16 NOVEMBER 1985, Page 6

POLITICS

The curious humility of Mr James Callaghan

FERDINAND MOUNT

There are two short cuts to the heart of the House of Commons. One is to say 'I'm sorry'. The other is to say 'I don't know'. After the trumpet-blowing of the know- alls, how deliciously humble, how aud- aciously wise to confess oneself as ignorant as, well, Socrates.

And sure enough, Jim Callaghan scored a hit on Law-and-Order Day: `. . . no doubt about the seriousness of the increase in crime. . . Prime Minister does not know the answer. . . I am not sure whether I do.. . there are no clear answers. . . .' The Home Secretary had been just as undogmatic about the causes of crime: some people put more emphasis on some things, others on other things.

In a law-and-order debate these days, it seems, one must at all costs avoid laying down the law. The correct posture in these matters is to be lofty, cloudy and pessimis- tic, throwing in a broody vision or two. Those who are mysteriously unable to interpret the past seem, equally myster- iously, confident that they can descry the dark shape of the future. Thus Mrs Shirley Williams at Torquay: 'The underclass so long prophesied is now emerging, alien- ated from the rest of society, bored, menacing and without hope.' But where is it emerging from, and why did it not emerge, say, in the 1930s?

All this might be called Moosbrugger- ism, after the shambling, subnormal murderer in Musil's The Man Without Qualities. The thought of Moosbrugger makes everyone's flesh creep. His mena- cing shadow dominates the front pages and the party conferences. 'If mankind could dream collectively, it would dream Moos- brugger.' The politician's first duty is to demonstrate that his own flesh is creeping too. He will not rest until the monster is brought to justice; he will stand firm against any wimp on the bench who lets Moosbrugger off lightly; bully for Judge Argyle; if all football hooligans were given life sentences, there would be none of this nonsense (and the jails would be rather full). But as for what causes the crime wave, well, search me, squire, I'm new here.

There is nothing wrong with Mr Hurd's proposed new offence of 'disorderly con- duct' — which is more specific than the old `insulting behaviour' and more suitable for minor hooligans. Nor is there anything wrong with the confiscation of drug- pushers' assets or the tidying up of the existing powers to ban or control marches and demos. But this is all routine Home Office stuff. It does not live up to the billing. It is not a major response to Moosbrugger.

This intellectual timidity is all the more disappointing in a Government which has, for the first time I can remember, made law and order the lead story of the Queen's Speech and in an Opposition which claims (not terribly convincingly) to be eager to tear the Government to shreds on this issue. Is the Crime Wave really such an inexplicable nightmare? Surely crimes in- crease and decrease in frequency and ferocity for all sorts of identifiable reasons: they may become easier or harder to commit, their perpetrators more or less often detected and convicted, their re- wards more or less attractive, the moral stigma attached to them more or less awesome.

It is, I think, still worth making a modest effort to demystify the Crime Wave. And we must start by ruling out the standard single super-explanations — unemploy- ment, poverty and the death of God. Recorded crime in this country has risen just as sharply during longish periods of full employment, such as the second world war and the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Contrariwise, the nation seemed to be- come more law-abiding than it ever has been before or since between the last quarter of the 19th century and the begin- ning of the 1930s — a time when the Christian religion in Britain was fading fast. At most times, most criminals may have been poor or unemployed or godless or all three. But these factors do not appear to govern changes in the crime rate.

Nor do all crimes wax and wane in unison. Traffic offences fell sharply during the war, because of the petrol shortage. The figures for 'unlawful sexual inter- course with girls under 16' and for most of the homosexual offences have fallen sharp- ly over the last 15 years, not, we may presume, because there is less of it about, but because it is less often reported to the police by the victims or their families. By contrast, the soaring number of thefts of and from cars must be related to the soaring numbers of cars and car stereos.

And I remain convinced that the doubl- ing of the size of the police force over the past two decades (including typists, traffic wardens and so on) must have some connection with the steady increase in the numbers of crimes reported. Is it not odd that the only three recent years in which the total of recorded crime fell slightly -- 1977, 1978 and 1983 — were also years which the size of the police force fell?

Even if the statistics exaggerate, burg- lary, street robbery and woundings (though not homicide) undoubtedly have increased over the past ten years — and unemployment must come into it. But far from there being no solutions, there are dozens: a logical pattern of sentencing, modern locks, more store detectives, more foot patrols, fewer unlit walkways, a reviv- al of the terrace and the street instead of the estate and the precinct. Why then do left-wing politicians and churchmen claim to be baffled when with so many much more abstruse questions -- the management of the economy, the removal of apartheid — they have no such hesitation? On an issue which raises so many practical questions, why do they take refuge in cloudy moralisations? What is this 'deprivation' which, if cornered, they assert to be the root cause of crime? What are the 'underclass' or those 'at risk deprived of, by comparison with their law-abiding parents or grandparents, who were also out of work and much poorer? And who deprived them of it?

The only plausible answer is an embar- rassing one, and no less embarrassing to ex-Labour politicians like Mrs Williams than to present Labour politicians like Mr Callaghan and Mr Kinnock. For what the underclass are under is the local authority. And what they are uniquely deprived of is responsibility for their own lives. Decade by decade over the 20th century, responsi- bilities which used to be theirs — some- times only partially or potentially theirs but theirs none the less — have been sucked away into local or national authorities, responsibilities for housing their families, for getting their children educated, for saving for their old age. And it was the Labour Party which did the sucking and the depriving, and took the credit for it, before the fashion changed. In the rookeries of Broadwater Farm, the rewards of going straight seem in- creasingly negligible, so do the for going bent (loss of character, social standing? You're full of shit, man). The only difference from Fagin's 'built environ- ment' is that these rookeries were actually erected by the Department of Circumlocu- tion and opened by the Rt Hon. Mr Boodle with Mr Coodle the council architect smirking at his side. penalties