Above: not keen on David Aaronovitch as a columnist - he has a contrarian style that is very irritating.“Debate” on the propensity of young people (especially young men, and especially in urban areas) to carry knives and stab each other has reached almost all sections of the media, and is threatening the uneasy political consensus on the subject.
The consensus is that “we still don’t know” (David Aaronovitch in today’s Times) why young men are carrying knives, still less why they are using them. All (mainstream) political opinion subscribes to this collective myopia. If pushed commentators will say “Society” is to blame because of the bleakness and inequality of inner city urban life (this is a very convenient position to take, since if “everyone” is to blame then it follows no-one is to blame, and therefore there is no need to do anything).
Looking at knife crime from a marketing perspective (which is the only way I am qualified to look at it) there seems to be chronic obfuscation over the issue of demographics (which is of concern, since if you do not target your audience properly only by accident will your message get through to them).
Yesterday’s Guardian told us that according to a report by Manchester University’s School of Law there were no defining characteristics of gang-related knife crime and that the position was hopelessly “messy” (the report based on 100 interviews with gang members carried out in an anonymous city - it is possible this city might be somewhere particularly un-diverse such as Exeter or Lincoln or Winchester).
Saturday’s Guardian devoted several pages to five in-depth case-studies on perpetrators of knife crime, none of whom fitted "the usual stereotype". These case-studies troubled me since they were so much at variance with the accustomed image. I thought possibly it was an Orwellian attempt to portray as “reality” the opposite of reality. Or possibly it was an attempt to even the balance since one particular community has had so many fingers pointed at it. Nevertheless, the picture presented by columnist Erwin James was troubling because it was at variance with my perception of the evidence.
And what is the evidence?
One national newspaper (either the Independent or the Guardian) published a portrait of every victim of knife crime in London over the last year. Immediately you could recognise a defining demographic according to age, ethnicity and social group. To pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious.
Occasionally you see heavily coded attempts to discuss this demographic without actually naming the target audience - for instance, politicians will give unqualified praise to “the projects of Camila Batmanghelidjh”.
Occasionally interviewers will ask questions. Gavin Esler in Newsnight yesterday asked an inner city social worker about “black on black” crime but the social worker just ignored the question (Jeremy Paxman wouldn’t have let him get away with this). The rest of this interview consisted of a talking head (on a screen) from the government and two studio guests who fitted the “dead white males” category, all of them talking round the problem in an extremely oblique way.
So from these scraps of evidence, gained in an extremely circuitous fashion, I have attempted in marketing terms to “define the situation”:
Target audience - young (sometimes very young) black men, social class C2, D and E, living mainly on inner city social housing estates in London and other major urban centres.
Characteristics - formed into internally-sociable peer groups, possessing a considerable sense of loyalty, they have developed sophisticated local cultures defined in ritual behaviour and fashion, visual/musical expression and an impenetrable linguistic dialect. They have a romantic self-image of themselves as “doomed”. Over recent years this demographic has taken a deliberate decision to arm itself - generally with knives and swords, increasingly with guns.
Wider cultural resonance - the “death or glory” ethos is a recurring theme in western societies with a succession of role models (Tybalt the “prince of cats” in Romeo & Juliet; Rupert Brooke going to war as if “into cleanness leaping”; James Dean’s death wish of speed and excitement etc). It is not surprising that young black urban men should develop their own “anthem for doomed youth” narrative that tells them they have a heroic (but doomed) destiny. If anything this demographic should be applauded - alone and unaided they have achieved Maslow’s goal of self-actualisation and invented (out of nothing) a world where they feel valued and fulfilled.
Because the lifestyle they have adopted is based on self-actualisation it cannot be changed by appeals to conform to mainstream values (even “the projects of Camila Batmanghelidjh” are unlikely to have much effectiveness, except at the margins and among those who did not buy the lifestyle in the first place). Probably the demographic lifestyle will have to be subverted from within, with the selling of a more attractive lifestyle that satisfies their desire for “death or glory” but without anyone actually getting hurt.
On a practical and immediate level the demographic must be disarmed. If they are not disarmed then other demographics will choose to arm themselves (and I guess this is already happening) with the logical conclusion that everyone in society must be given the right to bear arms. Even at the risk of renewed local rioting, the police must urgently take the weapons away.
Anyway, that’s how I see things. I have tried to be dispassionate, but this situation represents significant failure at a number of levels. Failure of political leadership, failure of community leadership, failure of policing policy in London, failure of the segregation policies of multi-culturalism, failure of the self-censorship of political correctness, failure of a materialist consumerist society that promises self-actualisation through material goods (actually not possible) then denies certain demographics the ability to consume those material goods.
I didn’t like this at first, but it grows on you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxR4AweLeXE
