Teenage murderers —going up?

Readers may recall an item I posted back in June, where I speculated that the commission of murder in the UK was becoming more prevalent amongst the young —specifically amongst teenagers. At the time I was taken to task over the use of ‘Google news’ trends to back up what I admitted was “a hunch”, arising out of a sense that the number of news stories concerning teenage victims or perpetrators of murder was increasing.

I did also mention that I’d tried, but failed, to obtain some statistics on this from the Ministry of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act. Somewhat frustrated that my hunch remained just that, I therefore decided to try again. I accordingly contacted the Ministry of Justice, asking them to provide the figures for “how many people under the age of 20 were convicted of murder between 1969 and 2008 on a year-by-year basis”.

Once again, the answer was not easy to obtain! I submitted the request in early July, and by law the response ought to come within twenty working days. Despite an immediate acknowledgement of the request, however, by mid August I still had not heard anything. To cut a long story short, I put in a formal complaint last week, and yesterday the information arrived, having been delayed by an administrative error. (I have duly withdrawn the complaint.)

It did come with some caveats, explained in a covering letter. In particular, the figures only go back to 1979 (and also omit 1983). Prior to that, the information is not broken down into the category I requested and is therefore not held. This means I cannot apply these figures to my suggestion that the steep increase in young murderers may have begun as long ago as 1975.

Notice also that the figures are only for England and Wales, but I don’t think this matters for the basic thesis. (Indeed, including Northern Ireland over this period may have created its own distortions.)

The figures are also based on the principle that “the offence selected is the one for which the heaviest penalty is imposed,” which I take to mean that if the individual were found guilty of, say, burglary and murder, they would show up as a ‘murderer’ if the penalty imposed was greater than that for the burglary (which I imagine would always be the case).

The figures for 2008/9 have also not been released, on the basis that they are covered by “a qualified exemption” and are therefore “subject to a public interest test”. This, however, seems to be a formality and relates to the (understandable) need to get the figures right before they are made public.

What we are left with, then, is a simple table for ‘the number of persons aged 10-19 found guilty of murder at all courts in England and Wales, 1979-2007’ (omitting 1983). This is reproduced as a chart below.

The first thing to say is that the figures are obviously limited in what they can tell us. In particular, there is no way of telling the extent to which they may include multiple convictions for the same crime —in cases, for example, of a gang attack which resulted in a single death. The figures for murderers do not correlate directly to those for murders.

The second thing is that I was admittedly surprised by the number of teenage murderers already being convicted in the late seventies and early eighties, which was higher than I expected. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that the figures are not available earlier than this, as my initial hope was to look at how the trend changed in the 1970s.

Thirdly, however, there is clearly an increase, which seems to begin some time in the mid-to-late 1990s, and seems to confirm the tentative conclusion I offered at the end of my previous article. Although it may not show up very well, behind the bars of the histogram is a trend line, based on a three-year average, which begins to climb around 1997. (If you click on the image, you will see a much larger version.) Nevertheless, it is impossible to say whether or not this is part of an overall increase in the murder rate in the same period.

Beyond that, I’d rather sit and think about what these figures might be saying. Between 1979 and 1996, the average number of young people convicted of murder remained at about twenty-five a year. Before that, we cannot tell anything. Over the following decade, the figures rose, and peaked in 2007 in the mid sixties. After that, again, we cannot tell anything —indeed my intuitive impression is that the figures are substantially down for this year (2009), but only time (and the FOI Act) will tell. Nevertheless, within the range of figures provided, there is a trend, and it is, sadly, upwards.

Revd John P Richardson
30 September 2009

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Murder only takes a prick with a knife

Back in 2006, I began noticing, and then tracking, the increasing number of teenagers being convicted of murder. Then, the total for the year was a little over forty. In 2008 there have been twenty-nine such convictions so far.

Last year, my attention switched to the number of teenagers becoming victims of murder, generally by people of a similar age. And finally this year, with (by my tally) thirty-one such deaths by the end of May, the media and politicians seem to have begun to take notice.

Not that there have been no attempts previously to reduce youth crime. Indeed, there have already been a number of anti-knife campaigns aimed at young people. But as the BBC reported recently, youth crime remains stubbornly resistant to all the money being thrown at it.

Thus hopes and expectations for a new campaign which has just been announced must remain low. Indeed, the content of this campaign seems misguided from the outset, despite it depending on advice taken from young people themselves.

The campaign sets out to ‘shock’ with pictures of actual knife wounds and is aimed, ostensibly, at the YouTube generation. But it seems to overlook the fact that a common feature of many attacks is that they are videoed and the graphic results proudly displayed on YouTube for all to see or sent round via mobile phones. The effect has not been a surge of crime-reduction.

My suspicion, therefore, is that youngsters of the knife carrying and using variety will regard these ‘official’ images as (a) pretty tame and (b) something else to be pored over and relished. The response will not be, “O how awful! I’d better leave my knife at home in case I hurt someone,” but, “Core! Have you seen this bloke with a knife sticking out of his chest?” (just one of the images available.)

What this campaign also seems to overlook is the fact that these murders carried out on and by teens are not all done with knives. A gun, a baseball bat, a stave, a shard of glass, a fist and a stamp to the head are all in the ‘armoury’ of the modern young killer.

And this tells us something important: it is not knives that are the problem, but people. What has changed is not the carrying of knives (in the 1950s and 60s, Boy Scouts regularly carried knives). Rather it is the, quite literally, murderous nature of fights and disputes. Where once boys fought with something akin to ‘Queensbury Rules’, now it seems ‘anything goes’, and where the intention was once to stop your opponent from continuing the fight, now actually killing them has become acceptable.

We are back in the world of Lamech, one of the most despicable characters in the Bible, held up as an example of human depravity: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.” (Genesis 4:23)

So what is the answer? It is not, I suggest, government campaigns. Indeed, I and others have argued that it is public policy which is ultimately to blame for some of our present difficulties in this regard.

Certainly there is room for manouevre in the courts. Very few offenders — a mere handful — are serving anything like the maximum possible sentence for possession of a knife.

Ministers and police tell the parents to take responsibility, but having placed themselves in loco parentis through their own policies of education, welfare, social care and so on, plus the inhibition of parental discipline, they fail to exercise precisely the discipline they require from others. Instead of a stated punishment being inflicted, the child offender is constantly let off. We know what that does in the home. Why should we imagine it is any different ‘on the street’ with regard to public authority?

Ultimately, however, it is human values which determine human behaviour, and here it is indeed ‘street’ wisdom, or the rules of the playground, which have most influence. In my childhood, kicking was considered something ‘not done’ during a fight. Indeed, fighting was (and I suspect is) a ‘ritualized’ activity — the gathering circle of boys shouting “Oi, oi, oi, oi” (why? because you did, that’s why), the use of fists, the absence of biting or hair pulling (too girlie), and the instant cessation of hostilities (and accompanying relief) when a master showed up.

Children will stop killing when they internalize a set of values. That is why I suggest the title for this piece might be a more effective deterrent than a graphic photo of a knife-wound. Being confronted by violence will only prevent violence amongst the sensitive. The boy who knows he is the hardest thing on his street or in his gang is not going to be deterred by something that is supposed to appeal to his sensitive side. Knowing other people think he is a prick just might do it, though.

Revd John P Richardson
29 May 2008

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This England

A headline from the Daily Telegraph:

Two million Britons emigrate in 10 years

... and if you're wondering why,

Striking back against gangland ‘untouchables’ who rule by fear

Crimes by girls rise by a quarter

Khyra was stealing bread off bird tables

Riots in West London as Chelsea fans clash with police after Champions League defeat

Youth crime drive has 'no impact'

Government plans to store citizens’ phone and web records in massive database

Fathers aren't needed say MPs: Commons decides IVF babies can do without a male role model

Abortion debate: MPs reject limit cut

Embryos have souls? What nonsense

Mother fined £300 for putting bins out early

Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Exam paper had answers on the back

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"Another one bites the dust": more dead teenagers

The newest member of the Dead Teenager's Society is Jimmy Mizen, aged just 16, apparently killed by an attacker of similar age at the bakery shop where he worked in South East London.

He joins twenty-six other members so far this year, murdered in various circumstances, often by people of similar age:

Lyle Tulloch, 15
Robert Spence, 17
Adam Paton, 17
Jack Steadman, 19
Ashley Horton, 16

Amro Elbadawy, 14
Devoe Roach, 17
Ross Davidson 19
Ryan Hyden, 19
Joshua Mitchell, 17

Nicholas Clarke, 19
Samantha Bennett, 19
Michael Jones, 18
Ahmed Ibrahim, 17
Ofiyke Nmezu, 16

Tung Le, 17
Sunday Essiet, 15
Joe Dinsdale, 17
Fuad Buraleh, 19
Christopher Johnston, 17

Boduka Mudianga, 18
Bradley Whitfield, 16
Faridon Alizada, 18
Alexander Thomas Holdroyd, 19
Henry Bolombi, 17

Louis Braithwaite, 16

I'm sorry if I sound as as though I'm trivializing these deaths. Nothing could be further from my intention. Rather, I'm trying to draw attention to the enormity of what is happening. Often these cases involve more than one assailant. Yesterday no less than five young men - or rather, older children - were jailed for just two similar murders.

The arrest rate in these cases seems to be quite high, with a corresponding conviction rate. Given this fact, I wonder how many people in our prisons currently serving sentences for murder began those sentences in their teens.

I also wonder when anyone in our political or social leadership is going to start taking this seriously. These murders are now happening on a more-than-weekly basis - something that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. In another post today I have suggested we suffer from an inherent collective dishonesty about murder. A society which gives one person eight years for GBH and another just twice that for murder, yet calls the latter a 'life sentence', is clearly in denial about its attitude to killing. And it is easy to believe that the realization of this fact has something to do with the situation now blighting the lives of scores of individuals.

(By the way, if you think the title for this post is inappropriate, its from Queen's track of the same name, the words of which are very fitting if you allow for the fact that in real life there is no romance to gang warfare.)

Revd John P Richardson
10 May 1008

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Why ‘life’ should mean life

Update: Read this article from the BBC website on 'whole of life' tariff prisoners here and in the USA.

CS Lewis’s essay ‘On the Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’ begins with a comment which will make little sense to someone born in this country after 1970: “I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make a good end on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later.” The alien concept is not hanging. Rather, it is that the person spared that fate would be expected to die in prison.

At the time of writing (in 1949), whilst there were many in society opposed to the death penalty, the only alternative being seriously contemplated in public debate was that convicted murderers would be locked up for the rest of their lives. This, it was felt, would have the same effect as hanging — the murderer would be appropriately punished by being permanently deprived of normal life and removed from society — whilst avoiding the moral pitfalls of the death penalty.

The modern relic of this is the term ‘life sentence’, regularly used in relation to tariffs imposed by our courts. It is, however, a mere left-over from a previous era, for clearly, in an increasing number of cases, it means an actual prison terms of as little as fifteen years (compare that with Lewis’s “thirty years later”).

This is of particular significance when one considers the rising number of teenaged murderers. In a single day this week, five teenagers were give ‘life’ sentences for two separate murders. However, if they serve the minimum term imposed (and there is presumably no reason in law why they should not), the oldest of them will be just 32 on his release, whilst the youngest will be 26.

By any standards, one’s mid twenties or early thirties are not ‘old age’. Nor, when you are a teenager, is one’s life expectancy a mere eleven to fifteen years (the spread of sentences in these cases). Why, then, does the term ‘life’ continue to be used in such cases? The answer is apparently straightforward: it reflects what was proffered as the alternative in the post-war debate over capital punishment. Criminals would not be hung, but they would be ‘locked up for life’. Hence, when a murderer was convicted, the sentence was a ‘life sentence’.

Yet clearly it is not. On the contrary, the typical sentence is no more ‘life’ than Nestlé’s ‘Everlasting Gobstopper’ actually lasts forever. In the case of the confectionary, however, the fiction is innocent. In the case of the criminal sentence, it is pernicious.

First, it must be observed that without the alternative of life-sentencing, it is unlikely that hanging would have been abolished. The life-sentence not only satisfied the concern of many that the punishment for murder should fit the crime, it allowed the anti-hanging lobby to gain the moral high ground in the public debate by reducing the risk of an irretrievable injustice. If the person was later found innocent, it was argued, they could at least be released and compensated.

If, however, someone had suggested that the sentence for murder should be fifteen or so years in jail, they would have been regarded as not merely joking but morally defective. In other words, the situation today would have been inconceivable, and was certainly not intended, in the years before the abolition of hanging. ‘Life sentencing’ was so-called precisely because, at the time, the words meant what they said.

Of course, it is perfectly possible to argue that fifteen years in prison is an adequate tariff for murder. The question I am asking is why we continue to use the term ‘life’ in relation to such a sentence and what is the impact of this practice?

It is beyond contradiction, in my view, that the expression is an anachronism, belonging to a past time and an earlier debate. Its continuing use, however, is both a proof of deception in the past and a continuing source of cultural self-deception in the present. As such, it is deeply injurious to our social health.

The past deception may or may not have been deliberate. I have no way of knowing whether those who oversaw the transition from hanging to custodial sentences ever intended that murderers would henceforth die in prison. It would be interesting to know, and figures must be available, what was the length of the first sentences imposed on murderers who were spared the gallows.

Clearly, however, at some point sentences that could not possibly be for ‘life’ began to be imposed on people who, in a previous generation, would have hung and whom the public was once led to expect would never be freed from jail once convicted. This was the first stage of the deception.

The second stage was that, once this principle of deliberate ‘non-life’ sentencing for murder was established, the term ‘life sentence’ continued to be used without demur from either the judiciary or (most of) the public. Irregardless of how the first deception occurred, this second, self-deception, must be addressed for the damage it causes to our society.

It is dishonest to call a thing what one knows it is not. It is a curious form of cultural dishonesty, therefore, to call a sentence ‘life’ when it is merely ‘long’, and we must ask both why we do this and what impact this has.

We do it, I would suggest, no longer simply because of the past history of the debate about hanging but for two important contemporary reasons.

First, we cannot bring ourselves, collectively, to admit that murdering someone is no longer regarded as particularly heinous. If it was, we would do something more about it.

Secondly, however, we protect ourselves from the moral challenge of punishing the wrongdoer. Continuing to talk about ‘life sentences’ allows us to feel ‘something has been done’ without the difficulty of being responsible for something about which we ourselves might feel guilty.

The problem with hanging was that the choice not to abolish it was, in the end, a personal choice for each of us about whether or not someone’s life should be taken. Equally, if ‘life imprisonment’ for murder meant that the murderer would die in prison, we would each, to some extent, be responsible for that. An increased tariff for murder would impose a moral burden on each member of society and that is something we may not be ready to bear.

At the moment, however, we have the worst of worlds. We are unwilling to admit the truth to ourselves and we salve our consciences with deceptive words. Meanwhile, our children are killing our children. To continue our present practice is therefore not a ‘neutral’ option. It is itself a moral choice, but, I would suggest, it is a choice to act immorally.

Revd John P Richardson
10 May 2008

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How we are literally breeding youth crime

Is aspirin the answer to youth crime? Back in the early 1960s, the saying went that aspirin was the best contraceptive: “Held between the knees, it never fails.” But what has contraception got to do with the problem of youth crime? Potentially, much indeed.

Many years ago, Tony Blair said that the government of the United Kingdom was to be, “Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime.” Since then, statistics for crimes in the United Kingdom show a mixed picture open to various interpretations. It is clear, however, that violent crimes involving knives and guns have increased massively, as have violent crimes committed by teenagers, frequently directed at those of their own age.

In the November 2004 edition of Cross-Cultural Research, Dr Nigel Barber, a researcher in ‘evolutionary psychology’, published a paper titled, ‘Single Parenthood As a Predictor of Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime’. In the introduction, he noted this:

One factor operating at the level of families that has received surprisingly little attention in cross-national comparisons is single parenthood. (p344)

This, he felt, was particularly noteworthy given that,

Cross-nationally, in research on developed countries, single parenthood is predictive of homicides committed against children (Gartner, 1991). (ibid)

Barber’s explanation of this, as might be expected from his specialization, was almost ‘Darwinian’: “violent crimes can often be considered a form of mating competition.” In support of this, he quoted sources depicting a depressingly familiar scenario from the United States:

Thus, Daly and Wilson (1988) concluded that many of the homicides in the Detroit area that were officially categorized as “trivial altercation” homicides, in which two young men who knew each other fought to the death over a seemingly trivial dispute ... were really conflicts over social status, which is an important ingredient in sexual attractiveness and reproductive success for men (Barber, 2002). (p346)

Of course, Barber may be wrong. A correlation does not prove a cause, but the scientific method demands that any such correlation may reasonably claim to be a candidate for causality, even if the mechanism is not yet identified.

This was the case with smoking and lung-cancer in the 1950s. The correlation was relatively easy to identify, though the causes were not precisely clear. Nevertheless, the public were soon being warned of the danger and encouraged to give up smoking for the sake of their health.

Surely, natural caution would suggest the same approach with regard to what Rebecca O’Neill in a 2002 paper calls ‘The Fatherless Family’? She cites over a hundred sources to support her conclusion that,

For many mothers, fathers and children, the ‘fatherless family’ has meant poverty, emotional heartache, ill health, lost opportunities, and a lack of stability. (p14)

Amongst the findings she notes are that children living without their biological fathers “are more likely to show hostility to adults and other children, and be destructive of belongings,” (p7). They are also more likely to offend, to take drugs and to play truant. Depressingly, she observes that,

In focus group discussions, young people in prisons spoke frequently about disruption in their family lives and about their fathers’ absence. One discussion went as follows:

Interviewer: I’ve just realised we’ve spent the whole time and nobody’s talked about dads.

Teenager 1: That’s because there’s no dads to talk about! (p8)

In the case of teen crime, however, it is possible not merely to establish a correlation with this absence of fathers but to propose a causal connection.

Before artificial contraception became widely available, sexual activity, whether casual or committed, was inclined to work ‘as nature intended’ and result in children. At the same time, children born out of wedlock were stigmatized as illegitimate and their mothers as immoral. (Nor did the fathers, if known, escape public disapproval.) Taken together, therefore, these factors were, until quite recently, a major disincentive to sex outside marriage.

Correspondingly, knowing that the only socially-approved context for sexual expression was marriage, young men were encouraged to marry, not only for the comforts it would provide but — crucially — for the sexual activity it would allow.

But marriage required certain practical provisions. It was prudent to have finished one’s education (and of course marriage was not legally possible for those of school age). Knowing that children would likely arrive within the first few years, it was also necessary to have a reasonable income and somewhere to live — preferably not with the wife’s parents!

Thus Jane Austen was only half right when she said, “a man in possession of a large fortune must be in search of a wife.” It was also true that a man in search of a wife had to be in possession of at least some fortune of his own. ‘Settling down’ was not just the nature of, but the prerequisite for, marriage.

All this encouraged maturing boys to think of work, saving and, most importantly, personal commitment to a partner and to eventual fatherhood, as the social ‘norm’. Most importantly, the sexual drive itself, instead of being given license to run free, was actually harnessed to creating the conditions conducive to a stable social fabric.

Since the 1960s, however, this incentive has steadily declined. In particular, the notion that sexual activity properly belonged within marriage has almost evaporated. And this is not merely the accidental result of the advent of the contraceptive pill. On the contrary, successive government-sponsored policies and educational movements since the 1970s have not only taught the young in detail how to engage in sexual activity, but have encouraged them to believe that the deciding factor as to when and whether this should take place is their own feelings.

When it comes to the right time to have sex, children are not taught to ask, “When do you think you would be ready to marry and raise a family?”, but “When do you feel sex would be right for you?” The result has been a predictable, and predicted, disaster. As E S Williams has shown in Lessons in Depravity: The history of Sex Education in the UK, 1918-2002, despite many warnings, ‘sex education’ programmes and the accompanying availability of contraception have correlated with increasing rates of abortion, teenage pregnancy and under-age sex.

Now we are confronted with evidence that single-parenthood in general, and absent fathers in particular, cause social disadvantage, linked not only with material deprivation but criminality and violence — evidence so compelling that even politicians are beginning to acknowledge the link. Given these facts, the prevailing sexual morality, together with the behaviours it produces and the outcomes which result, ought surely to be under consideration as one of the “causes of crime”. Yet, on the contrary, amongst policy makers there seems to be an aversion to confronting this issue. As Steven Malanga writes in the online City Journal:

The starkness of these statistics makes it astonishing that our politicians and policy makers ignore the subject of single parenthood, as if it were outside the realm of civic discourse. And our religious leaders, who once preached against such behavior, now also largely avoid the issue, even as they call for prayer vigils and organize stop-the-violence campaigns [...].

Why, then, do governments and social agencies not act? It is interesting to compare the inertia in this area with subsequent public policy in the UK on smoking. Not only has the present government now passed legislation making smoking in any ‘covered public space’ illegal, it has made the owners of those ‘spaces’ responsible for its enforcement. At a stroke, it has criminalized a once widely-accepted social behaviour and has turned the public into an unpaid police force.

What this shows, however, is that where a supposedly ‘liberal’ government has the will, it can be decisive to the point of draconian. Choice, in this matter, is not an option. And the justification is clear: smoking is now, finally, acknowledged to be bad for the individual and detrimental to society.

Yet the same could already be argued regarding single parenthood and fatherless families. And if we believe at all in government — which it must be presumed that at least MPs and their cohorts do — then it is surely incumbent on those in power to pursue vigorously those policies which are conducive to the common good. That this is not happening cannot be explained by ignorance or stupidity. Rather, it suggests a dogmatic commitment to an inchoate libertarian sexual ethic, just as invidious as the tobacco companies’ ability to go on selling a product they know kills (and the Exchequer’s willingness to take the taxes it produces).

The class from which policy makers are drawn value their own freedom to indulge, and the results impact on public policy. In the troubled parts of our towns and cities, however, the consequences play out very differently than in the circles of the educated and wealthy. On the street and in the housing estates, sexual liberation goes hand in hand with social chaos. Parenting, arduous enough in normal circumstances, is made vastly more difficult when fathers and husbands are alien concepts and peer pressure amongst teenagers is all. In such circumstances, what motivation is there for a youth to become a ‘responsible adult’, when social and educational policy, and public example, all tell him that the most basic of needs and drives essential to family formation can be satisfied at a whim without long-term consequences?

What is needed, bluntly, is a return to modesty, to lower the emotional pressure on young people, and chastity, to channel their natural desires constructively. But those virtues must be shown as well as taught, and that is not going to come from our present policy makers (nor, sadly, from the Church). Our leaders enjoy the freedom won for them by the Bloomsbury Group and its successors. They are not going to abandon it lightly. But then they do not live as Martin Dinnegan, Danielle Johnson, Abu Shahin, Ben Hitchcock and Sian Simpson once did. Never heard of them? They were all murdered in the UK in June of this year. Their average age was sixteen-and-a-half.

Revd John P Richardson

27 August 2007

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The Dead Teenagers' Society

Please don't tell me things are no different today from in the 1950s and 60s. This sad montage of teenagers murdered in London this year comes from the Daily Mail, reporting yet another such death. When will we wake up?

Teenagers murdered in London this year: James Andre Smartt-Ford (16), Michael Dosunmu (15), Billy Cox (15); Kodjo Yenga (16), Adam Regis (15), Paul Erhahon (14); Annaka Keniesha Pinto (17), Ben Hitchcock (16), Martin Dinnegan (14)

‘Life at the Bottom’ and the Gospel of deliverance

It is not often that I read a book virtually overnight, but that is what I have just done with Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom. And I find myself very thoughtful as a result.

‘Theodore Dalrymple’ is, in fact a pseudonym, due to the fact that Dalrymple was a GP and a doctor in the prison service. And this is why the subtitle to his book, ‘The Worldview That Makes the Underclass’, is so important.

Dalrymple’s thesis is that it is the way the underclass look at the world that causes most of their problems. They are victims, not of blind forces or social structures, but of themselves. It is anathema to the Liberal and it is, of course, dangerously seductive for the Conservative. But given that Dalrymple writes entirely from long personal experience, it is a thesis which must be heard, albeit with care.

Dalrymple points out, for example, the way those who have murdered or assaulted others deny personal responsibility, preferring to say ‘the knife went in’, rather than, ‘I stabbed him’:

The knife went in—unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crimes, was as nothing compared with the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome.

It is also, perhaps, no surprise to find that Dalrymple identifies the welfare state as what some theologians might call a structure of ‘institutionalised sin’, keeping the underclass under. This may sound heartless and preposterous until you read, for example, his description to a doctor from overseas of what would happen to a woman whose boyfriend repeatedly beat her and wrecked her flat:

“They’ll find her a new flat. They’ll buy her new furniture, television, and refrigerator, because it’s unacceptable poverty in this day and age to live without them. They’ll charge her nothing for the damage to her old flat, because she can’t pay anyway, and it wasn’t she who did it. He will get away scot-free. Once she’s installed in her new flat to escape from him, she’ll invite him there, he’ll smash it up again, and then they’ll find her somewhere else to live. There is, in fact, nothing she can do that will deprive her of the state’s obligation to house, feed, and entertain her.”

I asked the doctor from Madras if poverty was the word he would use to describe this woman’s situation. He said it was not: that her problem was that she accepted no limits to her own behavior, that she did not fear the possibility of hunger, the condemnation of her own parents or neighbors, or God. In other words, the squalor of England was not economic, but spiritual, moral, and cultural. (138-139)

Of course we must ask whether it would be a better world in which such a woman did fear hunger, disapproval or God. But clearly her life is not improving as things stand, despite all the provision being made for her. And of all people, Christians should surely listen when someone who is apparently a man of no discernible faith writes of a spiritual ‘squalor’ damaging people’s lives.

As Christians, moreover, we must also ask how the gospel addresses the terrible situations that Dalrymple describes. Elsewhere he writes of teenagers who are,

... condemned to live in an eternal present, a present that merely exists, without connection to a past that might explain it or to a future that might develop from it. Theirs is truly a life of one damned thing after another. (70)

Surely the gospel offers such young people something by which to get their bearings in life. Yet how are they to be persuaded of the gospel’s truth and relevance?

One of the things we are told constantly is that people judge the gospel, and are drawn to it, by its effects on the lives of others. And this should surely be as true with the ‘underclass’ as it has been anywhere else. Indeed, we know it can be! One of the often-quoted features of the Methodist revival is that people improved their social status after their conversion, due to the change it brought about — changes that Methodism deliberately fostered — in their manner of life.

What is odd, however, is that in the 1970s this social improvement was derided by Evangelicals as a betrayal of the working class. The Methodists, and others, it was claimed, left the working-class areas as their lives improved and so the gospel ceased to be proclaimed.

That is as my be, but the answer is surely not to deride the effectiveness of the gospel in bringing about individual social improvement. Rather, the gospel preached to the ‘underclass’ should be that of breaking free from the chains that bind — including the chains of blaming anything but oneself for one’s problems.

Dalrymple’s book challenges the Evangelical orthodoxy of the fourth quarter of the twentieth century which had ceased to confront the personal choices that, in his view, create the underclass. Indeed, he gives instances where an almost ‘evangelical’ personal challenge has, on rare occasions, resulted in someone turning their life around and leaving the past behind.

Might it not be that, far from helping those with whom it rightly sympathises, the church has ironically wound up colluding with them, because it has failed to identify the true source of their problems? Might this, indeed, specifically explain the failure of the church to help the black community, despite the widespread prevalence of religious belief? Might it also be why Islam sometimes succeeds where ‘Christianity’, so-called, fails?

These are weighty questions. They are worthy of thoughtful answers.

Revd John P Richardson
27 June 2007