Why and How Social and Moral liberals -in All Parties - Cause Crime

A little later I hope to post a review of a couple of books which have deservedly come back into print, Sarah Gainham’s superb novel about Wartime Vienna ‘Night falls on the City’ and John Buchan’s novel about fate and time ‘The Gap in the Curtain’.

 

But first I must respond to the latest wave of abuse on Twitter. This takes the form of various people jeering at the idea that liberals bear any responsibility for the killing of Alan Greaves, the much-loved church organist who died of severe head injuries on his way to Midnight Mass in a Sheffield suburb, on Christmas Eve.

 

I think it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that this crime is a consequence of social, political and moral change. I was puzzled that the incident did not attract more attention when it was first reported – a patently good person, on his way to a joyous occasion in the midst of the season of goodwill, violently struck down in the street.

 

 

I know from my own local papers, in a remarkably civilised part of the country, that many rather horrible crimes of violence never attract the attention of the national media, because such things are now alarmingly commonplace.

 

Back in September I recorded how ‘two men were jailed for attacking Kirk Smith in his home, in a petty, moronic robbery - of £20 and two phones. Abdul Adan, 21, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years (in reality he will serve half that) for stabbing Mr Smith four times, after first smashing his nose. Mr Smith's wounds were appalling. They 'bared his intestines', as the court report puts it. Adan's accomplice, Michael Edwards, 25, got three-and-a-half years, which of course he will not serve in full.’

 

We have also discussed here the fact (the above account is an example) that many people are the victims of horrible, life-changing attacks, but – because their lives are saved by heroic medical intervention – survive. So they do not, as they would have done in the past, feature in the homicide statistics. There is a great deal more violence abroad in our country than there was 20 years ago, and enormously more than there was 50 or 60 years ago.

 

One of the reasons for this is a general lessening in self-restraint. Another is the widespread use of mind-altering drugs, as well as the allied growth (for several reasons) of severe drunkenness. Another is the widespread knowledge among the morally deficient that cruel crimes are generally not followed by severe punishment. When they are prosecuted at all, and in many cases they are not, they lead at first to feeble consequences such as cautions (now, as we know, issued for an extraordinary range of crimes including rape), the farce known as ‘restorative justice’, non-custodial sentences, uncollected fines, suspended sentences and, eventually, repeated brief spells in prisons which are not, for the criminal type, punitive or harsh.

 

If these changes are not the result of liberal social, cultural and moral policies, then what has caused them? Some people will instantly say (for they know no other argument and have never heard any other explanation), that the culprit is ‘Thatcherism’.  As a non-admirer of the Iron Lady, I would agree that her time in office was certainly not a period of social conservatism. The dismantling of marriage continued (I really do recommend the chapter on this subject in my book ‘the Abolition of Britain’, which I was re-reading last night. The idea that boosting the tax allowance for married couples will in any way reverse this revolution is laughable. ). The covert decriminalisation of drugs (always a bipartisan policy) continued.  The destruction of rigorous, disciplined state education continued apace. The automatic halving of prison sentences was discussed but not implemented till the arrival in office of John Major.  The dilution of discipline and rigour in schools continued. The growing coarseness of language and manners in the broadcast media continued. The destruction of the alcohol licensing laws began.

 

At best, the Thatcher period was morally neutral. At worst, it contributed sharply to that decline (I take the second view, regarding her failure in these areas as her most significant fault). But social change generally follows some years after the measures which make it possible, and it was the great raft of changes sponsored by the 1964-70 Labour government, identified by me in ‘The Abolition of Britain’ as the British Cultural Revolution,  which had really begun to take effect by the 1980s. They were above all the fruit of an alliance of social liberals from both major parties, headed by Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, but ably supported by such Tories as Norman St John Stevas.

 

These included far easier divorce (and punitive, anti-husband settlements of custody and marital property), abortion on demand, a culture of entitlement in welfare payments, the encouragement through subsidy and cultural change of fatherless families, the abolition of grammar schools, a presumption in favour of bail, the abolition of the principle of punishment in the criminal justice system, and its replacement with the view that crime was a social disease in need of treatment, the consequent weakening of sentences, and of prison discipline, the legalisation (under cover of ’literary merit’) of pornography.

 

And they were of course accompanied by major changes in the attitudes towards certain forms of previously frowned-on behaviour by the churches, by the media and by educators. They were accompanied by the withdrawal of the police from preventive patrolling and later(under Mrs Thatcher) by the removal of police officers’ discretion to act independently, through the astonishing Police and Criminal Evidence Act and its codes of practice. Other significant changes involved the presumption that bail would be granted to accused persons, and the removal of the police force’s power to decide on prosecution, and the creation of the Crown prosecution Service, which subordinated decisions on prosecution to political and (increasingly ) financial constraints.

 

Under these conditions, is it surprising that it is now more dangerous to walk through the city streets at midnight than it used to be? And does anyone seriously deny that it is more dangerous than it was 50 years ago?