WHAT’s to be DONE?

Over the last ten days, Britain has taken leave of its senses. I do not refer to the urban riots that have scarred the social fabric, or rather I do not only refer to them. I am thinking more seriously and worryingly about the mooted mood – the “clear public mood” as BBC reporter Chris Buckler called it – of anger, blame, vengeance. When he was leader of the opposition, David Cameron sought to do the then government a piece of no-good by coining the phrase “broken Britain”. After barely fifteen months of his premiership, Britain looks to be in pieces, psychologically as well as physically.

No doubt stung by accusations of lolling in Tuscany (happily not at the Castello del Nero) while Britain burned – encapsulated by John Prescott’s #wheresthegovernment campaign on Twitter – Cameron rushed home to reassert his tottering authority. Given this perception, it was inevitable that the key to his reaction would be that useful machismo concept, cojones. Paradoxically, it fell to a woman – the Home Secretary, Theresa May – to give the most consistent running commentary exhibiting this notion and as a consequence no single sentence that fell publicly from her lips last Wednesday failed to include the word “tough”.

Well, tough is a pretty blunt instrument. Tough has a great appeal to Tory backbenchers of the string-’em-up/send-a-gunboat school and so far politicians imagine that it hasn’t played badly among the reeling public, those completely unaffected (directly) by the riots even more than those who survey an urban landscape that resembles Kabul, Baghdad and Beirut.

Mrs Tough, Theresa May

Some of us – thoughtful people, I like to think – would prefer a reaction erring more on the side of thoughtfulness. Politicians often warn against so-called knee-jerk reactions but they love to indulge such easy stuff themselves. I venture that any fool can deplore, condemn and fulminate. It doesn’t require much in the way of brainpower, let alone a university degree and a lifetime in the subtle arts of politicking. But we need our leaders to be a bit bigger than that. We need solutions more than condemnations. I offer the following constructive proposals for mending Broken Britain. Do not hold your breath for any of them to be implemented.

1: Dozens of rioters and looters are being handed jail sentences in an extraordinary panic of court activity, with magistrates and officials being required to sit through the night and at other unusual times. Anecdotal – and, more importantly, systematically analysed – evidence emerging from this process shows that a great many of those found guilty are being detained for petty offences that in the ordinary course of things would be dealt with far less punitively, especially when committed by a first-time offender or a teenager. If the courts are taking the view that the circumstances render these misdemeanours more serious than usual, they should also consider the commensurate special factors that mitigate: excitement, peer-pressure, opportunism, copycat behaviour, a climate of anarchy. Is the spur-of-the-moment grabbing of an item lying in a broken shop window really a greater felony than a planned and carefully executed act of shoplifting?

Punitive sentences that smack of politically encouraged vengeance contribute nothing to the aim of bringing society back together. The jails were already groaning at the seams and the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, had been commendably seeking ways of reducing Britain’s disproportionately high jail population. Worse, there is plenty of evidence that the most far-reaching effect that jail has on the inmates is to teach them a great deal more than they already knew about the criminal life. Politicians who insist that jail is always the answer ignore that, in most of our jails, drugs are epidemic, gang culture and pecking orders determined by menace are entrenched, and many of the warders are complicit and indeed, in some cases, downright corrupt. When the opportunistic miscreants are disgorged from these crime colleges after several months’ exposure to a criminal hierarchy much more effective and organized than any in their home neighbourhoods, some of them will inevitably return to those neighbourhoods thoroughly criminalised and resentful, rather than quelled and regretful. And all this banging-up just adds to the taxpayers' burden.

David Cameron gets down with the kids

I have long argued that only those deemed by the courts (after careful consideration of all the evidence and background reports) to constitute an actual danger to the public should be incarcerated and that those so detained should be taken off the streets for many years. The argument for short jail terms for minor offences is bankrupt and its only point is to satisfy those who seek vengeful punishment largely for its own sake.

The answer to crime that does not imperil members of the public – and most of those being jailed as I write did not imperil any member of the public – is to impose hefty community service orders. In the present circumstances, those who looted their neighbourhoods would by this means be seen by their neighbours to be making good, and some of them might even gain a sense of what both community and service mean. Perhaps even those who want the rioters and looters to bloody suffer might be mollified by the argument that the estimated cost of each inmate of a British prison exceeds £40,000 per year [Kevin Marsh, The Guardian, July 28th 2008; it must be higher now]. Throwing people in jail is a cripplingly expensive method of dealing with a social problem. To coin a phrase, the Prime Minister should have thought of that before he demanded that the courts favour the jail option.

2: David Cameron has suggested that the families of convicted rioters and looters should lose their entitlement to social housing. This is an astonishing remark for a political leader to make. To begin with, it cuts across the administration of law. There is no provision under statutory law in this country for a person who has not committed a crime to be penalised for the commission of a crime by another person, even if the additionally penalised person is the parent or guardian or in loco parentis. If Cameron wants to change the law, that is his prerogative, but he will need to be mindful of all those past and present ministers whose children have broken the law, not least his hero Tony Blair whose teenaged son was once found drunk and incapable in Leicester Square. Perhaps the then Tory leadership missed a trick by failing to demand that the Blairs be evicted from no 10 for bad parenting and a largely absent pater familias.

Euan Blair, now doing well but surely no thanks to connections

How can exacerbating the problem – turfing a whole family onto the street – possibly help to mend a broken society? Don’t vindictive responses simply raise the ante? And how will it look if the courts (usually wiser than politicians in the implementation of law) overturn the eviction notices handed out by local authorities? When the first case comes to court brought by progressive lawyers on behalf of, say, a six year-old girl who has been thrown onto the street with the rest of her family because her teenaged brother stole a mobile phone, Cameron might even have the grace to be discomfited.

3: The government has settled on the line that the problem is, in Cameron’s words, “criminality pure and simple” and specifically that a supposed gang culture is at the root of this unrest. It seems obvious to me that this is a rationalisation and that it represents handy code for suggesting to the public that ministers are on top of this rather than embarking on any hard work. Muddying the water further is an apparent lack of understanding by ministers – Cameron and May in particular – about the separation of powers. Although Cameron appears to subscribe to a traditional Tory stance of less rather than more government (and, by extension, ministerial interference), a foolish power struggle has developed between the government and the police, concentrated on the Home Office and the Met.

In her interview on The World This Weekend today, May harped continually on gang culture and what she presents as “the public mood”. I wish Shaun Ley – who was otherwise commendably determined – had pressed her to explain where she got her evidence of the public mood. She certainly didn’t ask me and nothing she says represents my mood. In particular, the constantly iterated trendy trope – “let me be clear/we are absolutely clear” – was continually undermined by her refusal to answer candidly and clearly any question about who is (or thinks they are) in charge.

For myself, I am perfectly clear, and capable (I believe) of expressing it in clear, candid language. It is for the police and only the police to identify, to attempt to contain and, insofar as is possible, to break up any gangs that may operate in our cities. It is for government to attempt to determine why gangs should spring up, if they do, and to address the socio-economic conditions that their existence indicates. Ministers are not chief constables, nor are they magistrates. It may well fall to them to articulate what may be perceived as the public mood, but more important is that they lead and, where necessary, educate that public mood. Blame is for columnists on the Daily Mail. Government’s role is governance and leadership.

Miss Selfridge, Manchester after the attention of an arsonist

In any case, the public mood, even if it genuinely exists, is not always a practical help. The latest bromide of e-petitions to Downing Street seems likely to reveal a strong groundswell among the public in favour of the restoration of capital punishment. You can bet your boots that parliament will not soon satisfy such a sentiment. The notion of the public mood is only cited when it may be presented as chiming with government policy.

4: Politicians and commentators bang on incessantly about rioters and especially looters. There is a third group – a relatively small one – within those who were on the streets in the last few days and who made considerably more of an impact than all the others put together, yet they are rarely mentioned. I do not mean anarchists or professional agitators or gangsters. I mean a particular kind of highly dangerous individual who occurs in all age groups, classes and cultures. I am talking about arsonists.

There is a special fascination about starting fires that needs to be teased out and addressed. In the last few months, there have been wildfires in many parts of the world, fires that destroyed vast acres of valuable and productive land, thousands of defenceless wild and farm creatures, homes and possessions; and indeed in some cases took human lives. Some of these started by accident, greatly assisted by bone-dry conditions and high winds. But most began through criminal carelessness or deliberate mischief. The cost of the damage done by such fires hugely outstrips that of rioting and looting. Ministers need to isolate this particular phenomenon, to seek help in understanding the psychology behind it and to initiate some sort of education programme to ensure that parents and children understand both that arson is a crime quite as serious as murder and that it will be punished accordingly. We need to get ourselves into a position where claimed ignorance of the possible consequences of starting a fire cannot possibly be ameliorating.

An unhugged hoodie enacts shooting the PM

5: The government is under pressure from all sides to halt the cuts it proposes to impose on the police. Cameron, May and George Osborne have decided that they will not accede to this pressure. They are taking a line already tried out in relation to local authority cuts and funding of the BBC: that others must implement the cuts that the government imposes and that there is no such response as “can’t”, however much councils or the BBC or, in their turn, the police warn that there is an optimal operational cost below which the fabric of the service inevitably must suffer. The government will have none of it. We seem required to accept that, if necessary, these services can be provided by volunteers who take no pay and therefore that the savings that may be made are almost infinite. The happy outcome for the government, so it believes, is that the electorate will blame the councils, the BBC and the police when it perceives that the services hitherto taken for granted are no longer forthcoming. Do not doubt that the NHS is being subjected to the same disingenuous policy.

So far, the police are disputing the government’s strategy robustly if not consistently. Theresa May’s refrain that “visible policing” will not be reduced cuts little ice with shrewd chief constables. The police are already wholly invisible to the public, save at national and local set pieces. And imposing swingeing cuts on back office expenses cannot possibly be achieved without the efficacy of the operation being affected adversely. The much-vaunted paperwork and Labour-imposed targets, while not quite a myth, are not so bureaucratic and onerous that they and the staff who are responsible for executing them can simply be chopped away with impunity.

6: Clearly, too much is asked of the police. If government will not fund the force properly, the force itself must seek extra funding. I have argued before that service charges could and should be imposed by the officers who are required to deal with incidents accountable to drunkenness in town centres. My argument then arose from the need to tackle alcoholism. Now I offer it as a means of contributing to police costs. In the breathalyser, officers already possess a gadget that will objectively determine alcohol consumption. The courts do not need to be troubled. A night in the cells and/or the attention of police (and indeed of paramedics) can attract a fixed or sliding scale of call-out charges. Let the drunks take legal action if they feel hard done by.

In another part of the forest, we are regularly told that the English Premier League is the richest football hierarchy in the world. So let the clubs stand the full cost of policing matches. ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, have been seeking this change for years. Last season, the policing of just the local derbies between the two Glasgow teams (Celtic and Rangers) cost £2.4million, of which the clubs themselves tipped up rather less than 20 percent. Let them pay 100 percent. Otherwise, the police should refuse to enter the football grounds, which are, after all, private property. I don’t think ACPO need wait for legislation or a government directive. They should give the Football League an ultimatum and a deadline – October 1st, say. The government ought to be pleased that the police are standing on their own feet in such a way.

The Home Secretary gives the Met their orders for the day

7: Something else that the police should do is to reopen the matter of MPs defrauding the public purse. Cameron and other leaders talked grandly about this matter when it first came to light two years ago: “no excuses”, “criminality pure and simple”, familiar phrases. Yet only a handful of members went to jail: exemplary cases but not even necessarily the most flagrant ones, which made those so punished feel rather understandably indignant.

MPs who stole amounts running into four figures were permitted to repay (part of) their ill-gotten gains but to fight the next election as if nothing untoward had transpired. Some were pressed to stand down but none of them suffered any further penalty. These are not deprived kids living in urban squalor and without proverbial fathers. These are handsomely-rewarded legislators expected to set an example of probity to the rest of society. Some of them have legal qualifications as well as the responsibility of making the law. How can they still show their faces in public? Yet some of them have been voluble about the “disgrace” of the “criminality” shown in the last ten days.

Here are some of those who embezzled more than £1,000 through their illicit expenses claims: Hazel Blears, Sir Menzies Campbell, Ronnie Campbell, Quentin Davies, Alan Duncan, Julia Goldsworthy, Michael Gove, Douglas Hogg, Phil Hope, Stewart Jackson, Sir Gerald Kaufman, Andrew Lansley, Oliver Letwin, Shahid Malik, Margaret Moran, Richard Younger-Ross. If David Cameron – himself obliged to pay back a wrongly claimed sum – is serious about the broken society, he needs to look at the chimneys and the sunroof as well as the drains.

Cameron, cruel victim of satire

8: Ministers need to sit down and talk with those who manage and direct the culture, in particular the culture of broadcasting. Our television is a showcase for the acquisitive society. It is not merely the advertisements that have been pumped into our homes for nearly sixty years at a greater and greater rate, the appeal of which is ever more to a subconscious sense of insecurity and misplaced duty – you must have this, that and the other product or you will be out of the loop/sexually unattractive/failing as a mother. The programmes themselves grow more and more like the advertisements that fund them, with acquisitiveness the most apparent of all the medium’s moral messages. I caught a trail on the Biography Channel this afternoon for a programme in which “six of Miami’s elite ladies flash their cash and reveal everything about their enviable lifestyles”. The key words, you will have noticed, are “flash” and “enviable”. Is it any wonder that viewers spend most of their viewing time unconsciously wanting things that they can never acquire by legitimate means?

The bosses of advertising and television – and of radio and the print media, which are no better – must be compelled to address the values that they casually inculcate in their consumers. This is a real issue, not a gestural concern. It is a problem that grows more acute by the day and if ministers do not make them confront it, who will?

9: Allied to the above is the responsibility of the various national bodies that administer sports. All sports have been transformed over the last half-century by the injection of big money: investment for a return by advertisers and broadcasting but also ownership by speculators, many of them with little grasp of the traditions and histories of the sports in which they have taken such large stakes.

With the possible exceptions of golf, sailing, swimming, diving and darts, all sports are now widely sullied by cheating, drug-taking, performance enhancement, results fixing, bribery, psychological pressure on officials and other manifestations of corruption. As sports people have a more significant impact as role models than anyone, including pop singers and movie stars, the requirement for them to be beyond reproach is all the greater. Ministers need to sit down and talk to the sports administrators about unprecedented levels of sanctions against cheats of all kinds. If “no excuses” applies to moments of madness indulged by kids who anyway have little consolation for the deprived lives that they lead, it must apply big time to cosseted, overpaid stars who have no need of any extra boost given by backhanders and steroid dealers.

Martin Rowson's take on blame culture

10: And then there’s the big political picture. The contradiction between politicians finger-wagging about violence on the nearby streets who yet glory in sending jets, bombers and tanks into the neighbourhoods of innocent people who seemingly count for nothing because they live a long way away. The contradiction between politicians who pretend that bankers’ bonuses are essential because these people need to be millionaires in order to have an incentive to stay in London and speculate against the pound and against British businesses, yet who simultaneously discount the aspirations of people unfortunate enough not to have gained posts as asset-strippers and arbitrageurs and who imagine that volunteering to shoulder half a lifetime of further-education-imposed debt is sufficient motivation to contribute to a society that values city failure higher than academic study and social service. The contradiction between politicians who blink at massive evasion of taxes by those wealthy enough to live in tax havens and to hire clever accountants yet who pounce angrily on supposed benefit cheats whose peccadilloes pale by comparison and who have no compunction about withdrawing support from the most vulnerable members of society: the disabled, the mentally incapacitated, the unemployable.

Over the decades since World War II, the gap between rich and poor has only widened. Tragically for the electorate, Labour has during the same period offered no alternative to Tory refusal of any notion of the redistribution of wealth. In an arresting phrase when preparing to be Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1970s, Denis Healey threatened to “squeeze the rich until the pips squeak” but in his long five years in the post he never actually did that. George Osborne has yet to rule out the abolition of the 50 percent rate of income tax and, given the government’s usual cavalier treatment of any notion of “the public mood”, we should expect this to come to pass in the fullness of time.

Frankly, there is little to hope for from the politicians, One might as well riot.