Make rioters pay reparations

Published: 18 August, 2011

• BOMBED Bermondsey in 1947, meant that the young, mainly lived in back-to-back homes or flats full of large families.

I lived in two rooms – three floors up – carrying slops to the Elsan toilet in the yard and using a jug as a water pipe.

Most washing was done at the public baths.

I worked with young people, who had no shoes, some of whom still visit me every year, even now. They are distressed because they say that “…being poor does not mean that you have to be bad”.

They went to school, learned their alphabet and sums, before taking up a trade or a shop job, and did well in life.

They are proud and independent, having grown up sharing food with neighbours in hard times.

None of these young ever brushed with the law courts.

It was a similar group of wonderful young people from the Seven Dials Club in Covent Garden who took their brooms to clear up the riot damage in Clapham.

The vandals and criminal gangs, who destroyed their communities, carried expensive mobile phones; wore smart trainers and jackets, but attacked like cowards in mobs, while hiding their faces.

Some are too lazy to learn their alphabet and sums so that they can take jobs.

Others are just greedy – not only for what they can thieve – but greedy because of the violence (which is promoted from what is on TV).

The guilty should make reparations, through suspension of their benefits, for all the hurt and deprivation they have caused innocent people.

YVONNE CRAIG
Ridgmount Gardens, WC1

Thanks for police work

• I WOULD like to extend my thanks to the Bloomsbury Safer Neighbourhoods police team for their work both in general and, in particular, during this last difficult week.

I understand they were working flat out thanks to the disturbances and, while sadly some shops and restaurants in Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia were hit, they still managed to keep in touch with me and residents about the priorities which have been set locally, which include tackling brothels and anti-social behaviour.

CLLR ADAM HARRISON
Labour, Bloomsbury ward

Questions

• Too many questions, not enough answers. What is it that drives a person to criminal action? What is it that tips-over a young mind to say “it’s ok to steal from my own community; it’s ok to smash my neighbours’ shop windows and burn them to the ground”?

What is the perception of this person’s sense of “right and wrong” – indeed why have these concepts become so grey for them?

But let’s wind the clock back.

In the time it has taken this very generation of young people to abandon our sense of morality of right and wrong, what were the questions that we should have been asking but have failed to ask?

Why have we not challenged the muggings at bus stops when teenagers were attacked for their mobiles?

Why have we given up on reporting “low-level” crimes to the police?

Why have we allowed Murdoch to gain a monopoly over our media?

Why have we not challenged authorities who issued the pill to under-age girls?

Why have we allowed a senior police officer get away with a simple resignation when he was apparently fraternising with the very people his officers were investigating for serious despicable telephone hacking crimes?

Accepting for just a millisecond that the banks are the devil we need in this relationship, why have we allowed them to play monopoly with our money?

When our taxes rescued the banks why have we allowed them to pay their executives huge bonuses?

Why are we allowing utility companies to increase their charges by such a disproportionate margin?

Why are we allowing the elderly to have to make a choice between food and heat when the utility companies are making such huge profits?

Why have we allowed the concentration of dysfunctional families to be housed in council estates? Why do we continue to pretend our “equal opportunity” laws are working?

Why are we allowing MPs who made immoral (if not illegal) expenses claims seemingly get away with a slap on the wrist? Why are we devoted to a culture of consumerism putting brand-names above moral values?

How many of us knew that prior to the riots, there had been 17 murders committed this year alone – young people killing young people, often gangs on gangs?

Until two weeks ago why was it politically incorrect to use the word “gang”?  

David Cameron speaks of a sick society, and, as the cuts begin to bite, there will be other opportunities for political point-scoring; but for once I have to agree with him.

I am ashamed that I have allowed all these things to happen.

As a society unless we are all prepared to ask these difficult questions, we cannot even begin to heal the underlying sickness the Prime Minister speaks of.

I am in no way saying two wrongs make a right.

Wrong is wrong.

The reality, though, is that our generation of young people have grown up watching us fail to ask these questions let alone answer them.

We are their role models and, despite this failure, most young people have managed to rise above all this “injustice” as they must surely see it.

Some, though, have not and it is only right that the full force of the law deals with them. But dealing with just one wrong will only postpone the inevitable.

Frustrations will boil over and in not a distant future we could find ourselves asking the same questions again.

CLLR MERIC APAK
Labour, Kentish Town ward

‘Respect’ etc

• Bombarded with advertisements urging young people to get hold of “must-have” branded objects, like shoes and clothing, it’s no surprise that many feel disillusioned.

Lack of funds prevents the acquisition of expensive mobile phones and other electronic gadgets which are largely unaffordable.

The long-term unemployed feel alienated and then something snaps… as has now happened.
The riots were an opportunity for theft.

What was particularly bad was setting fire to buildings: arson is an offence against society.

Some law-abiding people were made homeless; others were assaulted; some died – murdered!

What attracts migrants to the UK – apart from the economic advantages for some – is the way society is law-abiding, with “freedom for all, within the law”.

This attracts the rich, who live in the “gated” communities. The youth of Hampstead and St John’s Wood did not riot!

There is a need to educate all those sent to prison for offences committed during the riots.

The “respect” that matters, is that which allows everyone to be able to walk about without fear of attack or robbery.

ABDUL MIAH
Stanhope Street, NW1