BLAIR DECLARES WAR ON CHILDREN...
As reported last WEEK British Prime Minster Tony Blair is gearing up for a war against children. Through his official spokeswoman, Queen Elizabeth II, the self-styled modernizer, set his government firmly against the future, promising to crush the 'yob culture'. Measures include spot crimes for disorderly behavior and to 'raise the age of child curfew schemes from 9 to 15'.
Youth worker Stuart Waiton investigated the impact of and attitudes behind the pilot curfew scheme in Glasgow, but found little evidence of the 'yob culture' that exercises the British government. 'When I find grown men and women too afraid to approach 9 and 10 year olds about their behavior, it becomes clear that it is not the activities of young people that has changed but the growing insecurities of adults.'
Last month, the BBC finally killed off the grumpy old git, Victor Meldrew, in the last of the comedy series One Foot in the Grave. But Victor Meldrew is alive and well in Downing Street. A government that pretended to be building a new, and even a young Britain has revealed itself as appealing principally to the older generations' fears of young people.
Stuart Waiton's book on the curfews and policing youth is published by Sheffield Hallam University Press next year, and the Generation Youth Issues website is at http://www.generationyouthissues.fsnet.co.uk/index. html
...CHILDREN'S CHARITY FUNDS PARENT-BASHING
Last year the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) spent a total of £38m on fundraising, administration and campaigning. Only £28m went on children's services, according to the charity's accounts published this week.
In their defense the NSPCC says that it can have more effect as a campaigning organization than providing welfare. But the NSPCC's high- spending campaigns have courted controversy.
In last year's NSPCC television advertisement made by Tory advertising company Saatchi and Saatchi, movement is seen beneath a duvet on a child's bed. A male voice says: 'Not a word to anyone. This is going to be our little secret.' The charity's shock-tactics gain attention by portraying family life as a hell of abuse and violence. Another campaign exaggerated fears of child abduction so much that June McKerrow, director of Mental Health Foundation, a charity that has commissioned research on children's well-being, said: 'We don't need any more of these messages. If anything, the whole thing has already been taken too far.'
If the NSPCC wants to get out of the charity business and promote its own misanthropic view of families then it should abandon its charitable status.
NICE RIOT, BUT WHAT'S THE MESSAGE?
Showing an admirable indifference to law and order, young people rioted in Nice outside the European Union summit. The Nice riots come after a year of protests at world business and political forums since the protests at Seattle. But onlookers could be forgiven for asking, what's the message? The protestors' indifference to the law is matched by an indifference to gaining a wider audience for their views.
According to the publicity 'The European Union plan is part of the global neo-liberal agenda driven by the giant corporations and the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation'. But the anti-global message has a tendency to reproduce the parochial outlook of economic nationalism. At Nice protestors clashed with members of the Front Nationale, who sought to join in the demonstrations. Though the anti-capitalist protestors reject fascism, their message echoes the far right's hatred of everything foreign.
At a recent public meeting in London, anti-capitalist spokeswoman Naomi Klein was at pains to reject the charge of economic nationalism. But her protests only underline the point. Where the enemy is seen as the foreign influence of global capitalism, local capitalism becomes the ideal, if only by default. The point is all too clear in the promotion of small business in anti-globalisation protestor George Monbiot's recent book, The Captive State.
-- James Heartfield