The overnight news that yet another innocent child in Liverpool was shot dead came like a punch in the stomach. Fifteen years ago, an 11-year-old boy had been fatally wounded by gunfire in Croxteth, as a result of gang warfare. One would have thought that the successful prosecution then of the gang responsible, and the weeding-out of corrupt police officers, would have put an end to such tragedies, but it appears not.
Like today, gangs and gang warfare pervaded most of the big cities of the UK after the Great War, but the worst excesses occurred in Sheffield. Growing up in the 1950s, I picked up brief references to the race (meaning horse-racing) gangs of a generation earlier. Then, as now, guns as well as knives were used to intimidate or settle scores. The man credited with taking firm action to break the dominance of the gangs in Sheffield and, as I now discover, afterwards in Glasgow, was Sir Percy Sillitoe.
Now illegal drugs have replaced illegal betting as the source of gangsters' income. Special task forces are needed to break the latter's power in the worst affected cities, London, Birmingham, Manchester and especially Liverpool. This emergency action would not be an alternative to the proper funding of policing, the justice system, criminal rehabilitation and the social measures which are needed to prevent the growth of a criminal culture in the first place. However, it would move us towards a society more at ease with itself and one in which the long-term measures can be implemented effectively.
Sometimes when disease prevention has been lacking, an emergency operation is necessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment