ANOTHER VOICE
The unwanted, angry kids who form the thin blue line
AUB ERON WAUGH
But the phenomenon is by no means confined to Britain or to blacks or to the products of the Labour government's dis- astrous comprehensive experiment. In America, original home of youth worship, hatred of teenagers is breaking out in a rash of local curfews, from the suburbs of Washington to Newport Beach, California, by which all teenagers have to be off the streets and shut up at home by ten o'clock at night. This is not so much to protect their morals — universally agreed to be non-existent — as to protect the rest of America from the sight of them. As Mr Mike Hart — a city councillor at Newport Beach — puts it: 'Kids who don't have money should go home. What business do they have standing out there at night?'
It would seem that 40 years of Doctor Spock have finally succeeded in producing a generation which is not only so ignorant and undisciplined as to be unemployable, but also so unpleasant and aggressive as to be unliveable with. The problem is now to contain the amount of nuisance which they can create for the rest of us. Even a nationwide teenage curfew — I would sug- gest eight o'clock as a more suitable hour for them to be home — would have only limited effectiveness, since by general agreement it is the 20-25 age group which is the worst of the lot. And the attitude of parents, when shut up with their un- wanted, angry offspring from eight o'clock onwards, might prove electorally signifi- cant.
One solution much canvassed, especially among retired majors in Somerset, is to reintroduce National Service. This would solve at a stroke not only the problem of indiscipline but also those of employment and housing, since they would be taken away from the parents to whom they cause so much irritation and anguish. The rein- troduction of National Service is an ob- vious vote-winner and the only serious objection to it is the one put forward by Alexander Chancellor: do we really want to train this generation of UAKs in the use of weapons?
Sir Kenneth Newman suggests gassing them and shooting them with plastic bullets which seems, on the face of it, quite sensible. I have often thought that metal- tipped stockwhips might be useful in riot control, although the French experience suggests that nothing is so effective as the baton charge with pick handles. The prob- lem about arming the police is that they, too, belong to the generation of unwanted, angry kids for the most part, and although there might be some philosophical comfort for the middle-aged in the spectacle of the UAKs divided into two camps, bashing the hell out of each other with knives, shotguns and HK submachine guns firing 650 rounds a minute (possible from police helicop- ters), it offends the most elementary ideas of fair play that one side in the squabble should be given such an advantage.
Recent events have convinced me that the police, in their officially approved new methods of policing the ghetto areas, as well as in the cowboy attitudes of the younger metropolitan constabulary, are as responsible as the black UAKs for the state of war between them which is liable to break out in serious rioting at the drop of a hat. This is a hard thing to say of a force which is dedicated to preserving the peace, which comprises the thin blue line between our comfortable, secure existence and the horrors of anarchy, and which is made up for the most part of sincere and humane men doing an unpleasant job. But unless one is prepared to examine what is happen- ing among the new intake of 25-year-old policemen roaring around the big cities four-strong in their 100-mph cars with sirens screeching, one is liable to misjudge the mood of the nation very seriously indeed, as I believe Mrs Thatcher has done.
It was only after police had bagged Mrs Cherry Groce, the Brixton housewife, that we learned that the armed raid on her home was one of 50 carried out by the police in the Lambeth district this year. Many of these were in search of drugs, like the one on Mrs Paula Belsham in August, graphically described in the Observer, It is only when they manage to shoot a baby or a housewife or terrify a fat woman to death that we learn of these violent police swoops, but they are happening the whole time. They undoubtedly strike terror, but do they do anything to discourage crime?
I was not present at Blackpool to judge the exact quality of the applause which greeted Mrs Thatcher's promise of a blank cheque to the police. It will mean they buy more helicopters — I gather the Metropo- litan Police already have three Bell 222s costing over £600,000 each and capable of crossing London in a quarter of an hour at 170 mph — and more 100-mph cars with which they will be able to scream through the streets looking tough and macho, jumping out four strong to bundle off some unfortunate drunk who was been reported over the wireless for insulting a community policeman. More and more UAK school- leavers will be hired at wages which climb to £18,000 after a few years, more and more private houses will be violently broken into by gangs of frightened, armed thugs claiming to represent the forces of law and order.
Soon, by my reckoning, there will be little to choose between these gangs of young policemen and the gangs of young blacks, except that the young blacks are more localised. Both will be feared and hated by everybody else and I feel that the Tories if they identify themselves with one particular gang of unwanted, angry kids will be making as big a mistake as Labour if it identifies itself, like Bernie Grant, with the other.
Helicopters and 100-mph cars do little or nothing to prevent crime or even to bring criminals to justice, if the clear-up rate for notifiable offences is anything to go by. Armed police do neither, and I have not yet heard of a single case where a police- man's life has been saved by carrying weapons. All these things can do is to teach us which gang of UAKs is on top. Perhaps we should be grateful to the West Indians for taking up so much of their aggression• Otherwise I feel they might turn it on the rest of us.
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