’s job. By cracking that baton, some skulls, and maybe bringing back the birch, the cane and some capital punishment to go with it, all the problems would be solved.
But wait a minute? What about the copper at 159mph? What about the copper telling the kid how he’d “write it up properly”? If police officers don’t even respect the law, why would you trust one implicitly to hold an assault rifle and accurately dole out justice 100% of the time?
The fact is the police are as corrupt as the rest of us. A lot of us have no respect for the police – I include myself here – for reasons that we find difficult to back up. Police corruption is normally kept hush-hush. Allegations of this kind of behaviour are normally investigated by fellow police forces. Coppers don’t do another copper over. So if you accuse the police of being bent, you’re only going to look like a criminal yourself. The classic, “The innocent ones have nothing to fear!” gets wheeled out. Would you like cameras throughout your house to make sure you don’t beat your wife, or take drugs in your own home? Why not? I thought you were an innocent one?
This is the fundamental flaw in the British people. We encounter a problem and our first instinct is to lash out at it. We like to use our fists. We are a notoriously aggressive nation. We measure our worth in the amount of pints we can drink before we hit the floor, and then on how much we value brawn over brains. If people don’t like who we are, then fuck them. We have bigger muscles than them. If our kids step out of line, then whack! – take that you little bastard. The headmaster isn’t getting respect from the kids? Then why not give him back the cane, and belt the little shits back into line. That oughta teach ’em.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a fear culture. We have the government leading from the front in scaring us into isolation. We have a complicit media who like to do the same and then magnify the problem many times by clamouring for dictatorial measures to solve the problem.
There is a reason why we live in a liberal democracy. The principal tenets of the Liberal Revolutions of the 17-18th centuries were that we were fed up with autocratic leaders, making up the law as they go along, showing no respect for fellow members of society and putting themselves up on a plinth as somehow being morally superior by nature of their position. The rule of law was devised so that everyone had the same objective code to work from. We rejected dictators, because they had a habit of interfering here, there and everywhere for their own ends, and to be frank, a lot of them were psychotically deranged, taking pleasure in the beheading and torture of dissidents.
We decided we didn’t want that. We created systems of government that kept them out of our lives as much as possible. That is why it is called liberal democracy. We believe that individuals, families and to some extent society should be empowered to solve its own problems. Governments only tend to mess things up.
Now we’ve encountered another problem. This seems to be reversing. Bring back national service. Ban hoodies. Ban children from congregating in groups more than two. Bring back the birch. Bring back the rope.
Authoritarian measures. Authoritarian measures to solve a general decline in respect.
Where I come from, respect is earned. Whoever heard of respecting the puny headmaster who gets his jollies out of thrashing the living daylights out of kids? Why was it that it was always the same people who ended up in front of the headmaster, week after week? Why do we really think that abusing and assaulting children will restore respect to society?
Perhaps there is an ulterior motive. For respect, do we need to read fear? Do we want to get to a situation where the nation is constantly on edge for the police officer with an itchy trigger finger? Where adults have the right to violently assault their children, without understanding that the age-old maxim of “violence breeds violence” is true? Where adults violently assault each other to solve their problems?
I don’t want that. I want us to be in a situation where people respect and tolerate the law not because of fear of being caught, whipped, brutalised or even summarily executed by police officers, but because they believe the law is right and in the best interests of society.
And the only way we can get to this position? Like I said, it all starts at home. Start with your own respect for the law. Then try to engage with other people from other generations. Your own kids would be a start. They need you in their corner: they don’t want to be ignored, and they can’t be told that everything they do is right either. You need to draw credible lines and boundaries. You need to offer support, attention, reassurance and an open door. Many children don’t even bring problems to their parent(s) because they don’t feel they’ll get a fair hearing. Listen out for cries of help. Encourage those who don’t want to ask to feel there is no shame in talking out problems. Communication is the best resolution. Parent(s) can’t expect schools to teach this kind of thing. Our teachers are supposed to give children knowledge and information about the world. But only parent(s) can really impart wisdom.
Once we start to foster back the values of talking, debating, exchanging opinions and preparing solutions acceptable to all, then we also demonstrate the reason why we have politics, not just at a national level, but everywhere. The art of politics is all around.
It is the first solution from which all other solutions are derived.
It is the only solution.
I agree with much of what you’ve written, and with some of the solutions, but let’s be totally honest about what the problem is here, and not misdirect our efforts. The rise in anti-social behaviour, crime, lack of respect, whatever we call it, is not manifesting in double-income, middle class families, is it? The issue that worries people and policy makers alike is the growth of the underclass, and the increasing problems which stem from that process (I’m not sure if I go along with the whole crime-comes-from-poverty meme myself, but let’s go along with that for the sake of argument). If you think that the disruption of middle class family relations is to blame for that, I think you’re mistaken, although the general breakdown in families which successive governments have presided over and incentivised is at the very least partly to blame.
It’s all very well to put the blame onto parents and say we must start fostering respect at home, but not all parents are going to do that. Like socialism, it’s a lovely little idea if everyone plays by the rules, but they won’t, so it’s a non-starter.
This from someone who hates the rise in fear-based politics more than most…
The problem is one of language and its misuses. You know, and I know, and they know that banning someone from their own home by ASBO, or trying to legislate what clothes people wear, is not going to cut crime. If anything, it will increase just because you have to count the Asbo breaches as crimes (which will provide the reason for another binge on legislation). But it is necessary, in the cage of British political language, to be Tough.
Toughness (capital T required) demands that something coercive and authoritarian is done, and certain forms of words incantated, in order to fight a Crisis (cap required). If no Crisis presents itself, one has to find one, so a new word (like anti-social behaviour) has to be invented. In order that the ever-shrinking class of swing voters know that you are being Tough, they have to have an identifiable target-group. Hence BASs, yobs, squeegee merchants (party like it’s 1996!), single mothers, Teddy boys; visible stereotypes.
Note: it will never, ever, be dangerous drivers, tax evaders, polluters, managers of dangerous workplaces – there is too much risk that the audience will recognise themselves.
Note: it will never, ever, be dangerous drivers, tax evaders, polluters, managers of dangerous workplaces – there is too much risk that the audience will recognise themselves.
True, but not for the cynical reasons you raise here, or at least, not completely. Government only works well when the people consent to be governed. This is why crackdowns on anti-social behaviour are popular, but speeding cameras are not. People see the former as criminal behaviour, but the latter not. Even our new masters in the current government recognise this simple truth.
The problems in inner-cities are well documented and are nothing new. It has always been a risky business going through a city centre at nighttime. That has a different solution.
My post is not about this. My post is about the endless concern in the media with the rise of anti-social behaviour and disrespect in previously perfect market towns. It is very wrong to say that this is a working-class problem. I would not call the town of Solihull remotely working class, and yet this is becoming a major issue there. It is rising rapidly across the south and south east. The north has always had its fair share of scallies, townies and neds – as we have always called them – but even they were not as bad as what we have now, which is to permeate through previously aggressive but mostly passive cultures of “hardness” and turn it into something much more active.
It has gone beyond that. Middle class children, and middle class adults between the ages of 18-30 are just as responsible for what we see on the news as anyone. A lot of it is ineffective parenting – the middle class do not have the monopoly on raising “good” children. My argument is that liberalism has been falsely interpreted as leaving people to do whatever they like come what may. This has led to a rise in questionable standards of parenting right across the board. Many people would call it “excessive liberalism”. I call it a failure to understand what liberalism truly means. Liberalism still expects a lot from an individual. We are failing to socialise into our children that we expect a certain standard of behaviour before individualism can be worked from that platform. We are not drawing enough boundaries, lines and goals that are achiveable, which motivate positive citizens. And there just aren’t enough positive role models. Society has stopped setting credible expectations of each other.
When I go onto the streets and see children in the “chav uniform” (labels don’t help either, but it’s the only way I can communicate this), I don’t see them as part of an underclass. I just see them as disengaged and unmotivated citizens. There is just as much chance the child has come from a middle-class family as a working-class family. There’s a lot of peer pressure as we know which further encourages the cycle. Their families have lost interest in what their children are doing – through whatever reason – and that’s where it all begins. Children aren’t equipped to think properly, even up to the age of 18, although it varies from case to case. They all need adult support, many of whom are just too busy or too stressed to deal with anything beyond their own little world. Yet, without it things start going wrong.
It’s that what we need to solve. We need to divorce the problems of the inner-city from the problems of “chav culture”. They are two very different things. The former is through persistent and continued deprivation, poverty, poor education and lack of opportunity. The latter is a failure to socialise basic standards of society onto new generations.
Just cure Benefit Addiction.
The problems are a sense of entitlement to a level of luxury, unjustified by the non-working classes lack of effort.
Everyone knows that speed cameras are used for revenue purposes (indirect taxation). Short term bans on using your car would be more effective than fines, but these don’t raise revenue so won’t be used.
But Rob, why not just obey the fucking speed limit? It’s simple!
My post is about the endless concern in the media with the rise of anti-social behaviour and disrespect in previously perfect market towns.
That’s a very Conservative view – harking back to a golden age. I don’t think market towns were ever previously perfect. There has always been a disaffected group of middle class teenagers, bored by the limitations of small town life, in this sort of place. I was one of them. But I didn’t beat people up on buses and record it on my mobile phone, I didn’t vandalise other people’s property, I didn’t demand respect from people who looked at me in a funny way, and I didn’t threaten old people for kicks.
A lot of it is ineffective parenting – the middle class do not have the monopoly on raising “good†children.
Quite the opposite – a lot of them are spoilt, mollycoddled little brats who’ve never ‘failed’ at anything in their lives. It will be a shock to the system for them when they have to leave the protective bubble we’ve wrapped them up in. But this has nothing to do with the culture of (dis)respect on the streets. It’s a problem, but it isn’t this problem.
When I go onto the streets and see children in the “chav uniform , I don’t see them as part of an underclass…There is just as much chance the child has come from a middle-class family as a working-class family.
Maybe, but most likely they come from neither. Most probably they’re from a non-working family.
That sounds horrendously patronising, but it’s basically true.
We need to divorce the problems of the inner-city from the problems of “chav culture The latter is a failure to socialise basic standards of society onto new generations.
I’m not sure that chav culture is a problem. It’s a bit naff, but it’s basically harmless. I’d agree on the second point, but twas ever thus. I’d bet my grandparents’ generation thought my parents were feckless layabouts, with their new-fangled ‘rock and/or roll’.
The problem with your thesis is that assumes that we should all accept whatever laws the government of the day passes. Once upon a time this was not a problem. Crimes were things like violence and theft.
However modern day law making is all about interfering in the decisions that we used to make for ourselves. Many citizens see this as an abuse of state power, not as legitimate law making.
The concept of the rule of law is about more than people not breaking the law. It is about the State not losing the consent of the governed. When it comes to speed cameras to take one example, that consent has gone.
The concept of the rule of law is about more than people not breaking the law. It is about the State not losing the consent of the governed. When it comes to speed cameras to take one example, that consent has gone.
I appreciate your point, but the fact remains that we have just had an election… a chance we don’t get very often to express our disapproval of shoddy government. Elections are designed to limit the government, holding it to account and giving it a mandate to rule on our behalf. They are supposed to ensure liberal democracy remains in place.
Yet, the people chose not to do so. From that we must conclude that speed cameras is not an issue that riles people enough to make them demand change. So if people aren’t prepared to do anything about it – the contrast here is that people were prepared to challenge the poll tax openly – then we must accept the rule of law that we have just voted for.
The obsession with speed cameras is stereotypical middle-class hypocrisy. Nobody (or almost nobody) has even been caught by one who wasn’t actually breaking the law at the time, unlike burglary, violence, and so on. Speeding laws, that they are primarily designed to police, are perfectly legitimate and sensible.
They are the only ‘tax’ you can avoid or evade quite legally, and the only ‘stealth tax’ that comes painted bright yellow just to give you more than a sporting chance to do so. If there were such a system for catching underclass law-breakers the monied classes would be salivating at the prospect. Their objection to cameras is that they catch us. Libertarianism for the rich, authoritarianism for the poor. Pure hypocrisy.
the contrast here is that people were prepared to challenge the poll tax openly
That’s a false comparison. The poll tax effected everyone, and was indiscriminate. Speeding fines do not, and are avoidable. Nonetheless, every day, a Gatso is set on fire by fearless, masked avengers…
Elections are designed to limit the government, holding it to account and giving it a mandate to rule on our behalf.
Elections are not a referendum on every possible issue that effect people’s lives, despite what thumping-great-mandate-Blair seems to claim.
Eddie – I’m with you all the way, but I wonder if you’re willing to obey the consequences of what you say.
Like you, I don’t think people should flagrantly disobey the law, even when it’s a silly law (as I think some speed limits are – 70mph on a motorway is flat-out absurd). As you say, if you accept the legitimacy of our government, then you have to submit to its laws and use the due processes (debate, election, etc) to make changes.
But the implication of this is not in keeping with the doctrine of human rights (which, though vague, posits those rights over the form of government), and to deny a right to civil disobedience (breaking the law to undermine it). Herbert Storing wrote a brilliant essay in criticism of Martin Luther King on just this point – that while he agreed with King’s cause, he could not support all of the methods used to advance them.
Re the family point, there’re a lot of thorns here, but again I’m in agreement. It’s very classical republican in orientation (and much to my approval) – the household is the foundation of society, and the schoolhouse for public life. You can go further though. For example, by easing divorce laws, we encourage families to separate rather than attempt to reconcile their differences. Re Andrew’s point about double income families being more middle class, and yet the problem being strong in the lower class – well, a lot of lower class families are single income because there aren’t two parents, so Eddie’s point still applies.
Basically, we’re lurching towards a Hobbesian society, coarsening relations closer to the war of each against all. Eddie puts his finger on the problem here – we’ve fled from politics. But that was always the aim of those liberal revolutions of the 17th and 18th century, to systematise everything so that political discussion (over religion) wouldn’t turn to violence. It’s just that, as you say, without political discussion, violence is often all that’s left.
Interesting thoughts, Blimpish. I’m not prepared to accept that human rights must come under the government… I believe that certain rights are just so fundamental to the very nature of liberal democracy that they must be protected at all costs. Alas, this means I’m a written constitution kinda guy. I do believe there should be a right to protest, but violence is out of the question. You can oppose a law, using freedom to protest, while still obeying the law. For instance, you could still organise rallies against the poll tax while continuing to pay it. As you say, I prefer opposition to be worked out within the framework of the system. Politics is the only way.
The family issue is difficult. I just can’t help but feel that if you spend the first 18 years of your life being brought up by the same one or two people, then there’s no doubt that that is going to influence your life in terms of the processes of socialisation very heavily. Even a child’s independent decisions, taken without family involvement, are informed by their family values, because it is their family who has socialised the child to have those very values. There comes a point where the family is no longer responsible, naturally, but we cannot underestimate just how vital a role all parents play in the forming of the society of future generations.
I don’t think either of single or double parent families have the monopoly on raising good citizens. Both forms of family can be as stable or unstable as each other. All I want to see is that each child is given as much love, care and support as is possible. I admit that there is more chance of this happening in two parent households – and in an ideal world I would prefer it to be this way. But in reality, people do fall out and drift apart. Divorce should always be a last resort, but the option has to be there. It’s just that, if it has to happen, then the first question should be to do with how we keep on raising good children, rather than who gets the house or the joint bank account. All parents should remember: they brought the child into the world. In many respects, it is now their responsibility to put the child’s welfare ahead of their own. After all – they chose to have it in the first place.
I stand by my earlier assertion that this is as much a middle-class problem as it is working-class. The spoilt children that Andrew describes are just as likely to lead to bad citizens as the neglected children of inner-cities. There is a middle ground between giving your child everything and giving your child nothing. In some respects you could argue that the single jobless parent living in a council house with a child could produce a very good citizen – after all, they are able to devote all their time to bringing them up. But that is obviously not ideal. My point is that generalisations of single vs married and how well they bring their children up are not normally helpful.
We just cannot lose sight of the fact that family is the most important influence on our lives by far. It is the key place in which this problem can be tackled.
Eddie: On the single or double parent family, you’re very much right that neither has the monopoly on raising good citizens. What is true though, is that a double parent family has some in-built advantages – for example, it allows for a better division of labour, and it diversifies risks, so that one parent’s troubles doesn’t necessarily break the family. That isn’t to say that some single parent families don’t offer some of the best child-rearing we have; it is to say that the probability of a ‘good enough’ or better child-rearing is raised by having two children.
On divorce, I wouldn’t disagree that there should be an option, but there is a question of how easy it is and how quickly pursued it is, especially where there are children involved. Even an old throwback like me doesn’t have much problem with a childless couple deciding marriage isn’t for them, but as you say, children are the responsibility of a married couple together, a responsibility which shouldn’t just be carved up for convenience of access except as a last resort.
Now, to human rights and protest. What I meant here was not protest in the sense of going on a march and listening to Tony Benn speaking in Hyde Park, but full civil disobedience – sit-ins, and breaking the law. This is a toughie because (as in the Southern segregation case) there can be injustices that we want to overturn. But, as your post points to, once we start down this road it’s not clear where it ends.
Incidentally, I’m in favour of a written constitution too. Worship of the unwritten constitution left us without any defences against many of the very things my lot most abhor – European integration, arbitrary rule, the erosion of hierarchy and privilege in the regime. Tories still extolling the joys of the unwritten constitution look to me to have all the power of King Cnut facing off the tide… and none of the style.
PS – methinks you talk more like a liberal republican than a liberal as such, but perhaps another time..
The spoilt children that Andrew describes are just as likely to lead to bad citizens as the neglected children of inner-cities.
Maybe, but as long as they aren’t stabbing other citizens, it’s not that big a deal.
Divorce should always be a last resort, but the option has to be there.
You don’t turn something into a last resort by making it easy to do (c.f. Abortion).
I may be a raving minarchist but there seems a flaw in your logic.
As you say if people do not respect the laws they will not obey them. But it does not follow that if they obey the laws they will respect them, as your example of the bullying teacher pointed out.
So if the goal is a civil society where most of the people in it respect most of the laws most of the time. Perhaps first laws should be changed so that the most of the people respect them as sensible. From there will naturally come the obedience to the law, as to not follow them would not be sensible.
Chris: one man’s sensible law is another man’s injustice. The point is we have to all abide by the laws.
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I’d bet my grandparents’ generation thought my parents were feckless layabouts, with their new-fangled ‘rock and/or roll’.
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.
Phil: 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’.
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.
Phil: I do not agree with anything NuLab has done in this field – and I believe their actions are also partly responsible. They are failing to grasp the nettle of the this issue. I agree with you that if you read the media you would think Britain is in crisis. I said this in my other post… I do not believe it is anywhere near as bad as people are making it. The media and the government are complicit in moral panicking us into isolation, which is one of the reasons for our situation.
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.
I really don’t buy the idea of a long-term growth in yobbery or decline in ‘respect’.
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.
… and as a hanging and flogging blue rinse (I won’t say where) Tory, let me add here that Phil’s point contains something important. Even if you accept the country is only as yobbish now as it was then (I wasn’t there, but certainly the crime numbers tend to suggest some significant differences), that’s in a context of much greater social control. So, unless we think that control is completely ineffective, then the level of yobbery we’d have now would be much greater in its absence (this isn’t to justify that control – only to say that they do have benefits).
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.
(Apologies to Phil for saying the most patronising sentence of my life in that comment – it wasn’t meant to sound like that!)
unless we think that control is completely ineffective, then the level of yobbery we’d have now would be much greater in its absence
Excluded middle. ‘Effective’ and ‘ineffective’ aren’t the only possibilities – what about ‘locally effective but counter-productive on the broader scale’? As you said:
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.
Phil: I don’t disagree with any of that, overall. Certainly, I’d agree that football violence and the like (you could also add that certain pubs were probably regular fighting venues once upon a time) probably had a certain homeopathic quantity.
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.
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…
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..!
Thanks for a lovely site, I am very impressed :-)