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Guns, gangs and grime

August 7, 2012 2:30 pm

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As we stood in the boxing club overlooking the sprawling Stonebridge estate, Lefty, a former member of the Suspect Gang looked over at me, “Despite all the horror, the poverty and suffering, we will always defend Stonebridge, we will always be Stonebridge.” The estate has over the years become synonymous with some of the worst street violence ever seen as guns and gangs vied for control of the lucrative Crack Cocaine trade.

Today, after a quarter of a billion pounds of investment and regeneration, the crack houses have gone but have been replaced by the ‘youngers,’ youths aged between 13 and 18 who peddle and deliver drugs on BMX bikes like takeaway pizzas.  This is backed up by a ferocious appetite of some young people to use violence and aggression and to then parade it with pride and adulation as the latest YouTube video.

Gangs are beginning to take hold in our cities. In London, the Metropolitan Police estimates Gangs are responsible for half of all shootings, a fifth of stabbings and one in seven rapes. 25% of burglaries are also gang related, as well as almost a fifth of all muggings. Outside the capital, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool gangs accounted for 65% of all firearm homicides in the UK.

They are also evolving. UK gangs are going through a worrying process of ‘Americanisation.’ Members are exhibiting colour-coded clothes based on the American Blood and Crips gangs and marking out their territories using trainers suspended from telephone lines.

A year on from the August Riots, little it seems has changed. After much fanfare and tough talk from the Government about tackling gangs, their response has been mainly confined to recycling and rehashing old policies. Certainly not the “concerted, all-out war on gangs and gang culture” that David Cameron promised us all.

The result is that only 17% of young people feel safe in London with 28% of 12-18 years olds believing there could be a repeat of last year’s riots.

This is why I have set-up the Gangs Taskgroup in Brent, which will look at developing diversion and exit strategies for young people who are at most risk of becoming involved in gang activity.

The taskgroup will also harness some of the challenges and fears our young people face while growing up in some of the most deprived areas in the country.

Young people talk about postcode wars where they are unable to enter certain parts of the borough because they simply happen to be from a different area, even if it’s only a few hundred meters away. How young girls are seduced into gangs and gang culture and along with the terror of crime and drugs, are subjected to sexual exploitation and violence.

Gangs at times are substitute families for many young people who hardly see their parents because they are working numerous jobs to make ends meet. By providing the latest Nike trainers and designer clothing, gangs evoke a deep sense of family-type love and belonging.

On our streets, for many ‘Bling Bling is King,’ where being ‘dissed’ results in violence or even murder. A badge of honour that is earned by being the ‘big man’ and not backing down whatever the odds.

All this is wrapped up and spat out by the tough urban music genre ‘grime,’ which mixes hip-hop, garage and drum and bass and immortalises the gang lifestyle.

Our response to gangs needs to be more than just resource focused. It needs to bring in some of the other contributing factors such as housing, education, family breakdown as well as raising the aspirations of our young people to help free them from poverty and social deprivation.

The challenge is only made greater by government cuts, youth unemployment and the on-going tensions between young people and the police.

Along with statutory bodies and local stakeholders having well-coordinated and coherent strategies, there is also a key role for communities to play in helping to change the gangs landscape. There needs to be local responses to local challenges.

Local organisations can bring their own creativity and knowledge to help tackle gangs in their neighbourhoods. Many have the in-roads and sympathies of the local culture, which can help challenge the behaviour of local young people and to encourage lasting change in them. Government should avoid wasting local energies and empower them through mentoring, networking opportunities and promoting best-practice.

Meanwhile back at the boxing club, Squingy, another former member of the Suspect Gang commented to me: “Gangs are here to stay. Its how you deal with them that’ll make the difference.”

Zaffar Van Kalwala is a Labour Councillor in Stronebridge, Brent

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  • Bill Lockhart

    Current gang members all grew up under a Labour government. The gang problem was brushed under the carpet because to state the nature of London gangs led automatically to being accused of, of course, ‘racism’. So did pointing out the statistical prevalence of absentee black fathers. Discipline in schools was inverted so that teachers are afraid of children. Criticism of violent, homophobic, misogynist gangsta rap music was ‘racist’. In short , no critical examination of any aspect of the black communities was permissible. We now see the results.

    • ThePurpleBooker

      Unlike me you are not a black man, so the way you are making these comments can come across offensive. Though I agree that lack of school discipline, family breakdown, community disconnection and fatherlessness have caused these problems you cannot blame the Government. People are not grateful when middle class white people like yourself look down from some ivory tower making extremely dodgy comments to start politicising a comment that has destroyed lives. Let us do what they do in Labour council in Lambeth (a rightwing council according to Mike Homfray) where they empower and trust communities rather than having a big state approach.

  • Dan Mccurry

    I never knew about the trainers on telephone wires trick. I think the council should constantly end these boundaries. They are a challenge to the authority of the state. Whether it’s graffiti, or trainers, it shouldn’t be immediately removed. 

  • John Dore

    Gangs have always been around only now its a lot worse, when we were young it was school  or estate based and I dont think its different now. The difference today though is the violence and drugs. Where you really can make a difference is the drugs, if you’re addicted, come and have them for free in a controlled environment.

    Take away the demand and the money dries up.

    • Dan Mccurry

      I made exactly that argument on a post on Labour List a while ago. I can’t find a search function on this site but here it is on my blog. 
      http://danmccurry.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-price-of-heroin/

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

        Definitely. It really is a debate we need to have without the moral panics

    • http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone

      Portugal decriminalised drug use eleven years ago, the results are “staggering”*. Time to abandon the failed ‘War on Drugs’.

      *http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decriminalization-works-2012-7

  • Old school

    Until you make the penalties for drug and gang behaviour personally, painfully, sufficient to dissuade those who engage in such behaviour then you will never win.  Kick the crap out of them in the police station and then kick it out of them again once they’re in prison.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

      Ah, yes, just like America, where there are no gang problems at all

      • Old school

         no they don’t kick them enough

        • Bill Lockhart

           I am not convinced that your enthusiasm for vicarious violence holds the answer.

    • KonradBaxter

      Who has that tactic ever defeated?

      When someone can make £40,000 in a week and has rivals who would murder them why would they be bothered by a bit of a kicking?

    • Alan Giles

       ”Kick the crap out of them in the police station and then kick it out of them again once they’re in prison”

      I just had to look at the calendar. It is 2012, not 1962. Kenneth Drury is no longer at the  Yard, picking up his Friday afternoon “bonus” from Soho porn barons.

      Drug addiction is an illness, you won’t “cure” them in that fashion, and I think, even today the police get away with far too much. I am thinking of the officers involved in the 2005 shooting of Charles Jean Menezies and more recently Ian Thomlinson, when it was revealed – too late – that the officer in the dock had form for violence.

      We do not want thugs in uniform, and when they do as you suggest, they should face the full rigour of the laws they themselves are supposed to uphold.

  • https://mikestallard.virtualgallery.com/ Mike Stallard

    Congratulations in actually doing something to help your benighted local community. You ought to be very proud to be able to do this noble and very rewarding work. (Our community has different, but just as real problems).
    Usually (as with us) it is the Church that is at the forefront of such projects. So well done even more.

    Are you prepared to treat the men you work with as individual human beings as your equals. Not as your superiors. Not  with hand-outs? I suspect that you are. That is where the real reward lies. Do  you know their names? Do you know where they live (even in London)? Have you ever met their families? Are you prepared to work with anyone, even Christians, who are on your side fighting the menace of these ghastly times? It takes a lot of courage and a lot of time and a lot of patient listening.

    And, above all, can you have a laugh?

  • Mickelmas

    This is the usual clap-trap that is commonplace among the ignorant do-gooders who believe that ‘sympathy and understanding’ is the humanitarian solution to gang culture and crime (and by the way, gang culture is not a new phenomenon – it has been festering for decades). What should have been done in the past (and continued today) is a massive authority crack-down on gang-related activity in inner-city estates, including 24-7 police surveillance and extended CCTV coverage etc. Unfortunately, past and present authority figures have shown a total lack of moral courage to ignore media pressure. It is totally unacceptable for decision-makers to compromise the actions of, for example, police officers when investigating possible offences by hiding behind pathetic PR quotes such as “we have to be racially sensitive” or generally that ‘if someone of coloured origin complains about police (or other authority group) brutality or malpractice we will accept blame as the default position’.
    The only sensible fact you wrote was that gangs are often substitute families (which begs the question: why are the families not providing the necessary care, support and protection to their children?). Who is to blame when a black teenager is verbally and physically aggressive to police officers who legititmately stop and search him – is it the officers who are ‘racially prejudiced’ or the parent(s) who teaches their child to ‘hate the police’? I have far more belief that the police behave objectively.
    Providing ‘Rap opportunities’ for gangsters is just a sick joke.
    “Squingy” (what a ridiculous name!) was correct when he said that “how you deal with gangs will make the difference” but completely off base when he stated that “gangs are hear to stay”. No, they’re not, if the authorities get their act together!

    • Nick Lightowlers

       You seem to think this is merely a black problem. For Zaf it is because his ward covers Stonebridge, where minorities have been corralled for years. But what about issues in Hartlepool, Middlesborough and elsewhere with predominantly white populations and similar, proportional, levels of youth violence.

      I live in Harlesden and I know my neighbours and their children. Most of the children my Afro-Caribbean friends are stopped on a regular basis. They go to school, several have solid jobs (accountant, plumber, salesmen), but they have all been subjected to verbal abuse by white police officers in the past. In the last few years this has changed and, as a result, the community has responded to the police with greater trust. Nobody teaches their children to hate the police, teenagers just do. I know because I was a teenager once myself.

      Your suggestion that we turn out streets into a quasi-police state is not only fatuous but ridiculous. Blinkered by prejudice you call for action that would not only alienate the targeted population, for how do you spot a gang member if they want to blend in with the general population, but would cause fear among other communities who could expect the same ridiculous clampdown.

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