More shots in the dark

To the Guardian
08.09.2011
NO TO 'FERAL UNDERCLASSS
...BUT IF THE FACE FITS

Nice that a police chief rejects talk of a 'feral underclass.' Not so good that your report, like most others, takes at face value Ken Clarke's announcement that 75% of those sentenced for riot offences had previous convictions.

That begs an important question, especially with police investigations so reliant on CCTV evidence. How many of those brought to court were identified and arrested BECAUSE of their previous convictions?

As I know from my own experience, it may not even take a conviction: you only have to be charged for your picture, fingerprints, DNA and address to be taken and stored for future reference.

In my case, I was arrested and charged for a protest action. Although the charges were then dropped, I was rearrested a couple of months later following a similar protest in another town, by persons unknown either to the police or me. With my data to hand, our house was searched, papers and computers seized.

No charges this time and the case was dropped for lack of evidence. I was lucky. There had been no public hue and cry, I was half a century older than last month's likely suspects and much more expensively educated (though prison costs as much as university).

However nonsensical many of the recent sentences, and however we apportion responsibility, hundreds will be guilty as charged. It remains unjust that while previous convictions are not usually admissible as evidence in court, previous charges can effectively determine who gets identified, arrested and brought to court.



To Independent on Sunday
04.09.2011

TALKING TOUGH

You call for a 'tough demand that those at the top of society show responsibility' to match the 'tough response to the looting and stealing' on the streets. But this easy equivalence breaks down when it comes to policing and enforcement.
Rioting is visible in a way that boardroom crime and misdemeanor can never be. Insider-dealing may be indistinguishable from casual conversation and a financial trade, unlike betting on horses or roulette, easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies - and other people's livelihoods - can be shut down, stripped or exported within a legal framework that largely ignores moral, social and environmental priorities.
Tweaks and taxes can make a difference, loopholes can be closed, but the root problem is in the structure of capitalist enterprise. The corporate executives, traders and investors who rip us off are working within a legal framework that empowers them to make money for themselves and each other at our expense.
Comprehensive regulation and monitoring would require an independent mirror-world of virtual corporations to match and mark main players in the global market, with inevitable revolving doors for poachers turning gamekeeper and vice versa.
The only alternative is more representative regulation from within, but with the circle of decision-makers extended to those whose lives and businesses are most involved. Capital hardly needs representation, its needs can be met in interest or a share of profits and it can vote with its winged feet. Structural regulation requires inclusion of the other groupings and interests essential to economic enterprise: employees, consumers, suppliers and community.
A long haul, but for a start we could do worse than develop a form of social-environmental audit - with listings (SEAL?) comparable to the now-fashionable credit ratings. The listing process would focus public scrutiny. The necessary research and monitoring could involve existing social and environmental groupings - unions, consumers, greens etc - as well as academics, economists and politicians.
And, yes, bankers, of whom there are many who would be happy to work in a better cause.



To Guardian Weekly
27.08.2011

A FINE BALANCE

You print three stories about the August flare-up between Israeli and Palestinian forces on the Gaza border. Two of them trace the fighting back to an attack/ambush by Palestinian militants, and the third is a close-up of fear and horror at the killing of an Israeli security official by a Palestinian rocket.
Every killing, whether of civilian or militant, is a tragedy. Your main article has eight Israelis killed in the Palestinian attack, and 15 Palestinians in the fighting that followed. A Palestinian body-count for the months of July and August names 45 'martyrs,' including six children. On August 1st, the first day of Ramadan, an Israeli raid on the Qalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem left two young men dead. One of them was found by his mother, his brains blown out on the road outside his front door.


To the Observer
21.08.2011

PROFOUNDLY DYSFUNCTIONAL

Tony Blair attributes rioting to a minority of ‘profoundly dysfunctional families.’ But family dysfunction, like criminality, does not spring from nowhere. Nor is it confined to certain classes or districts: if most dysfunctional families don’t turn to looting, it is because they can get what they want over the counter.
When I left school, aged 17, in 1954 I had no difficulty getting jobs. Most boys my age had already been working for a year and we all got paid. Just as importantly we felt grown up. At work we were eager to win the respect of older workmates and when we got home we were tired.
And then there was national service…
My family was not poor and when I failed my 11-plus, my parents sent me to a private school. Like many post-war professionals, they voted Labour. They counted on better schools and conditions for everyone, a gradual equalling-up to end class privilege and segregation. It never occurred to them that by this century, nearly half all children would leave state schools without the 3 Rs, with little prospect of ‘worthwhile jobs.’ Or that one bank-trader could earn as much as 1,500 teachers, or 3,000 of the carers who helped look after them in their last years.
It took Thatcher to kill their dream of a natural movement towards equality, opportunity and mutual respect for all. And Blair to bury it.