'Shoplifters of the world
Unite and take over
Shoplifters of the world
Hand it over, hand it over, hand it over'
The Smiths
There was one of those awful phone ins' on BBC Radio
Scotland this morning about the stratospheric increase in shoplifting of all
kinds - Organised criminal shoplifting, casual shoplifting by kids, violent
shoplifting, shoplifting for addiction and desperation shoplifting being driven
by extreme poverty.
There were the usual 'hangin is too good fur them'
callers and the 'have a go merchants' alongside the Marxists types who believe
that all human behaviour (including shoplifting) can be explained away by
social conditioning and economic inequality.
The general consensus seemed to be that incidences of
shoplifting have indeed gone through the roof recently, (this is evidently true
here in Inverclyde too) shoplifters have apparently become emboldened by a lack
Police and a courts system which doesn't seem to be especially interested in
prosecuting shoplifters. Alongside and increasing number of people lifting
items like nappies, who are in dire need.
Interestingly, our late great Scottish Cardinal Winning
advocated "fringsen" in such scenarios -
"If your children are going to be hungry, if you get
to the stage of extreme hunger, anybody's property becomes yours, because you
have a right to survive. You can break into a bread van and steal a loaf. It
would not be immoral to do that".
In the Kölsch dialect "fringsen" translates as
"to Frings" (stealing food out of need). The expression comes from
the German Cardinal Frings refusal to condemn poor and starving families who
were looting of coal trains during the winter after the war. Frings in his
sermon, writes -
"We live in times where the single individual, in
his need, ought to be allowed to take what he needs to preserve his life and
health, if he cannot obtain it through other means, work or begging."
Accordingly, the term "fringsen" refers to
obtaining food and fuel for the winter.
Yet, apart from these very extreme examples of people
facing severe hardship, most ordinary folks still take a very dim view of
theft.
Indeed, with the possible exception of the odd tin of paint
disappearing from the shipyards back in the day, the majority of working-class
people have always been the main upholders of law and order in society.
There's an old joke which suggests that a number of tenement
closes on the Lower Clyde, from Clydebank to Greenock were once painted either
warship grey or had the same colour scheme as the QE2's funnel.
For me, even this kind of low-level theft is possibly
justifiable, since these were people who were trying to improve their
collective surroundings, back when having a respectable, clean and happy close
was once a big deal.
A number of years ago when my father was still a local
Councillor, he got into a dispute with housing officers over anti-social
behaviour taking place up tenements and in streets he'd grown up on in Gourock,
where some of his former neighbours still lived.
A decent and gentle elderly couple who'd lived in the
same building for 50 odd years, now subjected to drug use, graffiti, litter and
24-hour parties.
Unsurprisingly, the housing officers doubled down, responding indignantly
to my Dad, who had the audacity to represent a distressed 80-year-old retired
milkman and his wife who had been a school cleaner, now at the end of their
tether. The officers even took to the local press to suggested that Cllr
Ahlfeld was being judgemental and lacking in compassion for those victims of
society with complex needs and chaotic lifestyles.
At the time, the whole tone of this response sounded
pretty much like - 'Well, that's what those people living in these communities
are all like, they simply need to put up with it'.
As if it had never been a good place to live, as if
nobody had any right to agency over their own streets, lives and communities,
or personal responsibilities towards each other.
Presumably, these officers didn't actually live in the
community, much like some of those artists who never undertake any consultation, who are always keen to impose
ugly murals on buildings which they don't live in and would never dream of
having on the side of their own homes.
I hear some echoes of this same dismissive tone and
attitude today in the debate over shoplifting, as if it is something we must
simply endure. What is perhaps missing from the conversation is the question -
where does a shoplifting pandemic eventually end up and what long term impact
does it have on smaller local businesses?
To my mind, a number of distinct phenomena
takes place in communities whenever there is a marked increase in poverty,
coupled with an increase in criminal behaviour, alongside a declining Police
presence.
Church planting appears to increase, this was true during
the Victorian era in the East End of London and it is certainly still true
today. Especially in places like Greenock with any number of new Evangelical
and Pentecostal type churches appearing in the town, sometimes successfully,
other times unsuccessfully.
Similarly, charity projects which were once described as
'do-goodery' tend to spring up during such times. These are activities which
are rarely community led but instead results in doing things to people rather than
alongside them or empowering them.
Like the aforementioned Church planters, this is a type
of charity work which tends to involve settlers who think of themselves
primarily as moralising educators, intellectual guiding exemplars and saviours.
An example of this type of paternalistic charity work
would be the creation of Toynbee Hall established in Whitechapel in 1884, which
eventually developed into a highly positive presence east London. I visited
Toynbee Hall a while back and these days it is solidly community led and a real
catalyst for social change, working very much in partnership with the
community, at the frontline in the struggle against poverty.
The third phenomenon which tends to happen whenever good
community policing goes into decline and crime increases, is the need for
people to look after their own affairs and make their own arrangements.
Despite what we see in contemporary movies, most Cockneys
never had any great love for notorious gangsters like the Krays and it is a
myth to say that you could leave your door open or that they looked after their
own. This Robin Hood gangster fantasy was never a reality.
In reality, the claim that the East End was safer when
criminals ran things, arose from a need for protection due to a lack of
policing. One EastEnder recalls rarely seeing a Police officer and walking
miles to an old Police call box to report a crime, only to find that the call
box was broken.
This type of scenario was a fairly typical and quite a common
occurrence and it was from this vacuum came the practice of paying criminal for
protection from other criminals, a practice that will soon return in my
opinion.
Not that it ever fully disappeared, but I believe that
the consequences of increasing anti-social behaviour, muggings and shoplifting
will be a significant return to gangsterism.
Especially among small businesses
like corner shops, constantly being robbed at knife point, since paying for
protection is cheaper than hiring in a security guard.
Of course, protection racketeering will never be fully
restored to its previous prominence in society. There is a brilliant scene in
The Sopranos where Patsy fails to shake down a trendy Starbucks style Coffee
shop, the scene perfectly explains why franchises can't pay protection money.
Ultimately, a return to something like gangsters offering
protection, is just one symptom of our longing for dignity and some sort of
control over our circumstances, to make up for a loss of agency and common
good.
Much like loan sharking, such an awful development in our
communities will be rooted in the need to be heard and the desire to restore a
sense of place and autonomy.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the answer to all this
is, other than to say the solution won't be found in the state or the market or
in gangsters against the working classes but in a restoration of virtue, and in an authentic expression of true patriotism which is the very essence of
citizenship.
An end to our increasing social alienation and
atomisation is to be found in rediscovering the concept of service, social
contract, mutual self-interest and the pursuit of our common good.
