Whipping Boys

louth | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Saturday April 30, 2005 15:34 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Anti Social Behaviour

Are politicians jumping on the bandwagon pursuing anti-youth policies merely to enhance their own status before a mislead and increasingly gullible public?

Sean Crudden

"Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774)

You know the shitty, po-faced attitude which many administrators - both high and low in Ireland today - like to adopt. Well I often worry that it is too easily copied and transmitted to the classroom, the consulting room, the pulpit, the TV screen where politicians and would-be politicians pontificate, and even to the very fireside in our own homes. Where that attitude reigns in human affairs I suggest strongly that disaster does not lag very far behind.

Then again, as a woman said to me today, the Irish are snobbier than the English (who are renowned for snobbery). In the old days we used to call it "Tuppence looking down on three ha’pence." Indeed some of the snobs in 4xD wagons give the impression that not only are they worth "tuppence" but that they come from some kind of superior race of human beings.

I blew my top about Blueshirt politics in these columns a few weeks ago. At the same time we see the politicians trying to out-gun one another in the race to oppress young people with Anti Social Behaviour Orders, On-the-spot fines, withdrawing grants, etc., in the effort to rid the community of "anti-social-behaviour." This type of quick-fix, right-wing, totaliarian, "law-and-order" approach definitely comes under the heading of "Blueshirt Politics" as far as I am concerned.

In the long term I suggest it would be more progressive to reflect on the deficiencies in community life which are giving rise to this disorder. What way are our family values pointing? How are our schools functioning? (Personally, I believe the school has an even greater role than the family in developing the outlook of people young and old. And, incidentally, I believe that one of the most important educational establishments for a very important segment of the young people of Dundalk and its environs is "The Tech" i.e. the school that is now known as "O’Fiaich College").

It seems to me to be invidious to try to nail down young people and pin them to the wall as the hue-and-cry among politicians seems to want to do now. Young people should not be caged-in like circus animals. They should be consulted in every sphere and treated like human beings.

Indeed, paradoxically, it might spell personal and community disaster for older folks if the young people learn from present attitudes and grow up to be didacts and dictators like ourselves.