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Keith Hellawell: Britain descending deeper into a state of lawlessness
NOT a day goes by without the Government announcing a new measure to combat the decline of law and order. Unfortunately, it, and we, are beginning to recognise these will have little or no impact on anti-social behaviour and lawlessness.
Over the decade Labour has been in power, it has introduced more legislation and regulation in this area of our lives than any other ruling party in history. While its manifesto proclaimed that it would fight crime and the causes of crime, it appears to have lost its way, mistakenly believing the blunt instrument of enforcement will suffice. Clearly, it will not.
During its 10 years of office, peace and tranquillity have declined to an all-time low; respect for others evaporated; selfishness and greed praised; irresponsible and criminal behaviour of those in the public eye ignored, and violence and ghoulish behaviour increased to frightening proportions.
You only have to read any newspaper or listen to a news programme to confirm what I say. Growth in gun crime is a prime example. The discharge of lethal weapons, once rare on our streets, is now an every-day occurrence. Young thugs have graduated from knives to guns of the most sinister type in order to gain the advantage over their similarly-minded friends – with disastrous consequences for innocent people.
These young men, lured by black American gang culture and the music which endorses it, see themselves as heroes rather than villains. They have been desensitised to violence and death by TV and playing internet games to such an extend that killing and maiming is no longer shocking
to them.
Some of these groups have reached such a level of depravity that inflicting serious harm on another human being is a prerequisite to membership.
While these young people form only a small section of our adolescents, they have an enormous effect on the remainder of their peer group and the rest of society. They rule their communities, are beyond parental control and disrupt schooling.
One-off, short-term initiatives, like the one recently introduced by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, setting aside 1m to target gun crime in some of our major cities, is nothing more than a defensive reaction to stinging media criticism which followed the shooting of 13-year-old Rhys Jones, in Liverpool. These do little more than scratch the surface and have no long-term impact.
Similarly, hurried measures to increase the powers of police officers or the authority of teachers and those responsible for running youth offender institutions, are doomed to failure. They are ill-conceived and unworkable because of the environment this Government has created over the last decade. By mandating human rights and equal opportunity policies, they have tied the hands of those we entrust with educating and regulating us.
While in principle it is laudable to prevent teachers from physically chastising children, this has prevented them from doing their job. Recognising they can get away with anything without punishment, the most recalcitrant of our young now behave abominably, adversely affecting all those around them.
I urge you to take the time to listen to the stories of any state school teacher – they are frightening. Teachers are disobeyed, sworn at and in some cases, physically attacked. They fear retribution from parents and, in this litigious-minded society Labour has created, prosecution and dismissal. To even think that bolting on crude powers at this late stage will improve this scenario, is quite naive.
Jacqui Smith's latest initiative is to fine parents if their children fail to attend school. Do they not realise that many parents are in fear of their children over whom they have lost control? Have they no conception of the miserable lives many families endure on deprived estates and how this burden will add to it? Can they not see this will lead to more debt, more imprisonment for failing to pay fines, and more violence and disruption within the poorest families in our land?
I very much suspect the Government recognises the futility of its recent spate of regulations, but there is method in its madness. When things don't improve, it will be able to blame its servants and the community rather than itself.
Avoiding responsibility is a thread running through everything this Government does. It blames the police for not doing its job properly. The truth is that it has bound the service in so much red tape, forced it to adopt politically-correct measures and set it targets which are more political than practical, that police forces are left with little or no initiative of their own.
Labour has gradually politicised our police service and is now reaping the disadvantages of doing so.
However, it is so duplicitous it will never admit any liability for the irreparable damage it has caused.
Personal responsibility is something else Ministers are not prepared to accept. To hear the Home Secretary admitting that she, along with a number of her Cabinet colleagues, consistently broke the criminal law by taking illegal drugs, is a public disgrace. To do so at the same time as she was moralising about this activity, was a farce. These are supposedly intelligent people. They know the law. They knew what they were doing could result in a conviction and possibly imprisonment and yet they had the arrogance to continue. One must question whether the self-confessed criminals are suitable people to govern us.
So, how do we begin to mend this broken society of ours? We will never achieve our aim by a plethora of meaningless legislation. Neither will blaming those who put their own safety and wellbeing at risk in the service of the state. This is cowardly as they have no means of defending themselves.
Moreover, expecting society to repair itself is a forlorn hope as long as it is tethered to a philosophy which supports the rights of an individual against those of the majority.
Above all, in order to begin to turn from a vicious to a virtuous cycle, we must have confidence in the ability of our elected representatives to do the right thing. We must trust in their wisdom. We must value their judgment. They have to earn our respect as individuals.
I'm sorry to say that very few of the current crop of senior politicians meet these criteria and while they remain in office, things will only get worse.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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