Why We Shouldn't Go Back To The 1950s
Francis Beckett argues that some of the reactions to the riots have been knee jerk and simplistic.
14 Aug 2011, 18:00
Back to the 50s?
The baby boomers went to schools which operated on the principle that whatever was not compulsory was forbidden, and whatever was not forbidden was compulsory. It was, I argue in What Did the Baby Boomer Ever Do For Us?, hardly surprising that when they went out into the world and found the freedoms of the sixties awaiting them, they did not know how to use those freedoms.
By far the most frightening thing I've heard in the past week is the mantra, repeated over and over again, that the police were unable to respond vigorously because they have been cowed by criticism of their behaviour at G8 and other places. If only they could be free of these niggling criticisms, they could weigh into those thugs and stop the violence,
Now, I'm a supporter of th British police. We're infinitely better off with them that without them, and they're a lot better than most forces - especially the Americans, from whom our government seems to want to learn.
But the truth about G8, which no one seems to want to remind us of now, is that a uniformed thug viciously attacked a harmless, unarmed middle-aged man, and caused his death.
I've recently written two features for the Guardian about policing of football matches. I told how a handcuffed young man was held on the ground by three burly policeman while a fourth released a police dog at his face, causing injuries which requires two operations and 30 stitches. And an entirely innocent middle aged man was thrown to the ground by two uniformed thugs, one of whom then kicked him hard in the chest, puncturing his lung. Despite the fact that he identified the officer, no officer has been charged. The thug responsible is still policing the streets of London.
Yes, of course these are exceptions - but they happened, and will happen more often if we are not watching. In policing as elsewhere, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
On Sunday morning, when we first heard about the Tottenham riots, I was about to go on a BBC TV programme called Sunday Morning Live, with Revd George Hargreaves, a right wing evangelical pastor in Tottenham. Revd Hargreaves stated, as fact, that Mr Duggan, the man killed by a police bullet whose death sparked the riot, had been firing at the police, and added that Mr Duggan was a "well known tearaway". Within 12 hours we knew he had not fired at the police.
Revd Hargreaves has not, as far as I know, apologised for his false statement. Since then I have seen him again on television, repeating the call he made that morning for parents to resume the fifties practise of hitting their children.
We apparently have a government which believes that the state's correct response to looters is to make the looter's family homeless, where it has the power to do so. We have an orgy of self-righteousness - I listened to Steve Norris on the radio this morning, sneering at a few incoherent young people who had been recorded by the BBC and who had failed to sum up their feeling of frustration in language sufficiently sophisticated that an experienced politician could not misrepresent it. He also sneered at them for being, in his words, part of the feral underclass.
If we think sneering at the young and taking us back to the repressed fifties can put all this unfocused anger back in its box, we're mistaken.
The author
Francis Beckett
Francis Beckett is a writer and journalist and editor of the book Prime Ministers Who Never Were.
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Comments (2)
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A very timely article.
Virtually all left wing commentators condemned the riots and looting. Virtually all demanded strong punishments and an effort to make the streets safe.
But, now we see right-wingers trying to use these events as a reason to support attacks on the poor in general - i.e. attacks on people who had nothing to do with the riots and looting.
The public is, rightly I think, very angry at the looters.
But on the right (read the Daily Telegraph blog commentators) we have seen this used as an excuse to pull out any old conservative shibboleth about crime and punishment.
Thanks for your effort to combat these knee-jerk responses.
14/08/2011 18:36by back to the fifties do you mean when you walked down any british city street and heard english spoken,our doors could be left unlocked,unlike these days where we are forced to live with all from around the globe,where we hand out houses and benefits to everyone expept those who pay for it,where our children are copying rapper gangstas as role models,and if you dont like it you must be a fashist or a nazi,the riots proved that our come one come all attitude has come back to bite us in the backside,let the burnt out buildings and murders from last week,teach those pc lefties once and for all.our country has hopefully woken to the fact that mass immigration is the cause of all this.now cameron wake up and do something about it!
16/08/2011 14:31