13.07.1995

Only doing their job

LUTON, LEEDS and Bradford have all seen young people rioting against the police. All the riots were triggered by specific police actions. ‘Only doing their job’, of course, but what is significant is that doing their job has made them universally unpopular - so unpopular that young people want to bash their heads in.

The young feel they have been criminalised by age and appearance, not by evil deeds. Former Leeds city councillor Pat Regan commented, “My nephew Aaron went for a walk round the block the other day and got stopped four times.”

John Jefferson, a Luton councillor, said about the Marsh Farm riots: “The police have no understanding of young people.” True, but why? They have children of their own. But they have yet to learn that you cannot police social problems out of existence.

As another councillor, Morag Main, pointed out, “It is not as if the estate is deprived. Loads of money has been pumped into the area.” “Loads of money” is a vague term, but providing some new facilities has not changed the fact that the estate is, in the words of a resident, “one of the worst places you would want to live in”. Obviously councillors’ understanding is no better than that of the police.

The government knows that it may be expensive and unsatisfactory to solve social problems with police measures, but it is a damned sight cheaper than paying for reforms. Yet even reforms are not the answer.

Tom May, Communist Party candidate in the recent local elections in Luton, commented:

“Young people are at the sharp end of a society that does not work in their interests. Whether we are employed or unemployed, vote or do not vote, take drugs or go to church, we are all dependent either on the boss for a job or the government for a hand-out. We have virtually no control over our own lives.”

We are in a word alienated - powerless to take responsibility for our world or even our own lives. A political question that can only be tackled by getting rid of the boss and taking control of our lives.

Arthur Lawrence