Wednesday 16 July 2008

Knifey Spoony

London Fields # 54
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 16 July 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

On the streets of London there is a steadily growing sense of rising resentment and bubbling aggression that is becoming almost palpable. Perhaps it can in part be attributed to the current “credit crunch”? (Whatever you do, don’t dare call it a recession!) Families can afford less as salaries fail to keep pace with inflation, and prices of basic domestic necessities have risen drastically. For many years, the price of supermarket goods seemed to have been dropping year-on-year, but recently there have been sudden and dramatic increases, with certain items going up 20% overnight.

In this market, houses remain unsold; vendors see their prices falling, and some reports say there is only one buyer for every ten properties. For the buyer, mortgages are harder to get, and the interest rates are much harsher than even a few months ago. So while property prices have fallen over 10% in the past few months, it seems as if no-one is brave enough, or can actually afford to buy in this uncertain climate. This in turn results in a great shortage of rental accommodation, which allows landlords to push their prices up rapidly as demand exceeds supply.

I was recently speaking to an ‘old school’ real estate agent – one who’d been in the game long enough to have been through the last major downturn in the early ‘90’s. He said that many of the current players didn’t know how to handle this situation at all. “These guys are used to putting a ‘For Sale’ sign on the front, showing a few people round, and then selling it within a few weeks. They have no idea how to actually sell”. He also predicted that they’d be many casualties in the coming months. And he was right – already I’ve noticed some former estate agents are now up for let as they’ve gone to the wall, and this so-called “crunch” hasn’t really started to bite yet.

But this depressing picture could also be linked into the one story that’s dominated London news recently - the alarming rise in lives lost in knife crime in the capital. Last Thursday alone, there were four fatal stabbings in London in the space of sixteen hours, taking to twenty the number of teens who have died in knife-related incidents in the year to date.

There’s a certain way to walk London streets. You don’t look directly at other people; you more sense where they are. Almost automatically you find yourself ceding the footpath to one group, and walking through the middle of another. Because not standing aside, or giving way when you shouldn’t, or even meeting someone else’s eyes can be seen as a challenge to the street code of “face”. Some would say it’s about “respect”, but really it’s more akin to “cock of the walk”, or animals making themselves look bigger when threatened. Whatever its origin, it is an unspoken language and code of conduct which is difficult to learn. You have to trust your instincts, and sometimes repress your wish to respond as regretfully it seems to be the only way to walk the streets without confrontation.

However if you’re a teenager, getting it right can be even more difficult, especially if the other party is looking for trouble. Put blades into the equation, and a simple altercation can leave a deadly outcome. A doctor from the Casualty Department of Homerton Hospital claimed that there had been a big change had been in the type of wounds inflicted – slashing has been replaced by stabbing attacks. With the number of vital organs located in the torso, this has led to a huge rise in fatalities. Some other figures claim that the overall number of violent incidents has remained much the same, with the rise in knife incidents reflected in a fall of firearms-related ones. But you can’t buy a gun at your local supermarket, and the laws to stop real life games of Crocodile ‘That’s not a knife – that’s a knife’ Dundee prowess seem to be completely ineffectual.

Now I’m wary of being too pragmatic about this subject; grieving families have lost loved ones over the most minor of disagreements. And I’m also lucky as this hasn’t really touched me. But I’m also a feared about how it’s possible to use this as a blunt instrument for political gain without due consideration. When Conservative candidate Boris Johnson launched his bid for London Mayor last September, he advised Londoners to “tackle a thug” as the chances of being stabbed were “microscopic”. Now he’s won the election and has the job, he been forced to make a massive volte-face on those statements in the light of these events, now advising you NOT to intervene in disagreements, lest someone is tooled up.

Sometimes I feel that we moving towards the dystopian future of V For Victory. When a climate of fear is used to push through a law allowing terrorism suspects to be held 42 days without charge, perhaps there are others at fault? Yet the media is more likely to tie this into the spate of 17 seeming unrelated teen suicides in the Bridgend area of south Wales during the 13 months up to last February, and ask “What is happening to youth of Great Britain?”

Perhaps they’re a reflection of what they see?


© James McGalliard 2008