Gangs and Youth Violence (2011 Riots)

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity of the debate today, which I secured for two reasons. First, given that the riots of 2011 were so dramatic and one of the most momentous events in modern British history, justifying the recall of Parliament, it strikes me as somewhat extraordinary that we have not found an opportunity in the 15 months since to discuss them, their aftermath and what actions can and should be taken to ensure that such violence is not repeated. The Government gangs strategy was released in November last year, so we are at its anniversary, and the Government have reviewed progress, but we have not had an opportunity to discuss the events, certainly in Government time. I find that extraordinary, and I am grateful for the attendance of hon. Friends who represent boroughs affected by the riots for the most part, or by serious gang and youth violence, to talk about some of the effects on their communities.

Secondly, for a related reason, I very much want the opportunity to stress to the Minister, in the hope of reassurance, that the modest amount of money that has been invested in tackling gangs and serious youth violence over the past year, whether through the Home Office or the Mayor’s office, should continue beyond March next year at its present level at least. I will refer to that as I move on in my contribution.

Gangs and serious youth violence have been a feature of our cities for far too long. They are distinct but overlapping phenomena with similar roots. As I am sure colleagues will mention in their contributions, certain elements of the 2011 riots were specific to the time and place in which they occurred but, in general, the factors driving the gang and serious youth violence of recent years, which exploded into the riots, have the same stem. If we are to understand what happened and, ideally, to prevent and bear down on such phenomena in future, we need to understand both of them.

Acres of debate have been generated in the media and academia since the 2011 riots, which is one reason why not having the opportunity to discuss such findings to any extent in Parliament has been unfortunate. So much of the media coverage, however, was extremely unhelpful to our understanding. A lot of the reporting was wrapped up in language that betrayed the worst stereotypes, with talk of “feral youth” or “the underclass”, and reinforced a powerful sense of “the other”, a modern enemy within in our society. That distracts us from understanding the causes of such behaviour.

I was struck by some of the media commentary on the trials and convictions of 18 young people involved in the death of Sofyen Belamouadden at Victoria station in 2010, which casts a different light on some of our analysis of the problem. I met the principal of the college concerned a fortnight ago to discuss some of the issues. Paul O’Shea, that inspirational principal of St Charles sixth-form college, which was attended by almost all those involved in the murder, described his experience thus:

“All but two of the 18 were four-A-level kids. We had nothing in our files to suggest they could behave like this. Their attendance rates were high, and one of the boys had that very morning been given two achievement certificates.”

The idea that we can happily stereotype all young people involved in gang or serious youth violence, or indeed in the riots, as members of a feral underclass is demolished by that very experience, which requires us to think more carefully. As the Centre for Social Justice report was labelled, it is “Time to Wake Up”.

We have to accept that such issues are complex and multifaceted, with emotional, cultural, economic and social causes. We have to grapple with ancient impulses. The behaviour of teenage boys in particular has caused grief to adults for 2,000 years, although now we have to deal with some of the new tools that create new means by which behaviour can be channelled through very rapid communication. As I describe it to myself, the space-time between impulse and action is completely eradicated, which has important implications. What happens through the use of the BlackBerry Messenger service, YouTube or social media has fundamentally changed not how behaviour is expressed but how it can be organised and how young people organise themselves.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about some of the new technology that can lead to the fast propagation of some of the behaviours associated with serious youth violence. Does she agree that the issue is not only about the speed with which such behaviour can be spread, but about the material online that can escalate and foment a situation, leading to greater problems of retaliation between different gangs or competing groups involved in serious youth violence?

[Ms Buck]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has been a powerful advocate of our better understanding of social media and how they can interact with long-standing patterns of behaviour and yet change that behaviour, increasing the ability of groups to taunt and confront each other through the posting of gang videos. She is absolutely right.

From all the analyses from across the political spectrum, left and right, from politicians, the media, think-tanks and academia we have a whole range of different contributory factors. Family breakdown, unemployment, the absence of effective role models—in particular for young men—poor relationships between young people and the police, the role of social media, excessive consumerism and poverty have all been analysed and put into the mix. We have yet, however, to translate our understanding of all such different factors into a comprehensive strategy for responding to the violence that has plagued our streets generally and to ensure that there is no repetition of the terrible events of 2011. Are we doing enough to translate our understanding of the causes of such behaviour into a specific understanding of, for example, where flashpoints can occur, postcodes, the role of social media or how adult criminals are directing the behaviour of younger members of the gangs? Such adults are sometimes directing from inside prison or even from outside the country. Young people involved in gang behaviour often say that they are dealt with by the police—quite rightly—but adult serious criminal behaviour is often behind the drug dealing or other criminal activity underpinning some gang behaviour, and those adults are not gone after or challenged. Work is being done in all those respects but I can fairly say that it is patchy, inconsistent and simply not good enough to insure against a repetition of the events of 2011.

In London, the number of people who died on our streets as a result of gang and serious youth violence peaked in 2008. It would be extremely unwise, however, for any of us to feel that that might have been a high-water mark for gang and serious youth violence, because it clearly was not. Serious youth violence was surging in 2011, up to and after the riots, and that would have been a more important element of media commentary had the riots not, understandably, distracted so much of our attention. We are only just beginning to appreciate the role of serious sexual violence, and the way in which girls are being drawn into the gang structure and abused.

It is estimated that around 250 gangs are operating in London alone, and that around 88% are involved in violence. Some 18% of individuals in gangs are linked to drug supply, 20% to stabbings, 50% to shootings and 14% to rapes. The Minister may say that we are calling for additional public spending to respond to some of the challenges, but the reverse is true. I want less to be spent on the consequences of that serious criminal activity, and on holding young people in youth offending institutions and prisons. A place in a youth offending institution sometimes costs £60,000 of public money a year. If only a fraction of that could be invested in prevention strategies, we would make a contribution to tackling the deficit as well as criminal behaviour.

When gang violence leads, as it has done, to serious concern about flashpoints in Pimlico, Parliament should regard that as a wake-up call. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) in his place, and he may make a contribution. That was a powerful wake-up call for people on Westminster city council because Pimlico is not the sort of place normally associated with the gang culture.

When a Westminster head teacher tells me that

“Hearing gun shots from my office yesterday really brought home to me how close we are to yet another tragedy”,

that should be a wake-up call. When a busy Oxford street store is the scene of a confrontation ending in a teenager’s murder, as happened last Christmas, we are reminded that gang violence cannot be swept out of sight and consigned to the usual suspect areas, such as Tottenham, Hackney and Lambeth. It can explode into everyone’s consciousness.

Given that background, we might have expected the problem to continue in summer 2012, perhaps with a repeat of the riots, and certainly a continuation of that surging youth violence that we saw throughout 2010 and 2011, but the picture is much more complicated. There has been a significant fall in serious youth violence locally in Westminster and across the Metropolitan police area with falls of nearly one third in knife injuries and 21% in gun-related incidents. The number of young people arrested has also fallen, gratifyingly, in recent times. But that makes my case more, not less pressing. If recent months are not to turn out to be an aberration, we must understand what contributory factors bore down on that youth violence, and how we can continue them.

We are definitely seeing the benefits of gang initiatives in my constituency and Met-wide, supported by some outstanding individuals and organisations which are delivering results with better information sharing, such as through the Gang Multi-Agency Partnership—the GMAP process, which monitors individual and gang activity—gang mediation and intensive family support.

I pay tribute to some of those involved in that work, because they do not receive sufficient recognition. They include Matt Watson, who runs Westminster’s gangs unit, and his team; the outgoing Commander Bray in Westminster, under whose watch a police gangs unit was set up and maintained despite all the other pressures on local policing; front-line gang workers, such as Twilight Bey and the Pathways to Progress team; Manni Ibrahim and the youth workers at clubs such as the Avenues, Paddington Boys, the Feathers and others, who have had to deal with the realities of gang violence on the front line; schools and colleges that have worked together; parent and family groups, such as the Tell It Like It Is campaign and Generation to Generation; and individuals who are doing creative work trying to tackle youth unemployment, such as Circle Sports.

It would be good to describe that as an infrastructure, but it would be unreasonable because, important as that work is, and invaluable as those individuals are, it is held together by gossamer threads. We simply do not know how much of the fall in serious youth crime in the last few months is due to the combination of statutory and community activity, and how much is due to other factors. That is an important challenge for Ministers. We may simply be seeing a lull in violence in the aftermath of the riots, when so many people were convicted and imprisoned and the shock waves went to communities in cities up and down the country.

The Centre for Social Justice report warned that the arrest strategy of recent months has weakened the leadership of some of the more responsible elders in gangs and created a greater risk of a more anarchic gang structure growing up in its wake. I do not know whether that will happen, but nor does anyone else, and that is part of the problem. What I do know is that we cannot afford to relax our grip for one moment. There is no evidence that the tide has turned, and in many respects, the underlying conditions for some of that behaviour are worsening because of factors such as the disproportionate cut suffered by the youth services as local government has been squeezed, and the pressure on family poverty and homelessness.

I was struck by a report that was published today by the Human City Institute. It says that social tenants have lost 10% of their purchasing power over the last couple of years—a total of £3 billion. Grainia Long of the Chartered Institute of Housing, who wrote the foreword to the report, said that it

“is very concerned that the combined effects of austerity and welfare reform run counter to the government’s fairness principle, and…that tenants are…disproportionately taking the strain of deficit reduction”.

That sort of upheaval and social stress cuts across some of the work that we are trying to do in tackling gang behaviour.

Long-term youth unemployment is at catastrophic levels, with unemployment of black and ethnic minority young men and women particularly worrying. The youth unemployment rate for black people has increased at almost twice the rate as that for white 16 to 24-year-olds since the start of the recession, and young black men are the worst affected.

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[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing it. I am sorry that I did not hear everyone’s contribution, as I had to leave to meet a group of young people from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Knights academy in my constituency who have been visiting the House of Commons today.

I want to speak today for two reasons: first, to underline the huge importance to my constituents of tackling gangs and serious youth violence; and, secondly, to urge the Government to take an holistic approach and put their money where their mouth is in tackling the problem. They need to think hard about how they use the resources that they have allocated to best effect.

In the past nine months, I have met the parents of three young men who were stabbed to death in my constituency or neighbouring constituencies. In March this year, Kwame Ofosu-Asare, a 17-year-old boy from Catford, was stabbed to death in Brixton. I will speak a little more about that incident in a few minutes. The second young man whose mum I met was Nathaniel Brown. In August this year, he was stabbed after a party in Downham and lost his life on the street there. The third young man whose father I met was Kevin Ssali. He was stabbed as he got off a bus in my constituency in Lee Green in September. There are no words that a Member of Parliament can use when sitting in the front room of a parent who has lost a son or daughter to brutal violence on our streets. Tackling such violence is one of our biggest challenges.

To underline the importance of tackling gangs and serious youth violence, I want to say something briefly about Kwame Ofosu-Asare, who was killed in Brixton. The court case into his murder started last week. The prosecutor, Crispin Aylett, told the court:

“Kwame was not a member of either gang”

involved in the incident in Brixton. He continued:

“He was killed for no reason other than his murderers had come upon him on an estate they considered to be enemy territory and at a time when they were looking to take revenge for the stabbing of one of their own only hours earlier.”

I never met Kwame, but everything I have heard about him suggests that he was a very fine young man with a very bright future ahead of him. His father has been understandably beside himself with grief. He has come to the House to ask what we will do to prevent such violence from happening again.

Such incidents are not isolated. When I visit community groups in my constituency, such as XLP, a youth project based in Lewisham, and Second Wave in the neighbouring constituency and meet young people, I am struck by the seriousness with which they talk about their safety. I feel safe on the streets of Lewisham. We can quote statistics about falling crime, but when young people are losing their lives, the streets do not feel safe to them or their parents, which is why it is imperative that the Government and everyone in the House come together to tackle the problem.

There are four parts to the process to think about. First, we need to think about how to prevent young people from getting involved in gangs and serious youth violence in the first place. Secondly, when they are involved and caught up in gangs, we need to give them a way out and the means to get out. Thirdly, we need to tackle the retaliative behaviour and escalation of violence. Fourthly, when young people and those involved in violence go to prison, we need to ensure that they have a means to find a different life for themselves and not get caught up in exactly the same behaviour that they were involved in before they went to prison.

On the first part of that process, there are fine examples of community-led projects, which, with a relatively small amount of money, have a proven track record of going into schools, talking to young people and being accessible to them. They look like and sound like the young people, and they listen to them. Such projects can make a huge difference in stopping those on the edges from getting caught up in gangs and serious youth violence. They can help young people to understand the consequences of their behaviour and that if they are hanging around with a dodgy group of friends, they can get caught up in joint enterprise charges. It is important that such work is done in our schools at a young age to tackle the issue.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. I am reluctant to interrupt, but there is a Division in the House, so I am afraid that the sitting is suspended for 15 minutes.

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On resuming—

[Heidi Alexander]

I was talking about what needs to happen to stop young people getting involved in the gang culture in the first place. We must think very hard about what leads a young person—or even an older person—to think that they can resort to the level of violence that we see on our streets to resolve a difference. The Government cannot necessarily solve the problem; it is as much about parents, families and communities coming together and saying that the violence is unacceptable. The Mizen foundation, which was launched by the parents of Jimmy Mizen who was also murdered in my constituency, has recently introduced the valuable initiative, “Release the Peace” to stem the level of anger and violence that we see among some young people in our communities.

When young people are involved in gangs and caught up in youth violence, we need to find a way of giving them a route out. We need to enable young people to talk to someone in confidence when they arrive at accident and emergency with a stab wound. It is imperative that they can be open about what has happened, instead of closing up and not talking to anyone.

In Lewisham, the Trilogy Plus initiative, which is run by the police, has recruited previous gang members to become mentors and to work hand in hand with families of young people who are in gangs. The idea is to make it clear to young boys or young men what the consequences are of going out on the streets and doing certain things. They are told very clearly that the police will catch up with them. That sort of work on a real-time basis is critical.

We need to find a way to stem the escalation of violence. In my earlier intervention, I talked about online material that glamorises gang culture and that fuels and foments some of the animosity that exists between rival gangs. The problem will become more significant as time goes on. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport should talk to the Home Office about how, in future communications legislation, it might consider giving the courts more power, under very constrained circumstances, to take down such material because of the damage that it does on the streets in our communities.

As I have said, we need to provide a route out for people who have been in prison after being involved in serious youth violence. Nothing will do that better than finding a job. Instead of going back to the neighbourhoods in which they were living or hanging around with their old groups and friends, they need to be given a way out.

The situation is not straightforward. Some money has to be invested in the projects and initiatives that work. There is expertise in this area and the amount of money that is required is quite small. I implore the Government to do all they can to solve this horrendous problem that is afflicting our streets and communities.