The Week ending 3 December 2000
Damilola Murder: The Home Office's Uncanny Preparations
Home Office minister Jack Straw's prompt and high profile response to the murder of Nigerian boy Damilola Taylor in South London took many by surprise. Visiting the scene, Straw took the opportunity to emphasize the government's concern over youth crime. In the House of Commons the Prime Minister joined in the public anguish over the schoolboy's stabbing.
Damilola Taylor's death is a terrible tragedy for his parents, who came to Britain to get help medical help for his epileptic sister. But the public response to the killing from the politicians and the press is not a spontaneous sharing in their grief. The real reason that Damilola's death is so striking is that child murders are rare and exceptional. But New Labour's intervention is an attempt to persuade the public that, on the contrary, Damilola's death is symptomatic of a sick society: a sickness to which New Labour has the cure.
Though no one has yet been arrested for the stabbing, the press has widely assumed that the killers are schoolboys and it is widely reported that Damilola had complained about bullying. The government's response came before the killing. In September the Home Office announced a Sterling 45M scheme to keep 12-17 year old 'hardened criminals' under round-the-clock surveillance. The scheme follows a pilot project run from March 1998 in which young offenders were put under electronic curfews. The Home Office reported that 'Smaller tags were needed to fit children but this was not generally a problem: indeed, we were told that some of the smaller tags had been used on older offenders to ensure a better fit.'
The Home Office's preoccupation with youth crime has given rise to a number of surveys, used to manufacture evidence to back up new restrictions on young people. One Metropolitan Police Survey in West London found not only that the majority of crimes were committed by children, but that the majority of victims were children too. A Home Office report of 'Findings from the 1998/99 Youth Lifestyles Survey' says 'Comparatively high rates of offending by 14- to 15-year-old boys reflected their involvement in fights, in buying stolen goods, 'other theft' and in criminal damage.'
These figures, though, are hardly evidence of a youth crime wave. Rather, they indicate a change in the way that young people's behavior is defined. With murder being the exception rather than the rule, what in the past would have been called 'naughtiness' and dealt with informally by parents and schools is now classed as crime. A lowering of the age of criminal responsibility means that playground bundles, Chinese rope burns, grabbing someone's Pokemon cards and scribbling on walls becomes classed as assault, theft and criminal damage. Under the lower age of criminal responsibility, Britain now has a number of prisons dedicated to jailing children.
The government's desire to be seen to be acting tough on crime arises from the coming general election. New Labour knows that most of its policies are oriented to a metropolitan elite that, while an important social base, is not large enough to constitute a majority at the polls. The one area where Labour has succeeded in breaking out of its immediate circle of younger professionals is the crime issue. Pollster Philip Gould advised Tony Blair before the last election that the Tory's had until then monopolized its hold on people's insecurities. The recasting of Labour as a party that was 'tough on crime' appealed to an inchoate sense of insecurity that focused upon crime. Crocodile tears over Damilola Taylor's grave are the opening salvo in Labour's election campaign.
AIDS fears fail to materialize
Scare stories that Britain's long-predicted epidemic of heterosexually transmitted Aids had finally arrived filled the press, with speculations that there will be a 40 per cent rise in Aids cases over the next three years. Like most reporting of Aids, the story is projected into the future, where it cannot be checked. The number of people contracting the Aids virus last year rose to 3000. The cumulative total of Aids cases since the disease was identified is 20 000. The government blames the rise on complacency, especially amongst heterosexuals about the dangers of unprotected sex.
However, the threat that Aids will spread from the high-risk categories of gay men, intravenous drug users, and Africans has not happened. Of those with Aids, two thirds are gay men, a further 1000 are intravenous drug users and some 2500 were infected abroad (2000 in Africa). GP Michael Fitzpatrick reports that there were just '252 cases of Aids - in 15 years - in which infection had taken place through heterosexual contact in Britain' (The Tyranny of Health, Routledge, 2000, p15).
Though it makes more sense to target much needed resources at those groups whose risks are higher, the government prefers to stoke up fears about a heterosexual epidemic of Aids in Britain. Fears of disease give content to the Health professionals' attempts to promote sexual conservatism amongst young people.
Sadly, Aids charities, too, have joined in the manipulation of the risk of Aids. In July of this year the declining public interest in the disease was blamed for the dwindling financial support for Aids charities. One well-known organization Body Positive was closed, due to lack of support, along with many smaller groups. The charities feared that as long as the public associated the disease with gay people, then they could not expect support. For that reason, they joined in the Department of Health's campaign to persuade the wider public that they too were at risk. But you can only lie to people for so long. As few heterosexuals have experience of friends or acquaintances dying from Aids, the government leaflets look more and more like so much propaganda.
-- James Heartfield