Educate our children against gang culture

12 April 2012

The dispiriting truth about London's gang culture is that it is not only large, with at least 100 gangs, but it attracts ever younger children. As our analysis today makes clear, they are staying with the gangs for longer. Still, the situation here is nothing like as bad as in US cities; London can learn from their experience.

It makes sense, therefore, for the police and local authorities to try to inculcate in primary school children here, following an American scheme, some resistance to the pervasive culture of the gangs, so as to counter the impression of power and glamour that children associate with them. Police and surgeons who deal with the victims of gang violence are to tour schools to talk about the grim reality of the culture. The initiative is funded by both the Met and local authorities and is being extended to 280 schools in 15 boroughs. If children can be indoctrinated against gang culture in the same way as they are against smoking, that would be self-evidently to the good.

But this can only be part of a big strategy, the major part of which is visible policing. London housing estates must not be relinquished to the control of gangs. No-go areas for the police are unacceptable. There are initiatives in areas such as Hackney where police and social workers and local authority officials work together to share their knowledge and contacts; they have had promising results.

Then there must be worthwhile alternatives for young people to gang membership, not just limited to sports centres. Education is the most powerful force for change: government-driven improvements in schools in deprived areas will, it is hoped, offer teenagers more fundamental alternatives to the gangs, by providing them with the skills and discipline to aspire to employment and further education rather than an existence as drug-pushers.

The principle of catching children young to indoctrinate them against the gangs is worth supporting. It is, however, only part of the solution.

Homes for the many

One of the aspirations of Margaret Thatcher was to make Britain a home-owning democracy, and to a great extent she succeeded. Now that trend seems to be going into reverse. A report by the Housing Federation suggests that in 10 years' time, home ownership in the country as a whole will have fallen to 63 per cent of the population from a peak of 72.5 per cent; in London, to less than half.

This reverse would not in itself be a bad thing if it were easy and affordable to rent. But rents in London are increasing rapidly. The problem is the excess of demand over supply. Immigration is one cause: more than 3.2 million people came to the UK under Labour and most gravitated to London. Immigration has brought benefits but it has created enormous strain on housing as well as services, something the Government has not taken properly into account in tackling the issue. Ministers are placing their hopes on liberalising planning procedures to make it easier for developers to increase the housing stock. But that raises its own problems. Encouraging those banks which are partly state-owned to be more willing to lend to credit-worthy first-time buyers is one obvious step but it cannot alone solve the problem.

Welcome to the free

London's first free schools open to their first pupils on Thursday. We wish them well. Their numbers may be few but they are a brave attempt to increase the stock of good schools by freeing them from local authority control. It is an experiment that deserves to succeed.

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