Why do we have so many anti-social young people?

It’s always been a thing for as long as I remember. Anti-social kids or wee spides, as we call them in Belfast. They do tend to have the same look: the skinny body drowned in an oversized tracksuit, that side-shade haircut, the deathly pallor that looks like they’ve never eaten a vegetable in their lives. But recently it does seem like things are getting worse especially with the advent of electric scooters and bikes that they have taken to it like ducks to water. It’s crazy the amount of young boys I see on electric bikes, weaving in and out of traffic. Most of them are wearing balaclavas to cover their faces. It’s only a matter of time before they kill themselves or someone else but as usual in this place we don’t like to do anything pre-emptively. We only take action when there is a tragedy and even then we take action half-heartedly.

If you were watching the Stephen Nolan show Peelers, it seems the cops are specifically prohibited from chasing these kids or doing anything about the problem. Even the obvious thing of confiscating these bikes seems to be an issue. You would think the main thing to do would be to just go to whoever is selling them and confiscate the stock but there must be some kind of issue around the legality of these things.

In West Belfast last night there was trouble when hundreds of youths got together notionally to commemorate the death of a local drug dealer by driving recklessly, or what is known as drifting. The scenes look like a remake of Mad Max in Belfast. When the police tried to intervene, they were attacked. On these occasions the police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they intervene and someone gets hurt they will get pillared. If they stand back and do nothing they equally get pillared.

 

But there’s a broader picture of why do we have so many horrible young people? The Glider is another place where these gangs of young people congregate to intimidate other passengers. It’s a real problem for TransLink. One Glider driver described it as a ‘rolling youth club’. I have no problem with young people getting together. In fact I would like to see more facilities for young people but many of them go out of their way to be confrontational and provoke.

I’ve been travelling a lot in Spain and Italy recently and I’m struck with how well behaved the young people are in these countries. I was in the beautiful city of Bergamo two years ago and at night lots of young people would gather in the parks to hang out. Some of them might have been drinking but it was all very civilised, with no obvious bad behaviour. If that was Belfast, they would all be going f*cking mental and wrecking the place.

Likewise in Spain I have yet to see any antisocial behaviour among young people. They seem extraordinarily well behaved. I’m not expecting perfection. I was young once and had my own share of doing stupid things but with many of our kids they just seem to be so destructive and nihilistic.

I do wonder what the reason for this is? The first one that always springs to mind with these things is the Troubles, which we handily blame for all our social ills. But this is an issue in other parts of the UK and Ireland. Dublin has its own problems with youth, likewise other big cities like Glasgow, Liverpool, etc. Of course poverty is a factor but other parts of Europe are equally poor and don’t have these problems. The best explanation I can think for it is the destruction of inner-city communities that took place in the 60s and 70s, when some of our inner-city communities were broken up and relocated to new estates on the outskirts of Belfast. I think it fractured the social fabric of these communities and made things 10 times worse.

For example people were moved from the old terraced houses of the Falls and shipped off to Twinbrook and Poleglass. While many people were relieved to get new houses with good facilities like indoor bathrooms, gardens, etc., there was a problem where they did not have the same amenities that they were used to – shops, bars, doctors etc or simple things like being able to dander into the city centre or walk around to your grannies. Likewise on the Protestant side old communities in the Shankill were broken up and dispatched to new estates like Rathcoole, etc.

The same pattern was repeated all over the UK and Ireland. In Dublin you had people moving from the inner city to the notorious Ballymun estate, for example.

When you have proper functioning communities, there are networks there to help raise children and to show them the best way to behave. In simple terms there’s always somebody there to stop you being a complete dick. Many of these kids come from fractured families and have no male role models in their lives. Note that’s not a Daily Mail attack on single mothers, many of them are trying their best in terrible circumstances but it is a factor.

There was a much-needed correction in children’s rights compared to the old days when teachers etc. would happily batter us all with impunity. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and these kids know how to play the system. Teachers and other role models are utterly powerless to impose any kind of discipline on them as the kids know their rights and know the power they have of making a false allegation that can ruin a career.

In Northern Ireland we have an entire legal and human rights industry that is well-meaning in theory but too often prevents any kind of intervention or sanction on these characters. Police will tell you that the bureaucracy and paperwork around any kind of interactions with young people is an absolute nightmare. So many of them just turn a blind eye to bad behaviour and frankly can you blame them? Those people calling for action from the cops, I would love them to be specific about what they want them to actually do. This will be the same people who will be criticising the cops if they do intervene heavily and someone gets hurt.

But in Spain things are different in that people have always lived in small city-centre apartments. There are local bars and restaurant and other services and the communities seem very cohesive. It’s always nice to see families out for dinner in and there’s just less of a tense atmosphere that you can sometimes get in Belfast city centre where you are constantly on the lookout for getting accosted by some ne’er-do-well. I attended many of the Easter week processions in Spain and while there were thousands present, there was a lovely atmosphere with no bother from anyone.

I am aware that older people complaining about young people is as old as time itself and that it’s very easy to be accused of being elitist or classist, but we have to recognise that this is a problem. I am from a working-class background myself but I have no doubt that if I got on like the way some of these characters get on, I would have been told pretty forcefully to ‘wise the f*ck up’.

The solution seems to be more funding for early intervention programmes and for better funded youth work but sadly we don’t do common sense here and in the past few years have actually been defunding youth services, which is complete madness. Many of these characters will grow up to be dysfunctional adults. They will take up a massive amount of resources of police time, social services, the court system, prison, etc. They will likely never have proper employment and go on to have children who grew up to be equally dysfunctional and the cycle continues.

But it’s not acceptable for people to stick their heads into the sand on this issue. The middle classes in Northern Ireland have done an excellent job of fencing themselves off from the misery of the rest of society with their grammar schools, universities, private health, networks of nepotism and privilege, etc. They have managed to create a segregated state to keep their nice kids away from the crazy ones. While I, as a parent, completely understand the motivation for this, we can’t consider ourselves a Christian society if we just choose to abandon so many of our young people to addiction, delinquency, and feckless lives.

If we don’t do it on moral grounds, we have to do it on economic grounds. Having early interventions and well-funded youth work will save us in the long run on policing, court, prison costs, etc. but I am not optimistic. I don’t see anything much changing and a Nolan show very soon will be covering the death of one of these young people or a pensioner that has been hit by an e-bike and then all the usual chorus will come out for something to be done.

There has to be a real discussion around moving money from the policing budget into youth work. You will get better results for the money and it will take the pressure off the police. No peeler wants to be wasting their time chasing e-bikes around Belfast.

Long term I also have a real fear in the back of my mind that they’re going to introduce some really addictive drug into Northern Ireland. It’s going to make all these problems ten times worse or the economic changes brought by AI or a global recession will further leave these people ever more disenfranchised and excluded.

The one sure thing we can all rely on is for Stormont to do absolutely f*ck all on this issue. They will instead spend all their time debating statues, flags, sheep, street signs and every other stupid thing under the sun instead.

There’s not a lot of hope for the hopeless.