Comments on: Teachers and nurses hit out at Home Office knife crime plans https://leftfootforward.org/2019/04/teachers-and-nurses-hit-out-at-home-office-knife-crime-plans/ Left Foot Forward is the home for UK progressives. We provide evidence-based analysis on British politics, news and policy. Tue, 02 Apr 2019 09:47:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.5 By: Patrick Newman https://leftfootforward.org/2019/04/teachers-and-nurses-hit-out-at-home-office-knife-crime-plans/#comment-957002 Tue, 02 Apr 2019 09:47:27 +0000 https://leftfootforward.org/?p=135723#comment-957002 At last, the government has been forced to confront the awful consequences of its social policies in general and austerity in particular. Knife crime is the extreme manifestation of the crisis in law breaking and the attrition of public services in large cities and urban areas covering police, housing, education, health and community services. What kind of society is being developed when the lawlessness in London and other cities see young teenagers turned into drug runners. How could she sit as chair of the seminar on knife crime and mouth all the cliches and platitudes you can imagine when it’s her government that has played a major negative role in bringing the current street crisis about.

]]> By: Alasdair Macdonald https://leftfootforward.org/2019/04/teachers-and-nurses-hit-out-at-home-office-knife-crime-plans/#comment-956878 Mon, 01 Apr 2019 18:11:14 +0000 https://leftfootforward.org/?p=135723#comment-956878 This is what the Home Office – and especially under the reactionary Mr Jack Straw – has always done with regard to crime: find someone to blame and use the media to shout the blame from the rooftops, especially if those being blamed are social workers, teachers, charity workers, anyone in public service. And by the very act of blaming, the problem is thereby ‘solved’, I.e. it is no longer the news because the scapegoating is the news. Mr Ed Balls made a balls of this by sacking a head of social work – an action which was, of course, ultra vires – of a local authority where a child had died at the hands of violent parents.

I support the actions of the teacher and health service unions in this scapegoating action.

Knife crime is, of course a serious problem in parts of England. Austerity and institutional racism and the effective ‘privatisation’ of schools, with their exclusion policies are mainly the causes and need to be alleviated. Then rehabilitative work is required. There are good examples around the world, not least in Scotland, but, since Mrs May is contemptuous of Scotland, the lessons to be learned will not be taken.

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