The Road to Clacton Pier

By KATE WHARTON

LT AST weekend's outburst of teenage hooliganism at Clacton caught the headlines and momen- tarily at least drew public attention to the ways of the young vandals in our midst. It is impor- tant that what happened at Clacton should be recognised, not as one freakish occurrence on a boring Bank Holiday, but as part of a formidable development within our society.

The evidence is to be found, not merely at Clacton, but all over the country. Some friends of mine who live in a highly respectable suburb came home one evening to find all the basement windows of their house broken. Inside was the most indescribable chaos: curtains had been pulled down and ripped to pieces, chairs slashed, china and ornaments smashed, and water poured all over the kitchen. But, surprisingly, nothing had been stolen nor had any of the drink in the house been consumed. The police when they were called in took one quick look and then said sympathetically but hopelessly: 'Children—vandals--nothing we can do about it. This sort of thing goes on all the time.' In the same week I was told of a man in South Kensington who owned a very beautiful vintage Bentley which he left in the street outside his house. One morning he went out to discover

that overnight somebody had deliberately badly scratched the bonnet and ripped open the hood- Again nothing had been stolen from the car.

Like the events at Clacton, both these seem cases of senseless, motiveless, and in their implications, frightening destruction. Both oc- curred only a short time before the British Railways announcement that in a new anti-vandalism drive they were offering a £25 reward to 'anyone giving information leading to the conviction of those responsible for wilful damage to railway property.' A BR official told me rather shamefacedly that they didn't like the idea of asking people to spy on each other but what else could the railways do—as it was they were having to pay a yearly bill for vandalism of at least £500,000, and the figure was rising every year. But who isn't aware that most people would cheerfully forgo £25 rather than be drawn into the fuss and possible embarrassment that reporting somebody might involve them in?

General vandalism is increasing in this country to the most disquieting extent. It isn't until one begins putting the facts and figures together that the enormous scale of it emerges. A scale which ranges from the comparatively harmless and mild cases of bulb-destruction in parks to the

psychotic cases involving elderly, helpless people and animals. On January 15 vandals broke into an aviary in Lloyd's Park, Warthamstow, and killed or tortured to death thirty-nine birds. Late last year an old people's home was smashed up, and a sleeper was placed across the line in front of an express train. Are these incidents we should read and forget about? They suggest that some- thing other than the usual juvenile rebellion against authority is happening.

Vandalism already costs us over £3 million a year. At the Local Government Information Office in London, where they are still collating the answers received in response to a question- naire on vandalism sent to 1,525 local authori- ties, I was told that a conservative estimate put the national loss to the rates at more than £1 million. This extra money spent through van- dalism represents almost a total loss since little of it is covered by insurance. In fact, wanton damage is now so widespread that most councils will pay for the damage themselves rather than accept the high insurance premiums.

So far the answers' to the questionnaire create no recognisable pattern of vandalism: 'It seems to be completely unpredictable: neither less at one time of the year than another nor more of it in one particular area than another.' The objects of vandalism prove to be the same throughout the country : street lamps, flowers and trees in parks, windows and basins in public lavatories, anything that can be quickly and easily broken. In some areas the lamps in lonely. streets have been broken the day replacements were fitted, as have been the windows of public lavatories; with the result that the councils concerned have stopped replacing them, and these streets stay unlit and the lavatories windowless. At Southend more than 1,000 street lamps are broken every year and the annual cost of replacing damaged illuminations on the piei, stretching one and a third miles, is £200. More potentially dangerous is the loss of lifebuoys, which disappear at the rate of twenty-five a year. Blackpool, a town with similar problems, has a vandalism bill of £5,635. In only two months Willesden had 2.547 street lamp bulbs broken.

But if damaging street lighting is the most popular form of vandalism, destroying or tem- porarily breaking public telephones runs it a close second. Wilful damage to telephone kiosks over the country now costs the Post Office at least £100,000 a year. Last year there were 63,000 cases of this, the year before 55,000 and in 1961 the figure was 43,000—an increase rate of roughly 10,000 a year.

Returning to British Railways, last year on the Eastern Region electrified line in the greater London area alone the damage caused by van- dalism included the following: 4,600 seats slashed, 1,670 lamps broken, 407 ventilator covers broken, the destruction of countless lava- tory compartment fittings as well as numerous cases of interference with overhead electric wires, tampering with traction switchgear and signal- ling, and large-scale pilfering of lineside equip- ment. In the same year the British Transport police dealt with 6,723 cases of vandalism— in this context vandalism being defined as an 'inci- dent involving damage to railway property where there is no apparent motive.' In one three-month period in a Midland area the score was 2,000 electric light lamps broken or stolen, 150 light shades broken, thirty wash-basin plugs missing. 100 door window straps missing or damaged, ten lavatory compartment mirrors broken, lifteen cushions damaged, and ten windows broken.

These statistics indicate more strongly than words can the size and cost of vandalism. BY

THE SPECTATOR, APRIL 3, 1964 comparison any preventive measures seem almost trivial: some councils have installed special damage-proof forms of lighting and lock their public lavatories at night. Others, as well as British Railways, have taken to using dog patrols, though this can be expensive— Ilford pays £4,200 for its dog force. In the main, local authorities and parish councils said they had no idea how to stop vandalism, thOugh they did suggest that magistrates should impose heavier fines or, in the case of young children, parents should be made financially responsible for repairing the damage done by their offspring. Poplar, when faced with £10,000-worth of dam- age to its council houses, threatened tenants with a rise in their rents if it didn't stop.

A more imaginative plan to counter vandal- ism which takes into account one of the prime reasons for it—boredom—is the National Play- ing Fields Association's scheme for play leader- ship in parks. Designed to reduce road accidents as well as vandalism by keeping children cheer- fully occupied, it appears to have gone some way in achieving this. I talked to one play-leader working in a tough London area who seemed confident that play leadership was one of the answers. Starting from scratch two years ago on a cold winter's morning with nothing but a couple of footballs in the way of equipment, he now supervises 500 five-a-side football teams in the eight parks under his jurisdiction. The boys organise their own teams and reserves and have Constructed an elaborate transfer system. They Play a tough 'twenty-five minutes each half game which leaves them in his words 'too flogged to get up to any mischief afterwards.'

In addition to football he also provided recrea- tion centres where children of all ages from two to seventeen mixed quite happily together. The Only law he made was that. the children should draw up their own rules—'then they abide by them.' But for the relatively small number of boys and girls who find an effective answer to the lonely television-centred dullness of their homes in recreation centres, there are obviously thousands who don't. These are the outsiders We shall have to investigate fully if we're to un- derstand the complexity of motives that makes them turn to vandalism. So far all we know is that vandalism is mainly an outlet for boys (girls come into it very little) and that it is carried out by gangs. It is rare for the solitary youth to slash train seats, break street lamps or deface statues. Talking to vandals themselves seems to give little clue to the reasons for their disturbance. The doctors, teachers and social workers 1 spoke I° who had come into close contact with them said that when asked why they broke street the or ripped out telephones all they got from "le vandals was a muttered 'I don't know' or a more aggressive 'Why shouldn't I?' What was ore to these adults was an overpowering Leeling of the isolation and insecurity each of these young people felt which could only be assuaged by the warmth they derived from be- longing to groups sharing their misfortunes. :'!lnin the security of the gang they could cheer- fully join in the declaration of war hurled at the rest

of the world.

Writing in a recent issue of Mental Health ti at Leicester Jones, senior lecturer in sociology University, takes this further: 'The adeli e nquency of our teenagers seems to express in pronounced form many of the values anicillOre still attitudes of teenagers at large. They are thus normal in a purely statistical sense. Their does, however, embody so much anxiety and so much aggression as to point to a' underlying insecurity.' In a survey of

adolescent gangs in London Dr. Peter Scott con- firmed this view that in hardly any was the delinquency due merely to such acceptable traits' as group allegiance and youthful high spirits. They were all insecure young people with real conflict in their family environments.

'All this does suggest that for some reason the transition from childhood to adulthood is more difficult than it used to be. To blame it all on the hydrogen bomb seems to be too transparent an evasion. Human beings can face up to a physical threat if their morale is high. What they find much more difficult in coping with is a threat to their sense of personal worthwhileness, or to their place in the community. If there is anything in all this, we ought to pay at least as much attention to the social and emotional environment we pro- vide for our teenagers as we do to teenage behaviour. We might then find that the problem we see in them is really in ourselves as an adult generation. This is not a matter, however, merely for self-critical introspection but for serious re- search (as yet not even on the horizon) into current social values, their sources, and their consequences. . .

What will emerge from such research it is, of course, impossible to say. Among the cures for vandalism that have been suggested to me are such wildly divergent theories as the return of conscription; the serious teaching of .civics in schools to implant a sense of public ownership in children; the creation of a less materialistic age where possessions do not take the place of warm human relationships as they often do now; and the return to a positive Christian concept of living.

Notwithstanding these, I think most people would agree with Dr. Jones that serious research is needed into the reasons for current vandalism and hooliganism. It strikes me that some of the enormous sums made out of young people at the present could well go to pay for it. Until we know why-we are living in an age of vandalism we can scarcely know What to do about it.