by Joe Thorne

On Friday night, at around 1am and at the bottom of my road in Hackney, Jahmal Mason-Blair was stabbed in the neck and dead within the hour.   He was 17, the ninth teenager murdered this year on the streets of London.  The boy who has been arrested for Jahmal’s killing is 13 years old.

At a nearby  cafe yesterday morning, Jahmal’s murder was still on the minds of locals.  Jahmal was what they call a ‘good kid’.  A talented, ambitious footballer, someone who knew where he was going.  People say he was trying to break up a fight.  But the talk in the cafe is all about punishment; capital punishment, preferably.  I point out that they have capital punishment in the US, and it’s worse there.  Nobody listens.  One guy tries to talk about prison; but others pipe up about not wanting their taxes to go to buy food for the prisoners, let alone Playstations.  “If I could, I’d get a machine gun…” are the last words I hear as I walk out the door.

At the temporary shrine of flowers and football shirts under the railway bridge, a few of Jahmal’s friends were milling around, setting to rights the cards that had blown over, and the t-shirts that had become crumpled in the night.  But mostly just standing, below a billboard advertising the services of criminal lawyers – “Arrested?” it asks.  I got talking with a woman, a passerby.  Her idea was the same as those in the cafe.  “They should be killed”; she’s got a son, you see, about the same age, she’s worried about him.  She talks to him every day though, she says, a little proud, and she’s moved him to a different school to keep him out of trouble.  Jahmal is the second pupil at Hackney Free to have died a violent death in the last ten months.  And on top of that, the school is 150m from the spot where Shaquille Smith was stabbed dead in September, she can remember his name.  Lamely, I make the point about the death penalty in the US to her.  She doesn’t seem convinced, either.  Later, I find that Damilola Taylor’s father has been calling for the same thing.  The only other suggestion at the cafe and on the street, was of a curfew – “out at that time?  And thirteen” – combined with the usual questions about ‘the parents’.

This doesn’t represent a movement to introduce capital punishment, not at all.  What it represents is hurt, anger; people groping in the dark for a solution, finding no answers, and grasping hard to an idea which, however horrific – they know they are talking about a 13 year old child – is the only one within reach.  And where are we?  Where is the left?  What are our answers, where are our solutions? Where, even, are our questions?

The sources of violence

The rate of violent homicide among teenagers in London appears to have fallen slightly since last year, when it reached 28 by the end of December – in 2007 the figure was 26.[i] Nonetheless, at this rate, this year, the figure will probably pass 20 – the police would claim that this is a result of Operation Blunt, basically a programme of intensified Stop and Search on predominantly non-white youth, mostly of dubious legal foundation.  The issue has faded from the headlines a little, but it is still important: not only because of the numbers of deaths, but because of what it says about life in the more deprived parts of Britain.  So what do we have to say about it?

As has been argued elsewhere, one wrong approach is simply to blame crime on the deprivation, alienation and social chaos of capitalist society in general.  Of course, in itself, this is true.  Crime does tend to increase with unemployment, inequality and poverty, and the following map, which plots gang turf over deprivation is a graphic illustration of the essential truth of this idea.

Fact is, we need to look at why some working class kids are turning to weapons for respect.  They’re not getting it, and they don’t believe they have a prospect of getting it, anywhere else.  Statistics show that social mobility is falling.  Working class people are more likely to have to choose a university near home, if they go to one at all.  It’s not just a crisis of aspiration; it’s a crisis of reality.  Get up in the morning and work in some terrible service sector job for £6 or £7 an hour for the rest of your life, while private equity bosses cream it off?  Come on.  The life which young working class people in London are looking at – when they look at the lives of the people around them – doesn’t look good. That’s no excuse for getting involved in violence.  But, along with the economically mandated breakdown of families, it is a real cause of the fact that people do.

However, by itself, this approach fails to recognise or establish a role for members of the community to actively address crime or gang culture, short of ‘fight for socialism’ or – worse – ‘join the party’.  It also fails to recognise the impulse which young community members in areas overshadowed by gang, and gang related, violence to take responsibility for the culture they are part of.  On the one occasion where I have been present for a discussion by young people in London about gun and knife crime this tendency – to talk about the need to ‘take responsibility’ – was extremely pronounced.  Against the attempts of adults to blame computer games, music, and the need to ‘find God’, the most articulate young people were clear both that the deprivation of their communities was the incubator of violence, and that there were things which they could do to uphold different values in their peer group.[ii] They recognised that gangs were a source of respect, emotional support, income and validation for some young people unable to obtain those things by other means.  But they also unreservedly and pointedly condemned the violence.

While decaying capitalism will tend to produce violence of the sort we are seeing, the interventions of responsible family and friends undoubtedly makes a real difference in particular situations.  There should be a role for socialist propaganda to talk about both sides of the equation (and about the uselessness of “hang ‘em and flog ‘em” politics), but to produce this credibly will involve a deeper investigation into the communities around us, their concerns, their perceptions.

Interventions

The left is so used to focussing on struggle, that sometimes we forget that the actual constitution of communities (locally or in the workplace) must sometimes be a priority, and is often a precondition of struggle.  This is perhaps easier said than done.  For my own part, like many twenty-somethings who rent, I haven’t lived in one house or flat for more than a year and a half – and only once for more than 6 months – in the last 7 years.  I interact with neighbours as much as I can, but I’m not an organic part of the communities where I live.  So I can’t offer any easy answers; except to note that perhaps I should have got together with like-minded people living nearby and tried to produce a leaflet to give out locally.  Perhaps I still will.  Another idea might be to look at local community centres and see if there are opportunities for volunteering in projects which address basic community needs.

Pseudo ‘practical’ demands such as those promoted by The Mirror (metal detectors for police, “texts and internet will help win battle”!) are striking for their vagueness, and lack of real engagement with the problems identified by the young people themselves – which are at least present to some degree in the manifesto which was developed at the event I referred to earlier.  But what do we have to add to them?

Confrontational politics clearly doesn’t give us a model to directly address the sort of gang related violence we are talking about. [iii] Perhaps community building is the only thing that can do that.  But taking responsibility means not only taking responsibility for addressing violence directly, but in the long term.  To do so is to fight with your community for the sort of life that kids can grow up being proud of.  Good jobs, good homes, good schools, time with your family.  These are, have always been, things that proud communities, which respect each other, fight for.  Building without fighting will not turn back the tide of deprivation which capitalism brings; fighting without building will probably seem abstract and opportunistic to demoralised communities.  But, perhaps, as much as these things, we need to keep our minds open, and keep listening to what people particularly young people, in affected communities are saying.

Under the bridge, Jahmal’s friends are still milling around, talking quietly to each other.

[ii] I also note that the suggestion that police need to respect kids as well as the other way round, which received applause, was left off the ‘manifesto’.

[iii] Incidentally, the predecessors of modern gangs were formed by non-white youth as a tool for self defence against racist violence on the part of organised white gangs, whether criminal, sub-cultural, or political (such as the National Front) [*] [*].  The same is true of the ‘Crips’ and ‘Bloods’ in the US, the bastardised descendents of elements of the Black Panther Party, deformed by COINTELPRO, deindustrialisation, and the narcotics industry.

By an East London teacher

News of students occupying universities across the UK in protest at Israeli atrocities prompted some on the Left to proclaim young people as a new revolutionary force in Britain. This assessment is in part wishful thinking, since if it was accurate, the disproportionate amount of time the Left spends on recruiting and organising students would have some justification.

It is undoubtedly true that there has been an upsurge in student activism around international issues. Many of the school students who walked out of classes in opposition to the 2003 Iraq War are now at university, and their radicalism has not diminished. Any conclusions about a general left-wards shift on the part of the young should be resisted, however. There are no signs that the Gaza campaign will develop into a broader progressive movement. Indeed, research from 2008 shows that students are more likely to express support for the Conservatives than for Labour. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, since due to Britain’s inegalitarian education system, university students are disproportionately middle class.

Therein lies the rub. All the talk on the Left about the radicalism of the young is really about the limited radicalism of young, middle class students. What of the working class young people who do not end up going to university, or who are among the 22% of students who fail to complete their university courses? Almost all the articles on working class young people from the Socialist Worker newspaper focus on media demonisation of youth, and the failure of government to meet young people’s needs on education and crime. The following passage, from an article about youth crime, is typical:

Poor education, poverty, inequality, poor life prospects and decimation of local services – these are the conditions in which many of our young people are living and which create the conditions for some to turn to crime and violence.

Working class young people are cast as passive victims without agency. The political views of working class youth, and the way they see themselves and their society, are neglected. If the Left is to have any hope of building support for its politics in the future, it needs to get to grips with the worldview of young people growing up in communities devastated by Thatcherism.

The kids I work with are predominantly from working class backgrounds. Most have parents employed in routine clerical or manual occupations, though a substantial minority come from families where neither parent works. Some are the children of immigrants who, due to lack of job opportunities or their own refusal to accept poverty pay, have set themselves up as self-employed – often in the “black” economy. Over 90% are non-white: Bengalis, West Africans and Caribbeans are the largest ethnic groups. Nearly all are classified as from “socially deprived” backgrounds. They should be part of the target market for Left groups, but very few have any awareness of socialism or progressive politics. Last month, anti-capitalist demonstrators descended on the Excel Exhibition Centre, round the corner from the College where I work. The students viewed the protests with a mixture of curiosity, amusement and indifference, but seemed to feel no sense of identification with the protestors.

Many of my students are highly ambitious – often ludicrously so. Kids with four GCSEs who have trouble reading and writing announce their plans to become corporate lawyers, doctors and businesspeople. I’m often reminded of Delboy from Only Fools and Horses and his reassuring words to a sceptical younger brother: “this time next year, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires!” As with Delboy, the bravado often masks deep insecurities. Through their time in education, a gap grows between their ambitions and their ability to achieve them. The more distant the prospect of educational success becomes, the more they cling to the fantasy of future wealth. Many give up on tasks after the tiniest set back, afraid to grapple with the problem in case the effort makes the anticipated failure more painful. It is common for kids to mock and take delight in the failure of others, as this provides a welcome distraction from their own inadequacies. Many of them refuse to take responsibility for their actions when they experience failure, since to do so would force them to address their weaknesses.

The kids I work with generally reject the idea that anyone could be motivated by altruism or any non-material concerns, and assume people are naturally selfish. They are keenly aware of their own “rights” but often dismissive of the rights of others. The vast majority of students in every class I have taught favour much harsher restrictions on the rights of immigrants, despite the fact that they are generally the descendents of immigrants themselves. They generally accept the view of British society as meritocratic. While most acknowledge the existence of class as a social fact, they do not see it as a structural barrier to material success. Instead of structural explanations, there is widespread support for “conspiracy theory” views of the world, with the Jews or the Freemasons cast as evil masterminds controlling events.

It isn’t hard to imagine the political views that flow from these assumptions about human nature and British society. My students tend to support the neoliberal model of “tolerance”, insisting upon the right of others to pursue their own self interest. On economics, most are firmly opposed to progressive taxation and redistribution of wealth: Tory proposals to raise the inheritance tax threshold and reverse Labour’s increase in the top rate of tax are popular. If I point out to my students that such taxes affect a tiny minority of the population, the response is that they might be in that tiny minority before too long. Most of my students support harsh, authoritarian policies on law and order, and blame crime on individual criminals rather than social factors.

In short, the majority of the working class young people I work with seem to have accepted Thatcherite principles and assumptions in full. There is no society; only competing and ruthless individuals. Collectivism is a doomed endeavour, since people are bound by nature to seek their own benefit at the expense of others. It is easy to move up through the class system, and anyone can “get to the top” with the requisite hard work. People are entitled to the fruits of their labour and have no obligation to give up any of their money in the form of redistributive taxes.

Of course, the picture is far more complex and nuanced than the one I have sketched. In their personal dealings with others, for instance, most of my students amply demonstrate the altruism they deny exists. It is also true that my students do not constitute a representative cross section of British society. Since many are the children of recent immigrants, they do not have the ingrained awareness of class that indigenous British people often do. Those whose parents are self employed are perhaps less likely to be sensitive to class than those whose parents are workers.

Most importantly, they are just kids with no experience of the world of full time work. Once they leave college or university, they are bound to come up against the realities of a deeply unequal and unfair society and their views will surely change. However, the direction of that change is by no means pre-ordained. Someone who has always believed that society is meritocratic will not necessarily abandon that belief once they find themselves unemployed or in a low paid, unsatisfying job. In the absence of a socialist political culture, they are as likely to blame their situation on Eastern European immigrants and cartels of Jewish bankers as they are to point the finger at an exploitative economic system. The evidence is that young people do have reactionary views on a number of issues. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2007 showed that young people were less concerned with economic inequalities and much less supportive of policies to redistribute wealth than older respondents. Indeed, it would be surprising if decades of neoliberal social polices, designed in part to weaken social solidarity and support for collectivism, were not successful in altering the views of those who have grown up under them.

A good way to begin to tackle some of these problems would be to set up community organisations to involve working class young people in activities that prove that altruism and collectivism are possible. The left-leaning Kurdish / Turkish youth organisation DayMer runs a number of such activities for kids in East London, including sports activities and trips away. This approach should not be confused with the left-liberal stance that working class young people are simply bored and do not have enough to do. Of course the dearth of youth and community facilities is something that should be addressed as a matter of urgency, but unless there are community organisations that facilitate activities that engage young people in self-sacrifice and teamwork, attitudes are unlikely to change.

The Left should also build on the elements of the views of working class young people that have progressive potential. Ideas about personal responsibility should be nurtured rather than dismissed as reactionary. For instance, any approach to crime that is seen to absolve criminals of responsibility for their actions is unlikely to gain many adherents among working class youth. Ideas about hard work can also be progressive, but the need to work hard for others as well as to fulfil personal potential should be stressed. Similarly, we should not argue against seeking “success”, but should try to broaden the notion of success to include non-material and intrinsic goals.

Romantic notions of young people as a revolutionary force are wide of the mark at present. In fact, unless community and political organisations can successfully intervene, it seems likely that the Left will have an even harder job recruiting and organising in the working class communities of the future than they have today.

This article was originally published on Left Luggage.  Left Luggage has been formed by a small, independent group of community organisers and trade union shop-stewards in the UK. The blog is an attempt to initiate a discussion within the British Left around strategic issues, including questioning some of our most fundamental organising principles.

The site has already featured excellent articles highlighting and analysing the isolation of most of the left from the working class, and providing practical suggestions on how this isolation might be overcome.