When Labour came to power in 1997 it promised to tackle social exclusion and poverty, with Tony Blair claiming that this would be the main difference between Labour and the previous Tory government. However, the number of 15-16 year olds in custody is almost twice as many as a decade ago. Thousands of ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) have been imposed on working class youths – criminalising them, restricting their movement and even imprisoning them. Their aim is, on one hand, to exclude the poorest, most deprived sections of society, while on the other hand, to protect the privilege of the minority. LOUIS BREHONY reports.
ASBOs, and the further powers provided by the Anti Social Behaviour Act 2003, are designed to criminalise and punish working class youth, already excluded from decent education, social welfare and adequate living standards. The police now have power to issue on the spot fines for petty offences like littering, ‘wasting police time’ and alcohol consumption in public; small crowds of youths acting ‘suspiciously’ can be ‘dispersed’; people can be banned from specific areas, and even their own homes; curfews can be imposed on entire areas. As well as working class youth, prostitutes, Travellers and homeless people are also the victims of these police state measures.
And at the same time the children of the ruling class live in comfort. In a country where Prince Harry can get away with smoking dope and brawling in nightclubs, and the Prime Minister’s son can lie in the street in a drunken stupor, the vast majority of young people are cast aside and their culture repressed. A similar story can be traced through the last 50 years – from teddy boys to mods and rockers, punk to warehouse parties – the attacks on hooded youth is the present manifestation in a long wave of attacks on working class youth culture.
The divide between rich and poor youth can be shown by comparing the statistics for the poor West Midlands (WM) with the affluent South East (SE). There are three times as many 15-16 year olds from WM in young offenders institutes as there are from SE; WM has a concentration of people on low incomes three times that of SE; WM has the worst infant mortality rate in the country, SE has the best. Nationally the number of school exclusions is three times that in 1990, with black students three times more likely to be excluded than whites.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett started the witch-hunt by giving the media legal powers to ‘name and shame’ those found guilty of ‘anti-social behaviour offences.’ This draconian Labour policy has been developed by Blunkett’s successor, Charles Clarke. New government guidelines state that ‘publicising should be the norm, not the exception. An individual who is subject to an ASBO should understand that the community is likely to learn about it.’
The media has jumped at the chance to help criminalise those oppressed sections of the working class who are targeted by ASBOs. More than one fifth of all Britain’s ASBOs have been imposed in Manchester and the Manchester Evening News (MEN) has played as despicable a role as the police in attacking the working class victims of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act and ASBOs. Headlines such as ‘War on street thugs starts here’, ‘Moss Side suspects shackled by new laws’, and ‘Yob is banned from the airport’ are frequent. As are overblown front-page pictures of ‘criminals’ with articles pushing for ‘grassing up’ amongst communities.
Eddy Newman, the Labour councillor in charge of ASBOs, regularly boasts on the MEN’s pages about how ‘effective’ the orders are in locking up ‘yobs.’ In the three months up to 15 September last year, 121 children under the age of 18 were gaoled for breaching ASBOs.
‘Operation Breakthrough’, publicised highly by the MEN, specifically targets the poor black and Asian communities of Moss Side, Longsight and Levenshulme. Supposedly aimed at ‘gangs’ and ‘yob culture,’ the ridiculous ASBO conditions imposed on those charged include bans on wearing balaclavas, hoods and ‘body armour’, and bans on riding bicycles. Superintendent Neil Wain said: ‘Our intention is to disrupt gangsters and create a situation where we break the gang culture.’ In reality they are associating poor, black communities with drugs and ‘gangsterism’, and criminalising and repressing the culture of alienated youth.
The war on ‘hoodies’ is a sign that this criminalisation is set to intensify. A number of shopping precincts are in the process of banning hooded jackets and caps – it’s ironic that they will sell them to you but won’t allow you to wear them. Blair and Labour are debating further crackdowns on ‘street corner and shopping centre thugs’ and are even thinking about bright orange uniforms for ‘offenders’ on community service.
The frenzy of fear being whipped up by the government and media about ‘hooded thugs’ – ie poor, socially excluded teenagers – is designed to give more credibility to Labour’s police state measures. When Blair speaks about the lack of ‘respect’ amongst young people, what he really means is amongst working class youth, not the children of the ruling class he is so ready to protect. When the state, its police, and the media attack working class youth they are blaming them for the very conditions that the ruling class has created – they are the real criminals. Work must be done in local communities to organise the fight back against ASBOs and against criminalisation.
FRFI 185 June / July 2005
