I want the streets to be ours again

5:29pm Friday 25th January 2008

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WHENEVER I write in this column about the current levels of antisocial behaviour in our streets and the violence that seems to be the inevitable result of law abiding citizens' attempts to protect their families and properties from marauding youngsters, I am thanked by scores of strangers in the street, as well as my friends and acquaintances.

It seems everyone is of a like mind. It cannot go on. People of my generation share a memory of parents who were universally mortified if their children behaved badly in any way, however minor by modern standards.

Not just middle class parents either. The working class and even those who would fit into a group that we would today categorise as "poor" shared similar values. Decency and honesty were not just ingrained but a matter of pride for the vast majority of the population.

We can discuss forever how the slide into near anarchy has happened, but one central theme that keeps recurring is discipline. Early discipline in the home, in the schools and in the streets.

The fact that many people have become terminally outraged by the current level of antisocial behaviour is evidenced by the increasing number of otherwise civilised people who are calling, quite seriously, for the re-introduction of the stocks as a means of deterring crime and shaming perpetrators. Stocks were not needed or even mentioned when I was a young man.

Last week three youths were convicted of kicking and beating a man to death outside his own home after a seven-hour drinking binge. Garry Newlove had challenged them while they were vandalising vehicles outside his house in Cheshire.

The assault was witnessed by his family. His widow delivered a very moving tribute to her husband and a plea that should resonate across the land. Somewhere between the justice of Iran, where two rapists were recently given a hundred lashes and then thrown off a cliff, and the UK's current culture of "You can't touch me, I'm under age (or deprived) and can do what I like" there must lie a happy medium.

Garry Newlove could have been you or I. I don't think I could stand by and do nothing while youths came onto my property or threatened my family.

We must refuse to vote in, locally or nationally, politicians who continue to equivocate on this subject and do nothing. I want the streets to be ours again.