From Mizzy to the Middle East?
How do we deal with incivility and anti-social behaviour in our communities?
First, there is the deep well of civility and tolerance, on which our political life and wider national conversation depend, suffused with our sense of fairness and our devotion to the rule of law.
King Charles III, Mansion House, 18 October 2023
Odious people ripping down posters of missing children and mobs carrying placards of hate, do not reflect British values. They breach the social contract of civility we owe to all our neighbours.
Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities, 25 October 2023
When I wrote about Mizzy earlier this year, I said there was more to the anti-social behaviour discussion than a social media craze involving unpleasant young men entering people’s houses. I talked, for instance, about my frustration with my fellow commuters’ failure to intervene in bad behaviour on buses. And at the way adults have shut themselves off, turning up the volume on their headphones. Wilfully oblivious to the chaos around them, and unwilling to take any responsibility for the young people they share their space with.
I had no way of knowing that the wider sense of unease and lack of civility would take the truly disturbing turn that it did. The attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens this month were not only sickening in themselves but, as Kemi Badenoch told parliament, many over here took this as their cue to ‘play out foreign conflicts on the streets of this country’. While I won’t replay the political arguments, or the debates about multiculturalism and immigration; it certainly puts the discussion I will be chairing this weekend in a different perspective.
I’ll be chairing From Mizzy to Shoplifting: Anti-Social Society? at the Battle of Ideas. Maybe Mizzy doesn’t seem quite so menacing anymore. And the fuss, earlier this year, over laughing gas canisters littering our communities, seems almost quaint. Should we care that more than a million incidents of anti-social behaviour were recorded last year? Are kids hanging around on the streets really such a big deal? Perhaps we need to toughen up a bit and not be so traumatised by a little disorder in our communities. Rather than offering the culprits support, or worrying over a lack of youth clubs, shouldn’t we be taking a harder line with them?
But while the news agenda may have moved on and world events have shocked us to the core, the problems in our communities haven’t gone away. There has been a 25% rise in shoplifting over the last year. What’s behind the increase? Some are linking it to the cost of living crisis. But surely there’s more to it? Hard times may well play a part, but do they excuse or explain theft? While some of us might not want the police dealing with relatively low-level incivilities - and would rather encourage our fellow citizens to step in - why aren’t the police arresting the rise in shoplifting?
As the altercation, last month, between a black woman and an Asian owner of a hair store in Peckham showed, we’re talking about more than a petty crime problem here. This particular incident - again shared on social media - brought underlying racial tensions in that part of South London to the surface. And we’ve seen it again, but on a much larger and more disturbing scale, across the country and across the Western world, with ‘Free Palestine!’ protests and a worrying and rapid rise in anti-Semitic abuse in recent days and weeks.
So, this issue feels much more urgent than it did when I first wrote about it. But the questions remain the same. What’s going on in our communities? Have we become an anti-social society? Are we less civil than we were? And are adults too anxious or just plain indifferent to do anything about the youthful misbehaviour they encounter?
I will be chairing From Mizzy to Shoplifting: Anti-Social Society? at this weekend’s Battle of Ideas Festival. Tickets still available.
Image: Alisdare Hickson