... Piers Mostyn and Liam Mac Uaid
Two events over the Xmas break about gun culture. Two teenage bystanders were killed and several others wounded in a 30-shot gang battle in Birmingham while police sealed off a significant part of Hackney in East London in a two-week siege of a man with a gun.
The government responded by denouncing black rap artists, with minister Kim Howells saying that their lyrics have 'created a culture where killing is almost a fashion accessory' He did not go on to develop this insight by connecting Tony Blair's liking for Simply Red and Anglican hymns which seems to have contributed to his direct involvement in a lot more deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan than any aspirant yardie' could ever hope to achieve.
The government then announced a fiveyear minimum sentence for firearm possession. However it's already against the law to have an unauthorized firearm. In any event there has been some backtracking on this announcement partly attributable to judges wanting to have the right to determine sentences. Again New Labour wants to put itself to the right of public-school educated Tory judges.
The initiative was welcomed by the police who appear to be encouraging a community-friendly offensive of zero-tolerance against guns and those who have them. A 'summit' on gun crime was then held which, despite apparently excluding any community representatives, seemed to put such an offensive into effect with talk of 'gun amnesties, ceasefire initiatives and the like.
End of story? Unfortunately it isn't so simple. Firstly, it must be understood that the police and the law and order' lobby have their own agenda in all this. Their perspec• • So Solid Crew: are they really running the country? tive on the scale of the problem or how to solve it has to be treated with scepticism.
In the last two decades heavy-handed policing in response to the social tensions and decay of the Thatcher and postThatcher years has led to a series of crises. The inner city riots of the earty 1980's were followed by a series of high profile miscarriages of justice. More recently police racism has been highlighted, particularly in the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence's murder.
Each time the public concern has - generated pressure for refarm. But
this has been followed by backlashes, organised and fueled by the press and the police. An upping of the repressive tactics then followed. Right now we are in a backlash phase.
This has fed a major recent escalation of police stop and search, particularly against black youth, despite Lawrence Inquiry criticism that this is racist and counter-productive. The inevitable result is the alienation and criminalisation of a whole generation of already disadvantaged young people.
The police, especially at rank and file level, want to 'take back control' of the streets and estates. Real problems of drug and gun crime are used to assert control in communities perceived as 'no-go' areas.
That police in the recent Hackney siege appeared to take a softly-softly approach rather than immediately go in guns blazing is, at first sight, a welcome departure. But the nearby Pembury Estate had recently boiled over into a major confrontation due to heavy handed policing during a search, following months of daily harassment through the stopping and searching of local black youths.
It is difficult to avoid the fact that, in the same community perceived to be no-go police used the recent siege to seal off a whole area, swamping it with sub-machine gun-toting officers and controlling all movement for a fortnight. It is difficult to imagine quite such a community clampdown if a white man was holed up in his flat with a gun in the suburbs.
Certainly gun and hard drug-related crime is an escalating problem ravaging the most disadvantaged working class communities. As a spokesperson for So Solid Crew put it when describing the group's lyrics 'It's poverty and crime which are escalating. Cocaine addiction is escalating too. They are just reflecting what they see around them. Their music is reflecting society.
But it is complete hypocrisy for Labour ministers to blame pop singers and youth for long term social problems that have grown during the six years they have been in government. Anyone would think that So Solid Crew were running the country and not Tony Blair.
What is behind this problem and what can be done about it? The crack epidemic is a price we're paying for years of first a Tory and now a Labour war on drugs'.
It has been waged at a time of economic insecurity, racism, cuts in services and the promotion of a value-system based on individualism and the market. It is inevitable that a society which puts such a high value on individual achievement and conspicuous consumption will inspire young people to want to be part of it. In boroughs like Hackney, with an education system at breaking point and unable to meet the needs of the poorest and most excluded young people, guns and drugs will be seen as a fast track to that sort of status.
The distribution and sale of hard drugs has been driven into the hands of a new entrepreneurial class that then relies on gangs and violence to protect its markets. Fundamentally the same cycle of events by which prohibition fuelled organised crime in and racism. Powerful social and economic forces are ripping apart communities -poverty, inequality and social polarisation produce alienation and violence.
Neo-liberal capitalism and its New Labour cheerleaders are totally responsible for this state of affairs, not rap singers painting pictures of the world that exists around them, however offensive or reactionary some of their lyrics may be. The hypocrisy is particularly blatant from a Prime Minister about to squander billions on his fourth war since coming to office.
But isn't locking up these gunmen at least a short term solution? Such penal 'solutions' are based on the notion that people will stop committing crimes if the punishment is severe enough to deter them; failing that - it keeps them off the streets
This is a tragically mistaken approach. Firstly it makes no contribution to tackling the cause of the crime wave, rooted in the social, economic and political factors outlined above.
Secondly, research indicates that people who commit crimes, particularly of this sort, are not deterred by the severity of the punishment. Very often they do not think through the consequences in a rational way that assesses the outcomes. If they do it is the chance of being caught that dissuades them, not what will happen to them subsequently.
The real problem, therefore, is not soft sentences but the police and their relationship to working class communities, particularly black youth, who are completely alienated from the criminal justice system. This arises from racism, harassment, lack of accountability and an agenda of repression and control.
A crime control system that is so dysfunctionally oppressive to the community can only fail. The police rely on televised Crimewatch appeals, paying criminal informants, telephone tapping and new powers to randomly stop and search. Something is terribly wrong if it takes such methods to obtain co-operation and evidence from a community in who's evident self-interest it is to stop crime
Police intervention is therefore at best ineffective. More generally, it escalates the problem through alienating, oppressing and labelling as criminal precisely the youngsters who need to be won over to values based on solidarity, community and respect. The Damilola Taylor murder and trial is an example of what results
There is no easy solution. These arguments demonstrate that law and order crack-down is the last thing needed. One only needs look at the USA and Jamaica, where high rates of capital punishment and a rampant gun culture happily co-exist, for proof that it doesn't work.
And liberal-sounding talk of amnesties and cease-fires will only be window-dress. ing without a fundamental challenge to the social and economic circumstances that