We should not be surprised at riots in inner-city areas like Lewisham. A whole workless generation has been abandoned by society
‘The Welfare of the People is the First Great Law’. So goes the motto for Lewisham Council, my home ‘town’ in south east London. Last night as the sirens wailed and the helicopters roamed restlessly overhead, it felt more like a war zone than the beneficent local state its motto suggests. This morning, Catford, just down the road by the Town Hall, has the feel and appearance of a battle scene. Lewisham’s shopping centre has closed early this afternoon, in anticipation of a well-tweeted proposal to attack Europe’s largest police station – standing faceless and unwelcoming, where the borough’s last department store once made sure that we were being served.
Ours weren’t the worst of yesterday’s riots, but it would have come as no surprise if they had been. A long-time net exporter of labour, with a diminishing number of local jobs, Lewisham tops the UK’s league table for youth unemployment . According to the Office of National Statistics, almost 36% of Lewisham’s 16 – 24 year olds were out of work last year, compared to a UK average of 19.5%: alarming figures by any standards. Meanwhile, Croydon and Hackney – also under siege last night – were almost as bad – with youth unemployment levels of 33%.
In 2010, a TUC report showed that Job Seekers Allowance claimants in my ‘hood outnumbered overall job vacancies by almost 14:1. Compare this to to a national average of 5:1. This made Lewisham the third worst centre of unemployment in England, after Haringey and Hackney. In 2010, it was the 31st most deprived council in England – up from 52nd in 2004. Meanwhile, Canary Wharf with its Big Bonus-earning Bankers and their ever-expanding pension pots nestles a complacent 5.6 miles away across the river – another world indeed. Beginning to make some connections?
Unemployment and poverty are not Lewisham’s only distinguishing characteristics. Those readers who recall the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ against the National Front in 1977, the dreadful tragedy of thirteen young black peoples’ deaths in the New Cross Fire of 1981, the ‘Dread, Beat and Blood’ of Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Catford ministry of the Revd Desmond Tutu, will also know that Lewisham has long been a sustaining home to many black and ethnic minority people, as well as the locus of historic struggles against racism and white supremacist organisations. 34% of Lewisham’s population are from black and other ethnic minorities, compared to a 6% average across England.
Grandparents and parents from the Caribbean, Africa, India and Pakistan – as well as the white working class – once worked hard for a living in local hospitals, transport, the council and low paid jobs in the private service sector. They now see their children and grandchildren facing the interminable prospect of lives without even low paid work, as the great law of the welfare of the people unravels in the haze of George Osborne’s deficit reduction strategy and a global economy in crisis. That means lives without money and all those things that turbo capitalism has made us think we need – even if we could only afford them in the ‘boom’ times on the sort of credit that helped bring the global economy close to its knees. Most live out a ground down existence on the dole and the margins of London’s consumer society.
That’s bad enough in itself, but Coalition cuts have wreaked savage revenge on Lewisham’s Labour majority council, which has barely put up any kind of a fight against the ensuing meltdown in services for young people. Earlier in the year the council decided to shut down the Connexions service, which played an important part in supporting workless young people along the way through learning and unemployment – and occasionally found them a job too! (I was impressed by the very kind and gentle Connexions advisor who called a couple of times last year to check that my gap-year son was doing OK and who was delighted to hear that he’d scored a temp job in John Lewis.) It was the largest cut yet made to a Connexions service anywhere and has led UNISON to explore a judicial review on the grounds that Lewisham is failing to meet its statutory obligations to provide ‘Information, Advice and Guidance’ services. Add to this the five libraries and IT centres that were closed in May, cuts to youth work, restricted access to the EMA and unimaginable university tuition fees and you can see why young people in my neck of the woods are angry.
Policing practice in Lewisham shows that black people are on the end of the strongest arm of the law when it comes to ‘stop and search’ too. Between March and May 2011, there were 7 searches per 1000 white people, compared to 30 for blacks, 15 for Asians and 12 for ‘others’, although white arrests slightly exceeded those for black people. Not at all surprising then that the death of Mark Duggan should trigger the latent anger of those singled out for such special attention.
Of course, none of these facts and figures justify the sort of wanton and personal violence meted out to hard working and terrified residents of Lewisham and elsewhere over the last couple of days. It is hard to construe the riots as the ‘moral economy’ depicted by Edward Thompson, renowned historian of the English working class. The sight of dispossessed, forgotten young people destroying the heart of their own communities is as sickening as it is saddening. But it should come as no surprise. Those who have been deprived of the chance to use their own imagination, skills and labour to find the self-respect and material comforts that we are led to consider normal in this crazy world, have been literally forced outside of society.
Many of my young Lewisham neighbours no longer feel that there is any trace of a local Great Law ensuring their welfare. Without the beneficent aspects of the state, many are left with nothing material or psychological to hang on to. The moral codes that evolve from citizens who feel a responsibility to those around them no longer apply. MP’s fiddling expenses, tax evaders, phone hackers and multi-nationals who screw their workforces are hardly an example to anyone either, are they? The big question is, where to now?
Excellent analysis Heather.
What rot. What dangerous nonsense.
Radio 4 were in the first court sessions dealing with rioters yesterday. Young men charged with burglary, theft and public order offences. There were graphic designers, graduates, a YOUTH WORKER – Most of them had jobs.
Enough with the liberal soft soaping. Every jail in and around London is filled to bursting with black youth this morning. I’m black. Ive worked hard and so have my family. For years we’ve put in the effort to live and work hard in Lewisham Borough.
There is NO excuse for this behaviour. The violence and disorder in the borough and surrounding areas was not disaffected youth protesting, it was simple criminality.
Lewisham has schools, colleges, special needs provision, libraries with free internet access, teaching assistants, black mentors, educational psychologists, ESOL teaching. Kids have parents. What else do you want?
Every possible social intervention measure you can think of is available in this borough. Many schools have been lavished with rebuilding money, some have been renamed. Yet with all the money spent it’s still not enough – the borough’s kids still came out to loot and pillage.
Enough with appeasing these kids and their lousy parents. ENOUGH NOW.
In 3 days they have set back race relations 40 years. Everything racists (and liberals behind closed doors) have said about black youth has been displayed over the past few days in front of the world.
It wasn’t a small minority of kids. Lewisham and Catford businesses were attacked by massive groups of its own kids. This was no political reaction against the withdrawal of the EMA, this was acquisitive, recreational looting. Look at the riot videos, the jubilant, celebratory videos, photos, tweets of teens high on their looted booty. Look for the video of JD Sports and Argos being looted and the face offs with the police in the high street.
This is not a police failing this is parenting failing. A massive morality failing. And a COUNCIL failing. Decades of ridiculous, expensive, interventionist projects, over spending and left-wing education dogma have produced 2 generations of wild snarling, overly-entitled parents and kids – they have no impulse control, no sense of right and wrong, no self discipline, no respect for self or others.
Try and ask a kid or an adult in Lewisham to pick up dropped litter, or turn their music down on the bus – you wouldn’t dare. Moreover, try – as I’ve recently had to recently – asking children educated in a Lewisham school to do fractions, draw a graph or do simple algebra.
Lewisham’s education results are disastrous and for year upon they have got away with it; together with parents – they have churned out inarticulate, uneducated, immoral teens with zero empathy for anyone.
Parents – where is YOUR responsibility? Stop blaming the police, how could you let your kids outside during riots? You child has come home with new trainers, clothes and electrical goods – where did they come from? What are you going to do about to do it? Yesterday Catford parks and town centre was littered with discarded shoe boxes and packaging.
We’ve had police and tv helicopters flying over head for hours at a time in Lewisham. This is our community – we live here.
A cold fury has come over me. I feel utterly defeated and ashamed of the young people in this community. Just read the local twitter feeds from the last few days and you’ll see why. Every possible prejudice of black youth proved correct. Who will listen now about unfair stop and search, or job discrimination?
And its outrageous for professionals like you to justify this base criminality in sociological and to blame society for it when they are personal failings. Time is up for this failed paradigm.
You and liberal professionals like you who litter education and social work are the worst enemies of the young black urban dweller.
You are apologists for the worst of behaviour – black youth are on the rampage. It doesn’t need explaining, it needs confronting and condemning.
MH.
I agree will some of what mel said in her statement above but i have one thing to say and that is WHY BLAME THE PARENTS? yeah some parents are slack universally across races, but what you are forgetting is that in this country you get penallised for disappling your kids, you cant smack, shout, if you lock them in there room your on kidnapping charges, so when they get bigger and start back chatting parents or hitting them what can you do, maybe if parents were alloewd to dissapline there children without fear of criminal charges then maybe these future adults would be different… Just putting it out there also and i have seen a number of white people involved in this chaos infact i saw a white guy taking a tv people stood around and was laughing, same situation with a black boy and it is oh my god… And i saw this with my own two eyes, media is diverting the attention to specifics but what about the chaos in orpington no one is talking about thatthey were all white…….
I’d agree with almost all of this article, although race as a cause of lack of opportunity has become rather tired and outdated: being part of an unemployable underclass, or defining yourself as a part of a gangsta youth culture that’s self-fullingly worthless, that will do it though.
In a borough like Lewisham it’s well worth mentioning the demotivating effect that the suspension of the Education Maintenance Allowance will have had on youngsters.
In response to Max, the interventions don’t work especially well because they are attempts by local authorities to put little Band-Aids on massive wounds inflicted by right wing governments (including the Tony and Gordon show). Yes, we have a small sub-culture of feral youth that is unsocialised, uneducable and unemployable, largely because no government in over 30 years has been prepared to carry out the large and expensive social programs that are required to tackle the problems.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is hardly all Lewisham’s youth. How many were out in Lewisham? 100? That would be pretty much all the local sink estate gangs.
Seeing the numbers of kids who come to the attention of Social Services locally on a daily basis is horrible and horrifying, but set against that the numbers on the street were low.
I’m all for cracking down as hard as possible on gangs, on gangsta sub-culture, on feral youth. I’m also for some of the simple and cheap reforms we could make to turn out schools back into places of discipline, socialisation and places that instil some sense of pride, achievement and standards. Ever stood in Catford when the schools come out? They have to have police there every day.
But before we totally demonise kids lets remember what their prospect in Lewisham is: most of the little allowance they were getting to stay on at school has gone, higher education is now a total pipedream for the poor (who the hell would take on that kind of debt?), the training they are being offered, such as it is, is in large part just warehousing that offers mickey mouse qualifications, their chances of a job are near zilch (I suspect that the figures are actually now rather worse than the ones shown above, they were taken from before this years draconian destruction by the Tories), they are about to having their housing benefit limited to flat share only and even that is rather hopeful because with the housing crisis (or as successive governments have called it, “Crisis? What crisis?”) they have not a hope in hell of ever being able to find anywhere to live. would you like to be starting out and facing that?
No one can deny or ignore the fact that the difference between those who have plenty and those who have very little is getting wider. The recent changes mean that the majority of the poor will no longer afford to pay 40k to get a university education. The cost of living has gone up dramatically and the absence of job opportunities for the young and the over 50′s is virtually zero. These factors contribute to the anger felt by many but no one can or should accept that burning down and looting your own community is acceptable. Those involved with the disgraceful display of violence against their own are thugs, their action damages the fight to achieve equality. Walking out of a shop with a 50in HD ready telly is not a political act!!
Nick
Actually I have to agree with both of you…
I don’t see it as a race issue at all, as I did see white kids looting as well.
There’s an angry underclass of people in our society and it’s about time we all stopped ignoring that fact.
It seems like the only humane analysis that one could make. We have to ask, how could so many people think it OK to behave in this way? The narrative of a generation with few prospects, confronted with a widening gap between themselves and the better off, in a culture that celebrates crime makes some kind of sense.
Like Mel (commenting above), I’m furious about what has been happening, but while there’s part of me that’s tempted to re-introduce public flogging as a counter-measure, my better nature tells me that a steady, measured response is what’s needed.
In the medium to long term it’s economic policy, town planning, and services for young people that will make a difference; and somewhere, lurking behind it all perhaps, is a poorly defined ideological argument about the nature of our economic system itself. How can it be morally right, to have a system that cultivates such grotesque inequities?
The UK is not a social state anymore… there is a big gap between classes….unemployment, low wages for working class, cuts of benefits, education, nhs….and so on…. so I am not surprised by this anger…..
I completely disagree with the article and could not agree more with mh’s comment. I am a parent myself and am fully aware of my role and responsibility in shaping my children’s futures and bringing them up to be decent, respectful adults. Stop blaming poverty, society yada yada for the disgraceful, blatant lawlessness of the people that committed these crimes. Parents are children’s first and biggest role models and they need to regain control!
What planet are you on?
Why blame the parents? Because morals, behavior, respect for others, general conscience and manners are all set in standards born out of the HOME from a very early age – this isn’t myth, it’s fact, age-old fact.
I think this article is extremely poor – I think there are a LOT of unemployed people from ALL ethnic backgrounds that would take great offence to what’s said in it. Nothing changes what is right and what is wrong, even supposed social abandonment. Why is it that so many Europeans can come here and find work or make work etc.? If the “locals” can’t do it, someone else will. I think this highlights my point exactly – if you’re motivated and have good morals, you can do anything.
The people we have witnessed on our TV’s over the last few days are nothing short of scum and if society HAS abandoned them, I for one am pleased! They deserve nothing from the rest of us that contribute to society or those who are unfortunate enough to not be able to, but are nice, honest and morally sound people who will contribute one day when their opportunity arrises.
There are people FAR worse off than those thugs, arsonists and looters in the world who would give their right arm to live here and have a chance. A teacher from a school today has been sent to the Crown Court for sentancing after being found looting – how does HE fit in to your awful steretyping aricle exactly?
And what is it with blaming the coalition? If Labour hadn’t put this country on its knees for the 2nd time in one generation, we wouldn’t be in the economic mess we’re in. And we’re still arguably THE most prosperous country in Europe.
You’re just using this issue, like Miliband does, as a way of attacking the government. It’s weak, very weak, like Mel I believe it’s dangerous journalism.
I moved to this country 10 years ago to Lewisham and have lived here ever since. My visa would not allow me even the basic of services but if you get on with it and get out and about you will easily find a job. Granted, it won’t be much more, if at all that what the dole pays at the bottom end but when you have no other option it is pretty easy to make the right choice between getting up and going to work or to join the criminals. It is exactly this author’s ideas that the state owe’s people a living that is the reason behind the progressive worsening of the socio-economic issues affecting Lewisham. Take the cash out of the benefits system and get the supermarkets to fund development of a pre-paid debit card system that only allows purchases of food and essentials. Top up the oyster cards, pay the landlords from housing benefit and even let them off paying the council tax that the rest of us workers pay to enable these people to stay idle. All of a sudden the bone idle have no cash in their pocket and have to think about finding a job. They won’t starve and they will be able to get to job interviews. All of a sudden though they will realise they will have to sign up as participating members of society if they are to have all the things they so violently tried to steal over the previous few days and nights.
Parents who think it is the teachers job’s to teach children discipline need re-educating. Absent fathers need to be cut adrift from the benefits system if they choose the same life for their offspring by not meeting their responsibilites. They may not be able to meet them financially but they should still be made to act like fathers and more importantly like role models. At parent teacher interviews when the teacher says little Johnny isn’t paying attention in class or is being disruptive they should be backing the teacher and not their little urchins.
Why do the rest of us that can get ourselves out of bed, pay taxes be obligated to help people who choose not to help themselves. It is nobody’s fault but the children and their parents if their school years are wasted and the kids turn out unemployable. Lewisham has some good schools, some excellent teachers and a support system for parents and their kids if they choose to work within the system.
It isn’t rocket science to understand that when teachers say to the kids that they need to apply themselves to get anywhere in life they actually mean it. Why should the kid whose school years are not as exciting as others because they spent their time studying be made to feel guilty and pay ever increasing taxes as an adult to fund a life of idleness for those who chose to waste their potential.
It would be great if more people would distinguish between explaining something and justifying it. They are not the same! We shall all not be able to deal with such awful problems as the current riots if we don’t try to understand WHY they are happening. That is what Heather was doing in the excellent original posting. I therefore can find myself agreeing with her and also with much of what Mel and others say. Yes, of course we have a right to be furious but we also need to understand why…….
MH’s piece hits the issue head on. I am a white middle aged middle class male living in an affluent area. I have worked very hard and originate from a very poor working class background and I have achieved an enviable lifestyle.
There is NO excuse for this sort of behaviour and to blame the situation on poor parenting and lack of opportunity is a lame excuse. I know many black people that have achieved success in their lives. If it is a colour issue why do Asian people seem to succeed in business and the professions?
Black youth wake up before it is too late.
It was total anarchy in Lewisham on Monday night. I finished work at 6, shortly before the dirty south was trashed. I saw grown men and teenagers of all colours involved. Lewisham centre attracts an underclass of society, hanging around at all times of day! This was their excuse to crawl out of the gutter and cause as much distress and carnage as possible. Look at the BP garage, the poor people who work there, bet they were so scared while their forecourt and windows were being trashed. I must give my upmost respect to the police, putting themselves in the face of all the thuggery. They did a Stella job with what they faced. An ambulance was trashed, again on Lee high road. Aren’t we all so proud of living in this borough!!
I do not agree with compatriots who attribute the riots in Lewisham to youth unemployment. My teenage daughters have been working part-time locally and attended college at the same time. They were disgusted by the criminal behaviour of the youth and could not believe it was real.
We parents have a devine responsibility to instil in children moral behaviour. There is a lesson to us parents that if you made a bed to sleep on, you have to sleep on it. You cannot blame others for the criminal behaviour of your child, you are ultimately responsible.
EAA
Heather Wakefield is largely correct. Lewisham has been governed locally by the Labour Party incumbents for over 40 years. It’s a dump of varying degrees.
In its wisdom, and against total public opposition, it opted to close 5 libraries and hand 3 over to a “Social Enterprise” group, which its own officers considered weak financally and extremely risky. The 4th went to the Age Exchange charity after it received £200,000 of public money from Lewisham council.
The 5th, New Cross Library, is currently closed. The New Cross community hope to run it on a volunteer basis but need to find £24,000 first to feed to the council.
We now have in Lewisham a 2-tier library service, some do better than others, some get nothing at all.
This is symptomatic of the poor governance practised in Lewisham. And don’t blame cuts, the council was offered several alternative budgets which would have maintained the status quo. It didn’t want to know.