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Farewell
youth clubs, hello street life – and gang warfare
With budget cuts leading to the loss of facilities that kept
many inner-city youths occupied, experts predict a rise in
crime
by Alexandra Topping
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 July 2011
'There
will be riots over youth club closures' Link to this video
On a warm afternoon in Wood Green, north London, Aaron, 15,
weaved on his bike through harassed pedestrians, a hat –
worn under a hood – pulled low over his eyes, despite
the sunshine.
He was
out here, he said, because his local youth club had closed.
"I used to go to youth clubs but now there's nothing
to do. We're just out here, getting up to no good." He
looked around at the people staying out of his way, and added:
"People are intimidated by us."
He was
arrested the day before for something he said he "didn't
even do", and blamed the closure of his youth club for
the fact he is stopped more often by police.
"When
we are all together with our hoodies up, no one wants to be
around us," he said. "The youth club was just a
place we could all go and have fun, at least we had somewhere
to go. Now we walk down the streets, we get pulled over by
police. There is nothing here for us."
Aaron
is one of hundreds of youngsters in the north London borough
of Haringey whose youth clubs were shut after the youth services
budget was slashed by 75% after a cut of £41m to the
council's overall budget. Hundreds of thousands of young people
throughout the UK are affected.
Gang experts,
MPs and sector workers are warning that these cuts –
which have hit youth services harder than any other area of
local authority spending, according to the education select
committee – could have a serious impact on the safety
of young people in urban areas.
For Aaron
the dangers of the street are real. His friend Negus McClean
bled to death from stab wounds to his chest after he was attacked
by a gang in nearby Edmonton. His attackers have not yet been
arrested.
"People
are getting stabbed these days over postcodes ... people getting
stabbed up, people getting robbed, their house burgled, bare
stuff is going on right now. Bare stuff, it's crazy."
The future
of some organisations attempting to combat this postcode warfare
is under threat. Erika Lopez, 19, one of the organisers of
Hype (Haringey Young People Empowered), a youth-led group
that tackles gang and postcode violence through activities
such as football tournaments held in neutral areas, said its
future is uncertain.
The council
is charging the organisation to use rooms that used to be
free and future funding is unlikely. The young people involved
are starting to drift away, she said.
"They
are like, 'if it doesn't matter to the council and to the
government then why should it matter to us?'
"I'm
upset but what can we really do about it? It's not like we've
got a chance to win in a fight against the government."
Erika
has first-hand experience of what can happen when postcode
rivalries erupt. After taking a friend from the "wrong"
postcode to another friend's 18th birthday party, she found
herself on the floor with a gun held to her face.
"The
trigger jammed," she said, matter-of-factly. "They
were trying to fire it but the trigger stuck and that's when
they punched me in the face. I'm only here because of God's
will."
Godwin
Lawson was also a Hype member and a footballer who played
for Oxford United. In March last year the 17-year-old was
back in London to see friends and family when he was attacked
by a gang.
"He
had one stab wound straight in his heart and he died straight
away," said his mother, Yvonne Lawson.
Surrounded
by photos of her boy, his Oxford United shirt framed on the
wall, she said the consequences of his death have been "beyond
pain".
The streets
are getting worse, she said. "Every day you switch the
television on and you hear about one stabbing after another.
You are scared for your life, for your children's life –
for the whole community."
Experts
in the sector fear that the positive work achieved in recent
years could be lost, perhaps forever, as a result of the cuts.
Jonathan
Toy, head of community safety and enforcement at Southwark
council, said local authorities were being forced to scale
back their gang work and focus on the most problematic individuals
and areas.
But each
murder investigation in the borough costs £1.5m so cutting
programmes does not make financial sense.
"It
takes a long time to build up these relationships," he
said. "Losing programmes is cost-ineffective and the
impact is you lose some of that trust and confidence you have
built up in that community."
The government
is keen for the voluntary sector to take on the challenges
posed by gang culture, announcing £18m to help charities
tackle knife, gun and gang crime. But a sign taped to the
wall of the Pedro club in Hackney, a youth club where founder
James Cook and volunteers have been tackling gang problems
since 2003, gives an indication of the challenges they face:
"Do not bring weapons on to these premises as you will
be searched by metal detectors."
Former
gang member Sasha, now 17 and helping in the club, said getting
a gun is as easy as making a phone call "if you know
the right people". She knows this because, when in the
gang, she had an "altercation" with a girl and made
that call.
"Ten
minutes later my friend was in Tottenham with a gun to her
face. I didn't have no problems after that."
Knives
are even easier. "You can pick them up in Argos,"
she said, explaining that since stop and searches became more
frequent, blade stashes can be found all over the borough.
"They could be in a garden underneath a plant, in an
abandoned building, anywhere really."
Reaching
young people in gangs is difficult, time-consuming and often
intimidating, according to Kevin, a former youth worker who
lost his job in the cuts in Hackney and does not want to give
his surname. "You need to know how to deal with it, you
need dedicated frontline staff. If you get it wrong –
they take it personally. If we have a hot summer holiday expect
front pages, because kids are going to die."
Others
worry that a perfect storm of unemployment, the withdrawal
of the Education Maintenance Allowance and a squeeze on programmes
to help disadvantaged youths could bring more than just a
rise in crime figures and result in a "lost generation".
"The
young people in Tottenham, they are not so much a community
within a community, they are a community beyond the community,
with their own rules, their own codes, their own hierarchy,"
said Symeon Brown, 22, who helped run a campaign to prevent
the cuts in Haringey. "How do you create a ghetto? By
taking away the very services that people depend upon to live,
to better themselves."
Professor
John Pitts, who has researched gang behaviour for more than
40 years, says the "annihilation" of youth services,
coupled with academies likely to favour middle-class students
over disadvantaged children, could further disconnect young
people from society and result in more entrenched gangs.
"Services
are not just being taken away from young people, they are
being taken from poor young people," he said.
"At
a simple level that could mean an increase in antisocial behaviour
and vandalism. In the longer term, if you withdraw state protection
then there will be ever greater reliance on the groupings
that emerge in that vacuum."
In a chip
shop in Hackney, in an area associated with one of the capital's
most notorious gangs, the London Fields Boys, the need to
belong and be protected is clear.
Two young
men – supposedly banned from seeing each other after
being arrested the previous day for failing to stop at a police
stop and search – greeted each other with the phrase
"Alrigh' Fam".
The theme
of family – another term often used is "cuz",
short for cousin – is strong for many young men who identify
with this type of life.
"It
ain't a gang, it's a family," said one. "Some people,
yeah they sell drugs and kill people, but it ain't all like
that."
Another
explained that he can't leave his "ends", the area
where he grew up. "I feel safe in my areas. But if I
go out, I go on my bike, I don't like walking."
He is
not talking about going into central London, but just to the
other side of the borough, or even a few streets away.
"You
can't go nowhere, you might get hurt," he said. "This
is Hackney, no one likes no one, everyone thinks they are
better."
Very few
young people are involved in gangs – according to the
Centre for Social Justice's report Dying to Belong only 6%
of young people up to 19 say they belong to a gang.
But the
growth of this kind of normalised violence in some areas makes
people, including David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, call
the cuts to youth services a "big, big mistake".
Combined
with the rise in university fees and a cut to the Education
Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant, which encouraged disadvantaged
young people to stay in higher education, the effect would
be devastating, said Lammy.
"I'm
worried that the sort of scenes we will see in inner-city
communities across the country will now be on a par with the
sorts of scenes we see in America."
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