Benefits For Single Parent

Anarchy in the UK

On the third day of the London riots, I spoke to Mash, a member of a Brixton gang whom I befriended three years ago. He was standing outside a shop in Clapham, watching the looting. I could hear shouts, glass breaking but no police sirens. I urged him to go home. ‘Harri man,’ he remonstrated down the telephone, his voice hoarse, ‘You don’t get to do this every day. You do your ting, and you don’t get arrested. It’s wild and exciting. These few days, it’s our time.’

The riots engulfing areas of London and other cities this week are not about poverty or race. They are about young men like Mash who are barely literate, unemployed, with no future and nothing to lose. For them, this is a dream suddenly come true. Their favourite video games have become a reality. They have got what they never had before: power, a sense of achievement and lots of goodies. Most of us want the same things. The difference is that we can get them without setting London ablaze.

I met Mash while interviewing black Caribbean and white working-class boys around the country for a think-tank report. The young men I interviewed had very obviously failed to make the transition to manhood and successful adult life. Their failure leaves them disengaged from society and its values. The majority find themselves trapped in an extended, semi-criminal adolescence well into their 20s and 30s.

These young men came of age during the 13 years of Labour rule. It is not deprivation that has stunted their lives but the policies of the previous government in three key areas: school, work and home.

To begin to understand the mayhem in our cities, look at a set of figures on literacy rates that came out a week before the riots began. Teaching a child to read and write is not difficult or expensive. Much poorer countries manage to do it. The statistics in the UK are staggering. A full 63 per cent of white working-class boys and just over half of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below. How does that translate into the criminality on our streets? Humiliated in lessons, by 14, the young men I interviewed had either dropped out or were excluded. They then spent their time hanging around on the streets, turning up to school only to sell drugs or stolen goods.

Studies show that about half of the prison population has a reading age below that of an 11-year-old. Of one south London gang I met three years ago, all were bright but semi-literate. Three are now in prison. Bigs, the former leader of one of Brixton’s most notorious gangs, received his first prison sentence at 15. “Other people go from school to university,” he told me. “We go from school to prison.

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