On his ten-minute walk to school down a leafy shortcut, my elder son was approached by a youth on a bike who demanded his phone. When he hesitated, the boy stretched out an arm, to reveal a kitchen knife tucked in his jacket sleeve. It’s a rite of passage, other parents shrugged; at least he wasn’t harmed. He’s stopped carrying a phone but he’s still menaced most weeks. Last Wednesday he walked back with a mate whose shirt collar was grabbed by a thug demanding: “What have you got for me?”
At Peckham nick, after the initial crime, we scrolled through 300 potential suspects. Children’s mugshots: is anything bleaker? “We call it aggravated bullying,” said the officer, euphemising what, if an adult were held up at knifepoint at 8.15am, would unequivocally be robbery. Except lately I’ve reflected on what the muggers call it: “taxing”.
It fascinates me how rich and poor can live so tightly in London yet barely mix. Big gardens back on to council flats. One street sells serrano ham, the next fried chicken. If you want to boggle at inequality, stand in the IT room of our local comprehensive, look out at vast, verdant grounds and realise that not a single pupil is allowed to play here, since the land is owned — though barely used — by the adjacent private girls’ school.
Mostly rich and poor rub along. We wealthier folk have learnt, in any case, to alarm our houses and cars. But we cannot lock up our children. Well, not forever anyway. And so outside the schools of the rich, a small number of children of the poor lie in wait. From those teenagers who will enjoy gap years, uni places and a parental deposit on a flat when the time comes, their peers (who lack all such things) steal iPhones and iPods. In the absence of social mobility, equality or prospects, they even things up a bit for themselves: they “tax”. Posh kids know to remove smart uniforms before leaving school; police patrol gates at kicking-out time and counsel rookie pupils in mugging etiquette: don’t argue; hand over everything. (The unspoken coda being “Daddy can always buy you a new one.”) And the villains now know that their mildest request for booty will be obeyed by the terrified and tenderly raised.
Except not all these transactions are peaceable; you can pay your dues and the taxman will stove your head in anyway. Most of these attacks don’t even appear in the Home Office figures or the National Crime Survey, which doesn’t consult under-16s even though a recent report reckoned that last year 2.15 million crimes of theft and violence took place against children aged between ten and fifteen years old. This was a rather odd study that lumped in toys pinched by siblings, but if you cleared out the nonsense it still showed children endure a routine amount of violent crime. Of course, by no means all victims are rich: poor on poor crime is more endemic still.
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After my son’s mugging, what made me sulphuric with rage is our unique British complacency. While we are paranoid about adult “stranger danger”, to the real threat of street robbery we say: well, what can you do? Yet I was in New York when a 13-year-old was mugged in Central Park; he was unhurt, yet it made the TV news.
During the election I was called by a pollster who asked what local issue most concerned me. I surprised myself by replying crime. A spate of muggings, apart from my son’s, and several attacks by a gang on students returning from the supermarket to their nearby halls of residence, had rattled me. I wondered if the cordial interclass relations in my ’hood were curdling. Certainly there seem to be more youths loafing around that leafy shortcut.
But then almost a million young people are now unemployed: a fifth of everyone under 25. That’s an awful lot of idle hands. And what George Osborne’s Budget made clear was that he would be untroubled if that number were to rise. Labour’s jobseeker’s guarantee schemes may have been expensive, Big State stuff, but they gave training, propelling kids towards employment. Now extra university places are to go, and a big chunk of higher education. A friend who teaches literacy to low-achieving school-leavers reports that her hours have already been cut. Within a year, 250,000 more young people will be on the dole, their benefits cheesepared, since they must be “incentivised” to find what in many parts of Britain are largely theoretical jobs.
The underclass, which the Tories liked to call Broken Britain (when they purport to care), was created by millions of young people tumbling out of school and on to the dole in the Eighties, never managing to right themselves, begetting kids who in turn have known no model of work. And now this looks set to be repeated. Exactly what are you supposed to do all day, George, if you have no job, no course and £7 a day to live on? Wait for the upturn?
Certainly, the Government seems to think it unlikely that a surge in youth unemployment will fuel a crime wave — although history says otherwise — since included in the 25 per cent departmental cuts are the police, with current rules set to change so officers can be made redundant. There will also be a review of community support officers. The latter have had a bad public rap ever since a couple of them refused to dive in and save a drowning boy. Yet the other day, on leaving Peckham swimming pool, I watched a CSO of African origin talk to two boys cycling on the pavement: “It’s Victor, isn’t it? Say hello to your mum. Now get off that bike: a £10 fine is a lot of money.” It was pure Dixon of Camberwell Green.
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So will this bulwark between the community and criminality be axed, will magistrates’ courts and police stations be closed, prison sentences slashed as rumoured, even though Labour’s hard-nosed locking up of villains brought crime down? This is Osborne treading very carelessly over core Tory voter sensibilities and taking a huge gamble. Watching the BBC’s Eighties season recently, civil conflict — poll-tax riots, Orgreave, Brixton — seemed like ancient history. But how many young people can be classed surplus to requirements before, one tinderbox summer, they feel they’ve nothing further to lose?
George Osborne’s kids are still young. Maybe ministerial cars will ensure they never have to take a night bus or risk a short cut to school. I hope they stay lucky, because being the Chancellor’s children gives no exemption against this most punitive form of tax.