The judge said in his summing up that our son, Tom, “was in the wrong place at just the wrong time”. That is one of the things that makes it so hard to accept his death. Had he left the Tube station a little bit earlier, or a little bit later, he would still be with us. The possible “ifs and buts” are endless. This is also what I feel when I start to consider what makes young men in Britain want to attack and kill innocent people like Tom.
Countless words have been written about his murderers, Donnel Carty and Delano Brown, but I still cannot begin to understand their world. There the violence they used was so commonplace that just after they had killed Tom they strolled — rather than ran — off.
But unlike them, we cannot so easily ignore this scene of devastation. Understand we must, or at least we must try, if any good is to come of this. The first, and perhaps most obvious, point to note is that if the pair had not been carrying knives, not only would Tom have been spared, but their own lives would not have been ruined.
Next, there is a report from the Economic and Social Research Council, much quoted in connection with the verdict yesterday. Its authors found that “street robbers often carry out their vicious attacks for kicks”. This seems to me to be a reflection of the world we live in, where violence is glorified in music, films and videos. Computer games vie with each other to provide ever-greater violence and even more gory graphics, which the players gloat over. Things have got so bad the EU may even try to ban the new psychological horror game for PlayStation, The Rule of Rose, in which a young girl, Jennifer, is subjected to mental and physical torture by a gang of sadistic teenagers before being killed. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that this desensitised and casual attitude to violence can easily transpose to real life.
Also, there has been a rise in gang culture on our city streets. Here there are shades of West Side Story and that wonderful song Gee Officer Krupke, which puts the whole knotty problem in a nutshell: “Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset”, sing the gang members, “We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get./ We ain’t no delinquents,/ We’re misunderstood./ Deep down inside us there is good!”
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Half a century later we are still, as in that musical, debating whether these gang members are “crazy”, “lazy” or “sociologically sick”. What we do know is that they seem to want to celebrate their unique identity and independence from normal society. In London they use Jamaican patois and make up slang that only their friends can understand; they gain street cred from wearing the latest designer clothes and having the most technically hot mobile phones; and they rap about their exploits. This is far from Broadway; this is Clockwork Orange come true.
Being a “mindless vicious thug”, as Kwasi Kwarteng pointed out in the Daily Mail yesterday, does not necessarily follow from a lack of education and a deprived background. I totally agree. However, the word “education” is broader than schools and classrooms. It comes from the Latin educare, to bring up, and includes such things as self-discipline and respect for others. Neither Brown nor Carty appear to have had a father around during their formative years, so the temptation to do what they liked, and to get rich quick without the bother of working must have been attractive if no one was around to teach them right from wrong. As was apparent at the trial, the concept of telling the truth, on oath, seemed to be completely alien to them.
Another trend in society, which I think has a bearing on all this, is the way we live our lives on an “instant”’ basis. “Don’t wait,” we are constantly told, “don’t save, buy it now, free credit, nothing to pay for 12 months!” We have instant communication through mobiles, e-mails and BlackBerries, instant knowledge from the internet, instant reports from anywhere in the world and instant meals from the microwave. Perhaps this modern attitude to life, which is so pervasive, makes youngsters impatient for results, even more than they would naturally be at that age. And when the results don’t come — as is inevitable — they get angry.
A sense of belonging is a natural human need, and there are plenty of ways — such as youth and sports clubs, which all need to be funded — in which a teenager can feel he belongs, without resorting to gang violence.
However, we must remember that you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. What is it about boys — it is usually boys — that makes them reject all well-meaning offers? They want to be their own man, to do their own thing. Perhaps they have been excluded from school, or have a grudge against organisations, or they simply think it is not “cool” to be helped.
Let us not be dissuaded by their nonchalance. I have been comforted by the huge willingness, from individuals and charities, to try to make things better, Our small contribution, the Tom ap Rhys Pryce Trust Fund, has been set up to help disadvantaged young people to realise their potential through education in its widest sense.
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I wish that this article could have diagnosed the cause of all this mindless violence. But the very fact that its causes are manifold and difficult shows that there are no instant, easy remedies.
What I do know is that a lot more work needs to be done, by many more people, doing many different things. And it is something we should commit to. We must make some good, at least, result from Tom’s senseless death.
Information about the Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust can be found at: tomaprhyspryce.com