"Restore Civilization to our streets." This was the remark of a prominent politician recently. It sounds good; it has the ring of confidence and it is cynically calculated to allay the fears of the ordinary person who has to walk those dangerous streets, not having access to a chauffeur-driven limousine as do our political masters.
In the present instance it has been said in the context of public unease concerning violent crime on the streets. The use of CCTV seemed like a good idea but putting cameras mounted strategically in the town centers has meant that the thugs, yobs and assorted vandals have transferred their unwelcome attentions to residential streets. The level of noise, tuneless singing, mindless yawping, swearing and fighting is now a regular feature of Friday and Saturday night life outside your average semi-detached. It was once the centers which were no-go areas for the elderly, the respectable and the timid. Now they are being intimidated by those who insist on indulging their destructive and anti-social inclinations in public, in the leafy suburbs.
It was alright to express self-righteous disapproval when it was in the town center on a Saturday night. However it is now in the middle class frontyard and the privet hedges that are a target for lager tins and regurgitated curry. Even now the persons of the respectable are under threat of violence so they are making their displeasure felt and government is looking for some well-turned phrases to allay the fears of those who voted for them at the last election.
This response is predictable. A bit of huffing and puffing about law and order and a few ringing calls to arms and it will all be forgotten by next Sunday week. They hope! They wish! To further distract public opinion from the real issues, from issues which government can do nothing about, they make sure they are seen to be taking action. There is nothing like a government finding a few hapless scapegoats and being really severe with them to make the punters think they really are governing. The latest ploy to distract the public form the real issue is the announcement that government is to be tough on begging and on beggars.
What has that got to do with fights on a Saturday night? What has that got to do with yobs who gatecrash respectable parties and break up respectable barbecues ? Clearly nothing, nothing at all! What does the Home Secretary intend to do to stop begging, that most serious of crimes? Is he going to evict them? He can hardly do that, they are living and sleeping on the pavement and in shop doorways already. Is he going to have them arrested for vagrancy? If he does this he will most certainly earn the undying gratitude of some. To exchange a cold and damp pavement for a warm cell must be like going to heaven. To exchange the prospect of no meals a day for three inadequate and bland meals a day must seem like going to a banquet. You might get a few extra votes that way Home Secretary, but not that many I should think, because what most of the homeless are not, is stupid.
So much for government hot air. Perhaps in order better to understand the problem government ministers should try selling the "Big Issue" for a couple of weeks and living on the proceeds. This might soon lose its glamor at Number ten. The problem of unruly, uncivilized and violent behavior will not go away and is likely to become worse. I do not think that people will be fooled by this for long. It may convince the more intellectually challenged among staunch Labour supporters that government is doing something. Well they are doing something! Something utterly ineffective, something utterly irrelevant and totally useless but it may take the minds of the punters off the main issue so government can get on with their little game of soldiers in Iraq for a while. For a while until that goes stale on them.
Like all rhetoric, phrases like, "restoring civilization to the streets," is not meant to enlighten but it does serve to confuse. It sounds good in the ears of the voters and by the time they have seen through it there is another crisis for government to get its tiny collective mind round. Government only has to sound as if it knows what it is talking about. As long as it manages this somehow things muddle along and, usually, sort themselves out Probably, because of the good sense of most people and the conscientious diligence of the majority of the workforce things will go on as usual. As long as the punters are both impressed and confused they can go to cabinet meeting at Number Ten and play at soldiers to their hearts content. What they will achieve is another matter. Civilization has allowed them to come to this pretty pass. They are not aware but they are unleashing barbarism onto their country and, possibly, into the whole world.
