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Magazine
Ultimate responsibility
BILL KIRKMAN
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The growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots has led the latter to take law into their own hands. The solution comes not only from politicians but also from society.
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Shock in Britain.
FOUR days after writing this, I plan to walk along the road to the local village hall to cast my vote in the district council election. If predictions are to be believed — and they almost certainly are — the proportion of the electorate who do this will be small.
As you read this, the electorate of France will be voting in the second stage of their presidential election, choosing between the right-wing current President, Jacques Chirac, and the extreme right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose neo-fascist supporters ousted the Prime Minister, the socialist Lionel Jospin. Commentators are agreed that Le Pen's victory in the first stage of the election was due partly to the Government's failure to address popular concerns about crime, immigration and unemployment. (Another cause was the fragmentation of the left.) The proportion of the electorate who voted in the first stage election was 71.6 per cent, the lowest turnout on record in a French presidential election.
In the British local elections candidates from the British National Party (BNP) — a singularly unpleasant collection of racists — are standing in three north of England towns, which have been beset recently by racial riots. They are places where unemployment is high and housing and living conditions poor.
There was shock during the past week when two White youths on trial for the murder of the young Nigerian Damilola Taylor, were acquitted, at the end of a trial, which has caused serious questions to be asked about the competence of the investigation by the Metropolitan Police and the judgment of the Crown Prosecution Service.
In the wide-ranging discussion of the case much attention has been focussed on the poor conditions, which obtain in the part of London where Damilola lived. Street crime there is endemic. Gangs of youths roam the streets. Unemployment is high.
In Britain, as in France, the politicians clearly must urgently address a number of pressing social problems. A situation in which whole towns, or large parts of towns, are blighted by social deprivation is a situation in which crisis is on the near horizon. When people feel that their concerns are not being dealt with, they tend to take the law into their own hands.
When there is a stark contrast between their poor conditions and the comfort and affluence enjoyed by most of the population in a country, which is essentially flourishing and prosperous, disaffection inevitably grows.
Shock in France.
That does not excuse criminal behaviour. Taking the law into your own hands is not right. Nor is it right for gangs of youths to take control of the streets. We need, however, to ask ourselves some difficult questions about the conditions that lead to this kind of behaviour. The list should include questions about the way in which we exercise our own civic responsibilities, and about the sort of example we set in a society in which selfish materialism is rife among many who consider themselves — and are indeed seen as — belonging to the elite.
While it is right and appropriate to place responsibility for putting things right firmly on the shoulders of the politicians, national and local, all citizens need to remember that politicians do not work in a vacuum. They are our representatives, operating under the mandate provided by our votes, and subject to the pressures, which we put upon them.
In other words, the responsibility ultimately is ours. It should be intolerable to everyone who enjoys the privilege of living in the democratic society, which is the United Kingdom that fellow citizens suffer from the kinds of deprivation, which I have listed. Pressure to put things right, to ensure that people have decent housing and good schools, and that the demotivating and debilitating effects of endemic unemployment are mitigated, should come not just from those directly affected, but from all of us. "I'm all right, Jack" is not a respectable philosophy.
Faced with the threat of the BNP, mainstream politicians from all parties have urged voters to vote for any candidate rather than the BNP, just as in France voters, including left-wing voters, are being urged to support Chirac in order to ensure the defeat of Le Pen.
The need to defeat the extremists is the first step. Remedying the conditions, which allow extremism to flourish is the strategic need. The kind of apathy, which leads people not to bother to vote, is an abdication of responsibility. As Edmund Burke put it, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The writer is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. E-mail him at wpk1000@cam.ac.uk
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