Stupidity and murder - where's the justice?

I have no embarrassment in declaring myself one of those who thinks that our judicial system exacerbates many of our social problems by being ‘soft’ on criminals. (I seem to remember, incidentally, that CS Lewis once wrote an essay, which must have been about sixty years ago, lamenting the same thing after some boys were apprehended for vandalizing his shed.)

You might think, then, I would be rejoicing that Edward Woollard, the 18-year old student who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of 30 Millbank during the tuition fees protests last year, had received a jail sentence of two years and eight months.

On the contrary, I think it simply illustrates (and exacerbates) the problem. For in the same edition of the Daily Mail in which we can read about Woollard’s situation, we also see that Learco Chindamo, the man convicted of murdering headteacher Philip Lawrence, may have to serve an extra two years in jail over an alleged mugging he committed shortly after his release.

Now of course Chindamo may be entirely innocent in this instance. That is not the point that concerns me and will doubtless concern others. Rather it is the difficulty many of us outside the system have in making sense of the policy involved in such sentencing.

To begin with, Chindamo, was given what was described as a “life sentence” for a murder which the judge at the time described as “futile and un- provoked”. (Readers may recall that Lawrence stepped in to protect another boy being attacked by Chindamo and others.)

The first difficulty, then, is with this term “life sentence”. This is not simply a false expression, it is disingenuous, for it gives the impression of doing something that is not the case. ‘Life’ for a teenager does not consist of ‘the next fourteen years’ — indeed that doesn’t really begin to apply until you hit your sixties, and yet ‘life’ sentences continue to be given out to people considerably younger than myself.

Indeed, I suspect some research would show that the term “life sentence” is a hangover from the debate about abolishing the death penalty, when it was used as a justifying argument in favour of abolition: those who previously would have been executed would instead receive a “life sentence”. Now we know this is not true, we should surely drop the pretence.

Secondly, however, one cannot help comparing 14 years for murder with almost 3 years for throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof.

And here I would want to come to Mr Woollard’s defence. Of course what he did was wrong — and not just the throwing of the fire extinguisher, but the invasion of the building in the first place. However, it would appear to have been an act of monumental stupidity, not viciousness. Yes, people could have been killed, but they were not. Had they been, it would have been different, but that is surely to the point.

Most importantly of all, however, I would refer to the words of the judge who handed out the sentence:

... the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.

I could not agree more with the first part of this sentence. But I cannot see that a stupid act which might have killed someone equates mathematically to one fifth of the culpability of killing one person in the process of carrying out a gang attack on another — which is roughly the proportionality of the sentences in these two cases.

As a layman in these matters, I nevertheless feel that either Mr Chindamo has been treated too leniently or Mr Woollard too harshly. Either way, my confidence in the judicial system to remedy the problems of our society remains low.

John R Richardson
12 January 2011

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The rise in teenage murderers?

For some time now, I’ve been trying to verify a hunch that whereas murder was once an ‘adult’ activity, it has recently become more a preserve of the young —indeed, the very young.

About three years ago, I noticed the astonishing number of news stories online about murders in which the victim or the perpetrator was in their teens.

Often, if the victim was in their teens then so, it seemed, was the perpetrator. What was even more alarming was that in the case of teenage perpetrators of all kinds of murders there were often two or more individuals involved.

Trying to get specific numbers is difficult. Curiously, I have twice tried requesting information on the numbers of teenagers convicted for murder from our own Ministry of Justice, but without success (even though the website says this is possible under the Freedom of Information Act).

Today, however, I found that the Google news archive now shows a timeline of results for a search, and this is very interesting.

If you click here, you will see the result for the search term "guilty of murder" (this should open in a new window or tab, so you will need to come back to this page afterwards). At first glance this might seem to suggest the murder conviction rate has gone up since 1860, declined in the 1940s, and then has risen again since the 1960s. But of course what we also have here is the number of filed news accounts and a dramatically increasing population. On its own, the graph is interesting, but tells us nothing about rates of increase or decline.

However, if you click here, you will see the results for the same search term, only this time just for the period 1950-2009, and this is where it starts to get interesting.

Now click here, and see the results for the search term 'teenager + "guilty of murder"', again for 1950-2009. This time, we have factored out the increase in news media and population. The difference is, I'm sure you'll agree, striking. Click between the two pages or tabs to compare the two. Whilst the rate per head of population may not have changed, the rate of reports has increased dramatically. Indeed, between 1975 and 1995 it increased exponentially. If you scroll down the page, you will also see that the stories are, indeed, generally about teenagers who have carried out, and been convicted of, murders.

However, there may still be other factors involved, so as a kind of control try comparing 'wife+"guilty of murder"' and 'husband+"guilty of murder"' over the same period as before. This time it can be seen that both rates of reporting have increased - and the 'husband' rate slightly more than the 'wife' - but that the rates are not markedly different (and, thankfully, both seem recently to have fallen).

It is, I agree, not absolute proof. But it is surely an indication of a trend.

John Richardson
4 June 2009

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Ray Lewis: 'this brave man'

From Melanie Phillips about my friend, Ray Lewis. She could have worded this bit better, but I know what she means: "Whatever his personal failings turn out to be, it would be social suicide if his approach to delinquent youths was also discredited. Even if Ray Lewis is to be taken out of the picture, we need more people like him to continue what he started."

*******************

The resignation of Ray Lewis as the Mayor of London' s crime adviser is quite simply a tragedy, with profound implications far beyond the insular world of the capital's party politics.

Here is a man who has literally saved lives. Among the boys whose behaviour he has transformed through his Eastside Young Leaders' Academy in East London are those who, without any doubt, would otherwise have gone on to kill or be killed.

Yet Mr Lewis has suddenly been accused of a slew of torrid offences including financial irregularities, physical abuse and sexually inappropriate behaviour.

At present, we don't know the truth about these murky allegations. Mr Lewis has already robustly denied the more lurid claims, but perhaps some of them are true.

Maybe all those who have supported him in the past - ranging from the Tories' social justice guru Iain Duncan Smith to Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone's (now disgraced) race adviser who described his approach as 'brilliant' - are thus shown up to be naive and credulous dupes.

If so, then I am one of them. I visited the Eastside Academy in July 2005, months before David Cameron used it for his first official photo-op as the new Tory leader. I saw for myself the impressive work Ray Lewis was doing.

He took black boys from shattered family backgrounds who were on the way to criminal careers and turned them into high-achieving model citizens. These were the toughest boys in the neighbourhood.

They had fought, bullied, smashed up their schools and set fire to them, barricaded teachers into the classrooms and been in accelerating trouble with the law. Yet when they left Eastside virtually all of them went to college and lived law-abiding lives.

Ray Lewis achieved this by plugging the crucial gap in their lives that virtually no teacher or social worker or probation officer can fill.

He was simply the father figure they so desperately needed but who was missing from their own fractured families. He was a tough, stern, authoritative, totally uncompromising black man - all factors crucial to gaining their respect.

All he achieved was through the force of his personality. The boys did what he told them to do, not because he hit them but because his disapproval was shattering to them.

He loved and believed in those boys, he gave them a sense of unlimited aspiration and he drove them very hard. And because they both feared his tongue and admired him, they responded by transforming themselves.

He made them conform to strict rules of discipline; there were military-style roll calls, they were instructed to make eye contact with their tutors and to walk in straight lines with no deviations and no talking.

The importance of such 'tough love' to boys who possessed not even the most elementary social skills, let alone self-discipline or respect for authority, cannot be exaggerated.

He had no time at all for sloppy teaching practices, nor the usual excuses for bad behaviour such as 'poor self-esteem'. His work was the most graphic rebuke possible to all those involved in making excuses for juvenile criminality.

As a result, he made serious enemies on the Left, who regarded him as some kind of fascist. On the local Newham council various councillors and officials badmouthed Eastside as a 'boot camp' and gave him only minimal funding.

This was simply because just about everything he stood for was a monumental rebuke to everything they stood for, and to the personal and social damage over which they so complacently presided. Read more

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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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The Dead Teenagers Society: Make that 30

Update 29 May, now 31

The beating to death of Amar Aslam, 17, brings to 30 my tally of teenagers murdered in the UK so far this year, though the Daily Telegraph makes it only 29. Names, ages and ethnicity (you're proportionately more likely to be a victim if non-white) are as follows:

W=White, NW=Non-white

Sharmaarke Hassan, 17 (NW)

Amar Aslam, 17 (NW)
Rob Knox, 18 (W)
Jimmy Mizen, 16 (W)
Lyle Tulloch, 15 (NW)
Robert Spence, 17 (NW)

Adam Paton, 17 (W)
Jack Steadman, 19 (W)
Ashley Horton, 16 (W)
Nathan Lyons, 17 (W)
Amro Elbadawy, 14 (NW)

Devoe Roach, 17 (NW)
Ross Davidson 19 (W)
Ryan Hyden, 19 (W)
Joshua Mitchell, 17 (W)
Nicholas Clarke, 19 (NW)

Samantha Bennett, 19 (W)
Michael Jones, 18 (NW)
Ahmed Ibrahim, 17 (NW)
Ofiyke Nmezu, 16 (NW)
Tung Le, 17 (NW)

Sunday Essiet, 15 (NW)
Joe Dinsdale, 17 (W)
Fuad Buraleh, 19 (NW)
Christopher Johnston, 17 (?)
Boduka Mudianga, 18 (NW)

Bradley Whitfield, 16 (W)
Faridon Alizada, 18 (NW)
Alexander Holdroyd, 19 (?)
Henry Bolombi, 17 (NW)
Louis Braithwaite, 16 (NW)

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The Teenage Killers Club

In addition to the 29 teenagers murdered in the UK so far this year, at least 29 teenagers have been convicted of murder. Below are the dates of reporting their convictions on the BBC News website, their ages and their victims' names and ages.

22/5/2008 Lee Cruddas, 19 (Robert Richardson, 33)

22/5/2008 Armel Gnango, 17 (Magda Pniewska, 26)

20/5/2008 Alex Young, 17 (Helen Maughan, 24)

Lewis Hayward, 14

16/05/2008 Darryll Bennett, 18 (Stephen Green, 55)

Richard McNamara, 19

Nicholas Garland, 18

Shane Liddy, 19

9/05/2008 Junior Glasgow, 17 (Nathan Foster, 18)

9/05/2008 Tirrell Davis, 17 (Kodjo Yenga, 16)

Brandon Richmond, 14

28/4/2008 Brendan Harris, 15 (Sophie Lancaster, 20)

Ryan Herbert, 16

21/4/2008 Joshua Cook, 17 (Charlie Johnson, 22months)

18/4/2008 Aaron Aymer, 18 (David Stunell, 22)

18/4/2008 Gerry Cusden, 16 (Mark Witherall, 47)

9/4/2008 Teenager A, ? (Paul Erhahon, 14)

Teenager B,

Teenager C

7/4/2008 Jordan Jobson, 15 (Samantha Madgin, 18)

4/4/2008 Dimple Scaife, 18 (Jake Mackay, 19, partner)

26/2/2008 Teenager D, 13 (Stephen Croft, 34)

15/2/2008 Rikki Johnson, 19 (Lewis Singleton, 18)

13/2/2008 Falco Moludi, 17 (Orlando Thompson, 27)

22/1/2008 Teenager E, 17 (Brent Martin, 23)

18/1/2008 James Kerr, 18 (Mr Nicoll, 72)

16/1/2008 Adam Swellings, 19 (Garry Newlove, 47)

Stephen Sorton, 17

Jordan Cunliffe, 16

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The Dead Teenagers Society, 29 in five months

Twenty nine teenagers have been murdered on Britain's streets in the first five months of 2008, mostly by people of a similar age. The latest victim, in Sidcup last night, has been named locally as Rob Knox, an aspiring actor.

Interestingly, the odds of a murdered teenager being non-white are at least 50% - significantly more than the percentage of non-white teenagers in society as a whole. The average age overall is 17.

Meanwhile, see this comment from a young offender which may just be a clue as to the problem: Doing time didn't put me off crime.

W=White, NW=Non-white

Rob Knox, 18 (?)
Jimmy Mizen, 16 (W)
Lyle Tulloch, 15 (NW)
Robert Spence, 17 (NW)
Adam Paton, 17 (W)

Jack Steadman, 19 (W)
Ashley Horton, 16 (W)
Nathan Lyons, 17 (W)
Amro Elbadawy, 14 (NW)
Devoe Roach, 17 (NW)

Ross Davidson 19 (W)
Ryan Hyden, 19 (W)
Joshua Mitchell, 17 (W)
Nicholas Clarke, 19 (NW)
Samantha Bennett, 19 (W)

Michael Jones, 18 (NW)
Ahmed Ibrahim, 17 (NW)
Ofiyke Nmezu, 16 (NW)
Tung Le, 17 (NW)
Sunday Essiet, 15 (NW)

Joe Dinsdale, 17 (W)
Fuad Buraleh, 19 (NW)
Christopher Johnston, 17 (?)
Boduka Mudianga, 18 (NW)
Bradley Whitfield, 16 (W)

Faridon Alizada, 18 (NW)
Alexander Holdroyd, 19 (?)
Henry Bolombi, 17 (NW)
Louis Braithwaite, 16 (NW)

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It’s OK - he’s not evil, he’s just mad

The police reaction to the apparent attempt by Nicky Reilly, said to be a convert to Islam, to explode a bomb or bombs in Exeter is clearly meant to calm public fears. “It’s OK,” seems to be the message, “Because this is a man with a ‘history of mental illness.’”

So it was the work of a madman. Nothing to worry about there, then.

Personally, I’m not quite as reassured as I’m clearly meant to be. The real issue here is whether, as the police are suggesting it, ideas were planted in Mr Reilly’s head not by his ‘madness’ but by people who want to bomb family restaurants in cities across the country.

I would further be interested to know the nature of Mr Reilly’s ‘historic’ mental illness. Has he been treated for schizophrenia or depression? Either is very unpleasant, but whereas the former involves a detachment from reality, the latter is more an exaggerated, but normal, reaction to real life — and is, moreover, very common. In other words, Mr Reilly may not be what we would popularly characterize as ‘mad’, but actually completely sane.

The myth that suicide bombers (of any stripe, Muslim, Tamil, Bushido, etc) are ‘mad’ is the way people who don’t understand their motivation try to protect themselves from the unpalatable truth. ‘Madmen’ who want to take over the world are actually far less frightening than entirely sane people who want to do the same (unless wanting to take over the world is seen as definitive of madness).

The bottom line, though, is that when it comes to evil ambition we’re all a bit ‘mad’ that way. I remember vividly a conversation with the Australian artist, George Gittoes, who was actually present with an Australian Defence Forces medical team at the Kibeho camp during the Rwandan massacres. What he saw there, and depicted subsequently in his paintings, would make any ‘sane’ person plead for the God of heaven to come down in wrath and burn up the evildoers.

What I can’t forget, though, is his observation that both those who were massacred and those doing the massacring went to church that morning.

George Gittoes is a remarkable man (and slightly scary), not least because he is a man of faith. (He once painted the Dalai Lama’s portrait, at his request, and said it was very strange trying to hold a conversation on spiritual matters with a religious leader who doesn’t believe in God.) Most remarkable of all, though, is his ability to see goodness in situations where most of us would despair of God’s existence at all: the preacher, bringing comfort to those about to be killed, as he himself undoubtedly was; the badly injured woman who carried the wounded to the first-aid post until she died.

The point is, any one of us could be any one of those people. We could be the person who hid in the camp cess-pit (the ‘shitter’ as George called it), driven literally mad with fear. We could be the army commander who oversaw the massacre but ‘allowed’ the Australian medics (armed only with a few rifles) to treat anyone who wasn’t actually left dead. We could be the men with the machetes. We could be the victims, or the medical team. Press the right (or wrong) buttons, and you get out the most astonishing good, or the purest evil.

I’m not sure where this is taking me, except to reflect once again on how little we care to think about reality. Much better that we should be threatened by madmen than the sane. Let nothing disturb us, so we can sit in front of the TV watching ‘reality TV’ (an oxymoron of the first order), like ‘I’d do anything’, and wondering desperately who will be the next Nancy. At least we’re not hurting anyone else. But then we’re not exactly reflecting the image of God, either, I think.

The other thing, I suppose, is that salvation is not a ‘bonus prize’ awarded to those who aren’t the ‘evil’ people exploiting the poor or using up the world’s oil. Inside each of us is something that we really would rather not see. Salvation is not just to fullness of life, it is from our own sinfulness, which is held in check by our veneer of civilization, but which, given the opportunity, would result in something that would make ‘madness’ the best excuse we could offer.

Revd John P Richardson
23 May 2008

PS George Gittoes allowed me free use of ‘The Preacher’ on the front of my book, Revelation Unwrapped. He has never asked a penny in return and got quite cross when I tried to offer him some!

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The Dead Teenagers Society, 2008

Nine months ago, I posted an item titled 'The Dead Teenagers Society', about the appalling numbers of teenagers murdered in London to that point in the year (nine, by July 2007).

Today's newspapers are rightly lamenting the fact that the total of teenagers murdered in the capital so far this year is eleven (in the thirteenth week).

However, London is only one part of the UK. The total nationally is actually twenty.

Most of these teenagers have been killed in what might be termed 'altercations', usually with other teenagers. The majority of killings thus actually involved more than one killer, often in the same age group. Hence the number of teenage murderers so far this year is perhaps more like twenty-five to thirty. That's about two a week, or a hundred for the year.

The names and ages of these teenagers are as follows (not in exact date order):

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


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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