Teenage Gang Murders:

 

as a South Londoner, I am unfortunately accustomed to hearing police and ambulance sirens on an all too regular basis. It later transpired that a 17 year old boy had been seriously stabbed outside West Norwood bus garage, barely 5 minutes from my house. The victim is currently in hospital in a serious but stable condition and I hope he makes a full and swift recovery. Later that evening, a 17 year old boy was fatally stabbed up the road in Brixton. Even more shocking than the sheer proximity of these heinous attacks to where I live, or the depressing regularity with which they now seem to be occurring, is the tender age of the alleged assailants, themselves thought to be teenagers or at most young men, who apparently hunted their prey down like an animal, repeatedly plunged the knife into his chest, then left him to die. As two more devastated families now mourn their sons and come to terms with their incalculable loss and as effusive tributes are posted on Facebook, what should we be asking ourselves? We should not be walking on by, shaking our heads and thinking that because the young victims might talk or dress differently to us, it therefore doesn't concern us and won't affect us. Please make no mistake: this is not their problem. This is our problem. This concerns all of us. Sadly, this is not just a South London menace, or even a North or an East London affliction. This is now a citywide and also a nationwide scourge, which needs tackling with alacrity. Every sentient Londoner, whether a parent or not, should be both horrified and appalled by these tragedies. And yet sadly, such nauseating brutality from those barely old enough to shave is now becoming routine. How many more young lives will be callously extinguished and how much more human potential will go unfulfilled before we see that this situation is no longer tenable?   Enough is enough. I for one am thoroughly fed up of seeing boys of all colours (but in South London, at least, predominantly black boys) end up as clinical words on yellow police signs, as crime statistics and on slabs in morgues. This tragic phenomenon is clearly not about colour, but about culture, socio-economic factors, opportunities and a host of other causes. Despite what some might be inclined to think, race per se is not an issue here. All I’m seeing around my way are babies having babies and kids killing kids. Moreover, we are not talking about grown men. These are barely pubescent teenagers, carrying on like they are “big men”. And yet they know nothing of what it means to be a real man. What’s worse, these atrocities are increasingly no longer spontaneous crimes of passion. We are witnessing pre-meditated, cold-blooded assassinations, carried out by children in the first throes of puberty. So much for childhood being about innocence and virtue! The precise details of these latest crimes are still unclear, but it would come as no surprise to me if I learnt that those involved are suspected of gang affiliations. The phenomenon that is teenage gang culture is an evil scourge which now needs to be dealt with swiftly and with impunity. The alarmingly high teenage death toll in London speaks for itself. We are evidently failing our children and as a result our children are failing us. The solution to the teenage knife crime pandemic afflicting our capital is tough action, not just tough talk. Young people of all colours, classes and backgrounds need parental love, draconian discipline and clearly defined perameters. They also need positive male role models, such as fathers, whose constant presence and involvement in their lives should (in theory at least) alleviate the need to join a gang for protection or, more often than not, for the love and sense of belonging which fundamentally all children crave. As someone who has worked "on the ground" in Peckham for many years as a volunteer mentor with young people, I would assert that we urgently need more ‘hands on’ fathers bringing up their kids. We need more parents who passionately care about their children’s whereabouts. We need more education as to the dangers of the ‘get rich or die trying’ bling culture mentality - one of parochial yet rampant materialism - currently pervading our national psyche and an end to the ceaseless glamourizing of the gang lifestyle in popular music. We need more mentors and role models actively working in and giving back to the community.and more parents instilling the values of hard work, decency and respect for elders and for authority in their children. We need more police on the streets. We need more punishments for those found guilty of such heinous crimes to act as greater deterrents. And, perhaps most importantly, we need to find a way to inculcate more love in our children's hearts for their fellow man. This feral nonsense must end now. Only by tackling the root causes of this problem can this lunacy ever stop. It is demeaning to all of us. Each time another young boy is murdered, our own humanity is diminished. We must act now, because our city, our nation and our children deserve so much better.