Young Offenders Worker and Community Campaigner Discuss the Causes of the London Riots.
Shelagh Fogarty - BBC Radio Five - Wednesday 10th August
Shelagh Fogarty: Our reporter spoke to these looters in Manchester.
Interviewer: So why have you been stealing this stuff? Can you not afford to buy it yourself?
Rioter in Manchester: Why are ya gonna miss the opportunity to get free stuff that’s worth, like, loads o’ money?
I: So are you saying that you could probably afford some of the stuff?
RM: Yeah, obviously, but it’s not about that.
I: What is it about?
RM: The government obviously, taking away. Honestly, more kids don’t get no college no more, cause they don’t get paid innit.
I: So the fact that you are nicking shoes that you could probably afford to buy. That’s about the government, is it? I don’t understand.
RM: No, honestly, it’s not about that right. It’s about like the government aren’t in control. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do it, would we?
I: So because the government can’t stop you doing it. That’s why you’re doing it?
RM: Well, what did the government do? They tried, they failed innit? How many people have they arrested, right? Ten! I’m not really bothered. I keep doing this every day, until I get caught.
Shelagh Fogerty: Well *sighs* let’s talk to Winston Smith. The author of a book called “Generation F” which deals with the issues of the so-called “underclass” He’s also a former youth worker and writes a critical blog about the youth justice system.
Hello to you, Winston Smith.
Winston Smith: Hi there.
Leslie Pullman is a community campaigner and has worked with victims of anti-social behaviour in the Manchester area.
Hello Leslie.
Leslie Pullman: Hiya
That’s depressing listening isn’t it Winston Smith?
Winston Smith: It’s very depressing, but I’m not surprised at all and it reflects basically the work that I did in Manchester with the Youth Offending Service. I’m not at all surprised that that’s the type of attitude. Cause they’re saying that the government have failed to stop it, but they’ve been failing for years.
Theresa May was talking about the consequences. “People are going to see the consequences for these crimes.” Well, I can tell you that for those that are under 18, some of them will be in youth detention centres. They will be in rooms. They are not allowed to call them “cells”. They will have video games and televisions in those rooms. Look, I’m not advocating that they should be in dungeons or being treated inhumanely, but they should be punished.
For those that don’t end up in detention centres, they will be put on what’s called an intensive surveillance and supervision programme, which is part of the Youth Rehabilitation Order. While they are on that they will spend the majority of their time being driven by youth workers like me to play football, to go to gyms. They will be told that they themselves are victims of crime. It’s absolutely absurd.
Shelagh Fogerty: Leslie Pullman
Leslie Pullman: I couldn’t agree with more with what the gentleman’s just said. I was asked this question nine years ago when I was promoting ASBOs. I was asked repeatedly “why would they do this?” and it’s exactly what the gentleman said, because they can. And that the kids know they can do it, but you must understand when you’re looking at the pictures on the television, they’re not kids, a lot of them, they’re adults. And the adults are leading the kids, due to kids being let off being called criminals and being given these soft options. And they do it because they can, it’s exactly right. And they’re right, the government hasn’t stopped them. Not just this government, successive governments.
And it’s nothing to do with being disaffected, being black. It’s got nothing to do with all that. It’s opportunism.
SF: And when you say, Winston, that the government has failed, or repeated governments have failed, do you mean “failed to be tough enough”?
WS: They’ve failed in several spheres within our society. I worked for a year in a very rough Comprehensive school in the south of England. I actually liked a lot of the kids I worked with. A lot of them were characters in their own right. But there was absolutely no authority in that school. You’d see teachers in the morning crying in their cars because they had to go in. They were like bouncers in rough night clubs. 12 and 13 year olds stoned in the class, teachers couldn’t do anything about it. And these kids weren’t all from rough backgrounds.
SF: Wait, let me stop you there. Teachers couldn’t do anything about a 12 year old who was stoned in their class?
WS: Well that’s what I saw.
SF: Well in what sense could they not do anything?
WS: They could ring their parents and tell them, but often the parents would just be like “so what do you want me to do about it?”
SF: Well is that not a case, Leslie, for having that child removed from the care of that parent?
LP: Exactly, but the fact remains that there’s kids that are being abused, that are being left with parents that are drug-addicts, alcoholics and neglected. And they’ve not got any places to put those children and they’re left in those conditions.
SF: It’s kind of an insidious child abuse, Winston Smith, isn’t it? To fail to raise your child.
WS: It is. I think as a society though, everybody is blaming everybody else. And I hear a lot of people a lot of the time saying “it’s the teachers” or “it’s the parents”, but y’know we’ve always had dysfunctional people in society. But years ago the public’s fear in particular, there was respect for it. And the reason there was respect for it was because the police. I’m not advocating that they should be able to go round clouting people around the ear, but people actually had a fear of authority. A healthy fear. I don’t advocate that we should be living in a totalitarian state of anything like it. But those kids said it all: The government are failing. And what we’re doing, we’re failing to instill boundaries in young people, that they know when they cross a certain line… Cause let’s be clear about this, what we have seen in the past few days is actually an attack on the citizenry of the UK. And we’ve seen an attack on working class communities. These people are burning down their own communities.
SF: I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days of a lot of the stuff that Pope John-Paul II used to say. Y’know, obviously a deeply conservative man when it came to social issues, not surprisingly, he was a Pope. But he used to talk about the dangers of creating children who were just customers and consumers and the dangers inherent in a highly capitalist system as much as the communist system, in the dehumanising effects that they both had. This was his argument. Would you go along with elements of that either of you?
WS: I would actually agree to a small extent with that. I mean I wouldn’t be a great fan of the Pope or any Popes for that matter. But at the end of the day, I do think that a lot of young people, they don’t have opportunities. Like even to get jobs nowadays like, say, washing dishes or working in a Subway. I remember trying to get a kid a job in a Subway and they were like “well you don’t have any experience”. And he was 19 and I was thinking “I’m sure he’s made a sandwich at home” y’know? I mean, a lot of these young people, there’s so many barriers to entering into the workplace. However, that doesn’t excuse this violence or in any ways explain it, because let’s be fair as well. The vast majority of younger people who are unemployed at the moment or are finding it hard. No matter what background they’re from and what class, they’re not out doing this. This is a small minority that are being allowed to dictate to the rest of us and hold us to ransom.
LP: Can I just interject there? For years and years, going back 20 years, I can remember when social workers and how the liberal elite that are making the laws in our country were getting hold of these young people and saying to them “it’s not your fault.” “It’s not your fault because you’re poor”, “it’s not your fault because you’re abused”. There is no excuse! And they give ‘em crutches and they make them sort of justify their wrong behaviour and accept as “it’s not my fault.” They won’t take responsibility for that behaviour. So in the end there’s no consequences.
SF: What I thought was interesting in the bit from the children in Manchester is...You know you often hear people say: “Oh, children need boundaries. They want boundaries. They want discipline. They want to know where they stand, with their parents.” That was borne out by what one of those boys said, wasn’t it? He said, “if the government was in control, I wouldn’t be able to do this”. He was saying “give me boundaries and I’ll live by them”.
LP: But we’ve been saying that with the police. The gentleman’s right with the teachers. The police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I wouldn’t be a police officer for nothing. And they do, the police are human beings like everybody else. They’re like doctors. They make mistakes that cost people’s lives, but we don’t go rampaging on the street. You deal with it in a civilised way.
SF: Do you think that the police have been essentially sort of castrated Winston?
WS: Completely emasculated. And if you go on blogs like Inspector Gadget’s blog, you can read a lot of his frustrations on there. I can’t believe, the other the day, the home secretary, Theresa May is, like, making excuses not to use water cannon. I remember looking at the tele and I was saying to myself: “oh my God we’re concerned about wetting a few people.” I mean in other countries it would be shooting them. I’m not saying we should do that.
But I’d just like to bring one more example of what we are talking about. When these young people are brought before the court, the Youth Offences Service will treat them like they’re victims.
In Manchester a few months ago there was an attack on Wittenshaw Park. Birds were murdered, or killed, in the sanctuary. I was at work that day and one manager said that the young men who did that were victims too. And I just thought, “this is part of the problem”. They attacked a park in working class neighbourhood. That park was used by working class people. This is an attack on the working class. The decent people that abide by the laws, that’s who’s being attacked.
SF: But Leslie and Winston, this is a point to both of you really. That very fine veil that creates civilisation, any civilisation, is easily damaged isn’t it?
LP: It’s gone.
SF: You think it’s gone completely?
LP: I think…We’re on the third generation now and as each generation comes up, these criminals, they get younger and their behaviour’s worse and God help the next one that comes along. I’ve been to court. I used to support victims as me job. And I’ll tell you when you when you went in court you’d be hard pressed to know who the victim was. Cause the perpetrators would be standing there with all these people like the youth services and the op-teams supporting them. And the judges’d be asking to go away and look at the background and their circumstances. Nobody did a thing for the victims sat there. They was like invisible. And it’s become all about the perpetrator. All through the criminal justice system. They call it the injustice system now in this community. They’re not engaged with it.
SF: Do you think it’s important, Winston Smith, that whatever you think of these people, it’s important to understand them?
WS: It depends.
SF: That doesn’t mean tea and cake and stroking them.
WS: It’s doesn’t, of course not. We heard from those people themselves. We don’t need some kind of Marxist analysis of what’s going on. We live in one of the most generous welfare states in the Europe. I’ve worked with, what I call the underclass, which are distinct from the working class. Very distinct in many ways. This was about opportunism. It was about stealing jeans. Those kids that you interviewed there said it themselves. They did it because they could get away with it. But at the same time I do think that we need to look at this free-market capitalism. I’m not against capitalism, but it has created a very dog-eat-dog world. I don’t think that explains it, but we need to give young people more opportunities.
We need to go back into school and we need to have effective discipline. And we need to make sure that parents are penalised in some ways if their children are not behaving well and instead of all this molly-coddling we do…
SF: But is it more than molly-coddling. Isn’t it also about adults, whether it’s parents, teachers, police or whoever they are. Concerned adults….
LP: They don’t have that backing, because the parents in some of those areas looting we’re coming up in cars.
SF: And helping them. Hmm.
LP: So what do you do about that?
SF: So obviously, that’s an extreme where the parent is helping with the looting.
LP: I’ve seen it.
SF: I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen in numbers, but the question I’m trying to ask you is, over say 30 or 40 years, because we are talking generationally here, have we just stepped back and said, y’know Winston said it himself, there’s nothing we could do about 11 and 12 year olds who were high on whatever it was in the classroom. We see 12 and 13 year olds having sex and, instead of saying “let me explain why you shouldn’t”, instead we give them condoms. Have we basically just put our hands up and said “you’re in charge”.
LP: They’re not taught about moral responsibility. The depivation is moral responsibility. It’s not about owning things. I come from a family of 12 and when we grew up. They think they’re deprived. They don’t know what “deprived” is. There was no benefits and we relied on our student meal. We were taught manners and respect because that cost nothing. And we was fearful of our parents. If we had been naughty, or even cheeky to someone, we’d have got a going over from the person we did it to and off our father when we got home.
SF: Isn’t this also about a sense of shame and I don’t mean awful, inflicting shame on a person, but that sense of shame that we all should have, that stops us doing bad stuff?
WS: Oh, the cult of self-esteem: Everyone should feel good about themselves all the time. That’s the nonsense that I used to hear throughout the different parts of the youth offences service system I worked in. If you’re a criminal and you’re terrorising your neighbourhood, you should feel bad about yourself. You are a drain on society. People don’t really know what is going on out there. They don’t actually know.
I’m not surprised this has happened. It just really angers me.
And that lady, Leslie, is so right. The perpetrators of crime are treated like the victims and excuses are made for them all the time.
SF: So what do we do? What do we do?
LP: It’s the government that made those laws. It’s governments that have made this society.
WS: Since the sixties, the cultural revolution in the sixties, a lot of forms of authority were challenge that needed to be challenged. I keep saying this over and over again to people. It was too patriarchal, there was a lot of racism, there were a lot of bad things that needed to be changed. But what happened is, the actual term “authority” came to be seen as anaethemat to all these people making policy, in education, social services…
SF: Do you think that since the sixties, to make that a starting point, too many freedoms have been given whether they are sexual, financial, social?
WS: I’m a liberal and I believe in individual rights, but with that comes responsibilities. And when you inflict damage onto other people by your actions, you should be held accountable. Also another thing, I believe in a welfare state, but I have worked with people and tried to help them move from benefits into work, when there was work y’know, I know it’s challenging now. And I was visiting people in their homes. Young people. And, like, you’re going in there and people are saying to you “this person is poor” and you go in and there’s a widescreen television, there’s loads of alcohol, there’s weed. Why would they go to work when we give them that much and they look on people like me as a servant. If I spoke harshly to any of the “clients”, as I was told to refer to them, I’d be disciplined. Yet I have to take abuse off them all day long.
LP: I have a friend who’s a social worker and they call abused children “clients”. It’s totally unbelievable.
SF: Okay, really briefly from both of you. One important change. What should it be?
LP: It’s got to be the government. It’s got to come from the top down. Communities can’t do it on their own. They’ve got to offer support from the government. From the top with the laws. And they’re talking about putting these people in prison. I’ll put money they have to let people out prison to make space to put them in, because they’ve not built any.
WS: First and foremost, the first thing we need to do, if anything; we need to toughen up the criminal justice system. We need tougher policing. The police need to be allowed to police, because the people who obey the law, responsible people. They’re not being protected. We are being let down.
LP: Can I just say, I’ve got a family member close to me who’s got a university degree and went on to do further and further.
SF: What does he want to do?
LP: He’s in IT and computation. Under-experienced for certain jobs. Over-experienced for certain jobs. And in the end they’ve given up.
SF: Will he leave Manchester?
LP: Where does he go? When they’ve got no money how can they move? Y’know, on benefits how can they? If they can’t get a job in Manchester. People losing jobs in Manchester. People losing jobs in London.
SF: But has he widened the net. I’m just stunned that someone with that qualification can’t get a job.
LP: Yeah, but it’s a matter of… what do they do? I’ve got one son that lives in London. I’ve was up all night, cause he was watching them with a packed bag ready to go with his personal belongings, a tent and an ice pick.
SF: Oh Leslie, you’ve started a whole other discussion, but thank you.
Thank you Leslie, Leslie Pullman a community campaigner who’s worked with victims of anti-social behaviour and she’s talking to us from Manchester and Winston Smith who’s brought out a book called “Generation F”.
For a limited time you can listen to the original interview at BBC Radio 5's website.
(Source - Choose the programme for the 10th August)
I had never believed things were this bad....
Shelagh Fogarty: Our reporter spoke to these looters in Manchester.
Interviewer: So why have you been stealing this stuff? Can you not afford to buy it yourself?
Rioter in Manchester: Why are ya gonna miss the opportunity to get free stuff that’s worth, like, loads o’ money?
I: So are you saying that you could probably afford some of the stuff?
RM: Yeah, obviously, but it’s not about that.
I: What is it about?
RM: The government obviously, taking away. Honestly, more kids don’t get no college no more, cause they don’t get paid innit.
I: So the fact that you are nicking shoes that you could probably afford to buy. That’s about the government, is it? I don’t understand.
RM: No, honestly, it’s not about that right. It’s about like the government aren’t in control. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do it, would we?
I: So because the government can’t stop you doing it. That’s why you’re doing it?
RM: Well, what did the government do? They tried, they failed innit? How many people have they arrested, right? Ten! I’m not really bothered. I keep doing this every day, until I get caught.
Shelagh Fogerty: Well *sighs* let’s talk to Winston Smith. The author of a book called “Generation F” which deals with the issues of the so-called “underclass” He’s also a former youth worker and writes a critical blog about the youth justice system.
Hello to you, Winston Smith.
Winston Smith: Hi there.
Leslie Pullman is a community campaigner and has worked with victims of anti-social behaviour in the Manchester area.
Hello Leslie.
Leslie Pullman: Hiya
That’s depressing listening isn’t it Winston Smith?
Winston Smith: It’s very depressing, but I’m not surprised at all and it reflects basically the work that I did in Manchester with the Youth Offending Service. I’m not at all surprised that that’s the type of attitude. Cause they’re saying that the government have failed to stop it, but they’ve been failing for years.
Theresa May was talking about the consequences. “People are going to see the consequences for these crimes.” Well, I can tell you that for those that are under 18, some of them will be in youth detention centres. They will be in rooms. They are not allowed to call them “cells”. They will have video games and televisions in those rooms. Look, I’m not advocating that they should be in dungeons or being treated inhumanely, but they should be punished.
For those that don’t end up in detention centres, they will be put on what’s called an intensive surveillance and supervision programme, which is part of the Youth Rehabilitation Order. While they are on that they will spend the majority of their time being driven by youth workers like me to play football, to go to gyms. They will be told that they themselves are victims of crime. It’s absolutely absurd.
Shelagh Fogerty: Leslie Pullman
Leslie Pullman: I couldn’t agree with more with what the gentleman’s just said. I was asked this question nine years ago when I was promoting ASBOs. I was asked repeatedly “why would they do this?” and it’s exactly what the gentleman said, because they can. And that the kids know they can do it, but you must understand when you’re looking at the pictures on the television, they’re not kids, a lot of them, they’re adults. And the adults are leading the kids, due to kids being let off being called criminals and being given these soft options. And they do it because they can, it’s exactly right. And they’re right, the government hasn’t stopped them. Not just this government, successive governments.
And it’s nothing to do with being disaffected, being black. It’s got nothing to do with all that. It’s opportunism.
SF: And when you say, Winston, that the government has failed, or repeated governments have failed, do you mean “failed to be tough enough”?
WS: They’ve failed in several spheres within our society. I worked for a year in a very rough Comprehensive school in the south of England. I actually liked a lot of the kids I worked with. A lot of them were characters in their own right. But there was absolutely no authority in that school. You’d see teachers in the morning crying in their cars because they had to go in. They were like bouncers in rough night clubs. 12 and 13 year olds stoned in the class, teachers couldn’t do anything about it. And these kids weren’t all from rough backgrounds.
SF: Wait, let me stop you there. Teachers couldn’t do anything about a 12 year old who was stoned in their class?
WS: Well that’s what I saw.
SF: Well in what sense could they not do anything?
WS: They could ring their parents and tell them, but often the parents would just be like “so what do you want me to do about it?”
SF: Well is that not a case, Leslie, for having that child removed from the care of that parent?
LP: Exactly, but the fact remains that there’s kids that are being abused, that are being left with parents that are drug-addicts, alcoholics and neglected. And they’ve not got any places to put those children and they’re left in those conditions.
SF: It’s kind of an insidious child abuse, Winston Smith, isn’t it? To fail to raise your child.
WS: It is. I think as a society though, everybody is blaming everybody else. And I hear a lot of people a lot of the time saying “it’s the teachers” or “it’s the parents”, but y’know we’ve always had dysfunctional people in society. But years ago the public’s fear in particular, there was respect for it. And the reason there was respect for it was because the police. I’m not advocating that they should be able to go round clouting people around the ear, but people actually had a fear of authority. A healthy fear. I don’t advocate that we should be living in a totalitarian state of anything like it. But those kids said it all: The government are failing. And what we’re doing, we’re failing to instill boundaries in young people, that they know when they cross a certain line… Cause let’s be clear about this, what we have seen in the past few days is actually an attack on the citizenry of the UK. And we’ve seen an attack on working class communities. These people are burning down their own communities.
SF: I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days of a lot of the stuff that Pope John-Paul II used to say. Y’know, obviously a deeply conservative man when it came to social issues, not surprisingly, he was a Pope. But he used to talk about the dangers of creating children who were just customers and consumers and the dangers inherent in a highly capitalist system as much as the communist system, in the dehumanising effects that they both had. This was his argument. Would you go along with elements of that either of you?
WS: I would actually agree to a small extent with that. I mean I wouldn’t be a great fan of the Pope or any Popes for that matter. But at the end of the day, I do think that a lot of young people, they don’t have opportunities. Like even to get jobs nowadays like, say, washing dishes or working in a Subway. I remember trying to get a kid a job in a Subway and they were like “well you don’t have any experience”. And he was 19 and I was thinking “I’m sure he’s made a sandwich at home” y’know? I mean, a lot of these young people, there’s so many barriers to entering into the workplace. However, that doesn’t excuse this violence or in any ways explain it, because let’s be fair as well. The vast majority of younger people who are unemployed at the moment or are finding it hard. No matter what background they’re from and what class, they’re not out doing this. This is a small minority that are being allowed to dictate to the rest of us and hold us to ransom.
LP: Can I just interject there? For years and years, going back 20 years, I can remember when social workers and how the liberal elite that are making the laws in our country were getting hold of these young people and saying to them “it’s not your fault.” “It’s not your fault because you’re poor”, “it’s not your fault because you’re abused”. There is no excuse! And they give ‘em crutches and they make them sort of justify their wrong behaviour and accept as “it’s not my fault.” They won’t take responsibility for that behaviour. So in the end there’s no consequences.
SF: What I thought was interesting in the bit from the children in Manchester is...You know you often hear people say: “Oh, children need boundaries. They want boundaries. They want discipline. They want to know where they stand, with their parents.” That was borne out by what one of those boys said, wasn’t it? He said, “if the government was in control, I wouldn’t be able to do this”. He was saying “give me boundaries and I’ll live by them”.
LP: But we’ve been saying that with the police. The gentleman’s right with the teachers. The police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I wouldn’t be a police officer for nothing. And they do, the police are human beings like everybody else. They’re like doctors. They make mistakes that cost people’s lives, but we don’t go rampaging on the street. You deal with it in a civilised way.
SF: Do you think that the police have been essentially sort of castrated Winston?
WS: Completely emasculated. And if you go on blogs like Inspector Gadget’s blog, you can read a lot of his frustrations on there. I can’t believe, the other the day, the home secretary, Theresa May is, like, making excuses not to use water cannon. I remember looking at the tele and I was saying to myself: “oh my God we’re concerned about wetting a few people.” I mean in other countries it would be shooting them. I’m not saying we should do that.
But I’d just like to bring one more example of what we are talking about. When these young people are brought before the court, the Youth Offences Service will treat them like they’re victims.
In Manchester a few months ago there was an attack on Wittenshaw Park. Birds were murdered, or killed, in the sanctuary. I was at work that day and one manager said that the young men who did that were victims too. And I just thought, “this is part of the problem”. They attacked a park in working class neighbourhood. That park was used by working class people. This is an attack on the working class. The decent people that abide by the laws, that’s who’s being attacked.
SF: But Leslie and Winston, this is a point to both of you really. That very fine veil that creates civilisation, any civilisation, is easily damaged isn’t it?
LP: It’s gone.
SF: You think it’s gone completely?
LP: I think…We’re on the third generation now and as each generation comes up, these criminals, they get younger and their behaviour’s worse and God help the next one that comes along. I’ve been to court. I used to support victims as me job. And I’ll tell you when you when you went in court you’d be hard pressed to know who the victim was. Cause the perpetrators would be standing there with all these people like the youth services and the op-teams supporting them. And the judges’d be asking to go away and look at the background and their circumstances. Nobody did a thing for the victims sat there. They was like invisible. And it’s become all about the perpetrator. All through the criminal justice system. They call it the injustice system now in this community. They’re not engaged with it.
SF: Do you think it’s important, Winston Smith, that whatever you think of these people, it’s important to understand them?
WS: It depends.
SF: That doesn’t mean tea and cake and stroking them.
WS: It’s doesn’t, of course not. We heard from those people themselves. We don’t need some kind of Marxist analysis of what’s going on. We live in one of the most generous welfare states in the Europe. I’ve worked with, what I call the underclass, which are distinct from the working class. Very distinct in many ways. This was about opportunism. It was about stealing jeans. Those kids that you interviewed there said it themselves. They did it because they could get away with it. But at the same time I do think that we need to look at this free-market capitalism. I’m not against capitalism, but it has created a very dog-eat-dog world. I don’t think that explains it, but we need to give young people more opportunities.
We need to go back into school and we need to have effective discipline. And we need to make sure that parents are penalised in some ways if their children are not behaving well and instead of all this molly-coddling we do…
SF: But is it more than molly-coddling. Isn’t it also about adults, whether it’s parents, teachers, police or whoever they are. Concerned adults….
LP: They don’t have that backing, because the parents in some of those areas looting we’re coming up in cars.
SF: And helping them. Hmm.
LP: So what do you do about that?
SF: So obviously, that’s an extreme where the parent is helping with the looting.
LP: I’ve seen it.
SF: I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen in numbers, but the question I’m trying to ask you is, over say 30 or 40 years, because we are talking generationally here, have we just stepped back and said, y’know Winston said it himself, there’s nothing we could do about 11 and 12 year olds who were high on whatever it was in the classroom. We see 12 and 13 year olds having sex and, instead of saying “let me explain why you shouldn’t”, instead we give them condoms. Have we basically just put our hands up and said “you’re in charge”.
LP: They’re not taught about moral responsibility. The depivation is moral responsibility. It’s not about owning things. I come from a family of 12 and when we grew up. They think they’re deprived. They don’t know what “deprived” is. There was no benefits and we relied on our student meal. We were taught manners and respect because that cost nothing. And we was fearful of our parents. If we had been naughty, or even cheeky to someone, we’d have got a going over from the person we did it to and off our father when we got home.
SF: Isn’t this also about a sense of shame and I don’t mean awful, inflicting shame on a person, but that sense of shame that we all should have, that stops us doing bad stuff?
WS: Oh, the cult of self-esteem: Everyone should feel good about themselves all the time. That’s the nonsense that I used to hear throughout the different parts of the youth offences service system I worked in. If you’re a criminal and you’re terrorising your neighbourhood, you should feel bad about yourself. You are a drain on society. People don’t really know what is going on out there. They don’t actually know.
I’m not surprised this has happened. It just really angers me.
And that lady, Leslie, is so right. The perpetrators of crime are treated like the victims and excuses are made for them all the time.
SF: So what do we do? What do we do?
LP: It’s the government that made those laws. It’s governments that have made this society.
WS: Since the sixties, the cultural revolution in the sixties, a lot of forms of authority were challenge that needed to be challenged. I keep saying this over and over again to people. It was too patriarchal, there was a lot of racism, there were a lot of bad things that needed to be changed. But what happened is, the actual term “authority” came to be seen as anaethemat to all these people making policy, in education, social services…
SF: Do you think that since the sixties, to make that a starting point, too many freedoms have been given whether they are sexual, financial, social?
WS: I’m a liberal and I believe in individual rights, but with that comes responsibilities. And when you inflict damage onto other people by your actions, you should be held accountable. Also another thing, I believe in a welfare state, but I have worked with people and tried to help them move from benefits into work, when there was work y’know, I know it’s challenging now. And I was visiting people in their homes. Young people. And, like, you’re going in there and people are saying to you “this person is poor” and you go in and there’s a widescreen television, there’s loads of alcohol, there’s weed. Why would they go to work when we give them that much and they look on people like me as a servant. If I spoke harshly to any of the “clients”, as I was told to refer to them, I’d be disciplined. Yet I have to take abuse off them all day long.
LP: I have a friend who’s a social worker and they call abused children “clients”. It’s totally unbelievable.
SF: Okay, really briefly from both of you. One important change. What should it be?
LP: It’s got to be the government. It’s got to come from the top down. Communities can’t do it on their own. They’ve got to offer support from the government. From the top with the laws. And they’re talking about putting these people in prison. I’ll put money they have to let people out prison to make space to put them in, because they’ve not built any.
WS: First and foremost, the first thing we need to do, if anything; we need to toughen up the criminal justice system. We need tougher policing. The police need to be allowed to police, because the people who obey the law, responsible people. They’re not being protected. We are being let down.
LP: Can I just say, I’ve got a family member close to me who’s got a university degree and went on to do further and further.
SF: What does he want to do?
LP: He’s in IT and computation. Under-experienced for certain jobs. Over-experienced for certain jobs. And in the end they’ve given up.
SF: Will he leave Manchester?
LP: Where does he go? When they’ve got no money how can they move? Y’know, on benefits how can they? If they can’t get a job in Manchester. People losing jobs in Manchester. People losing jobs in London.
SF: But has he widened the net. I’m just stunned that someone with that qualification can’t get a job.
LP: Yeah, but it’s a matter of… what do they do? I’ve got one son that lives in London. I’ve was up all night, cause he was watching them with a packed bag ready to go with his personal belongings, a tent and an ice pick.
SF: Oh Leslie, you’ve started a whole other discussion, but thank you.
Thank you Leslie, Leslie Pullman a community campaigner who’s worked with victims of anti-social behaviour and she’s talking to us from Manchester and Winston Smith who’s brought out a book called “Generation F”.
For a limited time you can listen to the original interview at BBC Radio 5's website.
(Source - Choose the programme for the 10th August)
I had never believed things were this bad....