Big Issue Scotland Issue 433

Tough talk on youth crime - MSPs state the case



The Big Issue in Scotland broke the story of how Scottish Socialist MSP Rosie Kane had begun to question whether it was appropriate for ministers to use the word 'ned'. She claimed that it is an acronym derived from the phrase "non-educated delinquent", and that the use of the word by senior politicians stigmatises young people and does nothing to get to the root of the problem, which Kane and her colleagues claim is poverty and lack of opportunities. In the media onslaught that followed, with Kane being told by the headline writers of several tabloids that she was "Off Her Ned", the debate became somewhat lost in a wrangle over political correctness and the origin of the work 'ned'. Meanwhile, the Executive ploughed ahead, recently outlining its proposals for the extension of tagging. In order to take the debate forward and help refocus it, we asked both Rosie Kane and communities minister Margaret Curran to state where they stand on the issue.

Rosie Kane, Scottish Socialist Party MSP;

I hope readers will excuse me for not mincing my words, but anyone associated with the Executive's document, `Putting Our Communities First', should be hanging their head in shame.

The Executive seems to have invented a new crime to level at Scotland's young people - is there to be a Hanging Around (Scotland) bill? I'd like to ask communities minister Margaret Curran if the name Easterhouse Community Centre means anything to her. It's a facility in her own constituency that the local community repeatedly tried to save but which in the end fell to the Labour blitzkrieg that has flattened scores of Scotland's community facilities.

No wonder then that young people are hanging around on street corners - with the exception of very few places, there is nowhere else for them to go. Proposals to electronically tag children, place them under house arrest and threaten to send their parents or carers to jail while telling police to disperse groups of "more than two" young people has left professionals working with young people dumbstruck.

The plain fact of the matter is that poverty is the single biggest risk factor in pushing young people into anti social behaviour and then possible criminal activity.

Take Glasgow. It has 12 per cent of the Scottish population but 30 per cent of the homeless population and five times the average incidence of drug abuse. In Glasgow, 42 per cent of families are reliant on income support, compared to the Scottish average of 2 5 per cent and levels of deprivation, unemployment, mortality and chronic illness are above average.

In 1999, crimes recorded per 10,000 of population was 851 in Scotland overall; in Glasgow it was 1,431, 70 per cent above the average.

The Executive's document is clear on the responsibilities young people have to society but short on the failure of adult society to meet its responsibilities to young people. To put it bluntly, we have failed them. The Tories removed benefits from 16 to 17year-olds and the Lothian Anti Poverty Alliance estimates that this has resulted in 11,000 Scottish young adults who currently have no job nor benefits of any kind.

Labour in power has not lifted a finger to overturn this catastrophe. Sixteen to 18 year olds pay tax to the government if they work but have no say on what that government should be. They pay National Insurance if they work but receive no benefits if they are unemployed. And 16 to 18 year-olds are not eligible for NHS psychological treatment even though they may be suffering from serious problems.

Kids hanging about in groups may be an irritant for some but it is hardly of the order of problem that can appear so insurmountable to young people that they attempt to take their own life; suicide now accounts for the deaths of more young, Scottish men than road accidents. This is an increase of 70 per cent in 30 years.

There are certainly problems in Scotland in relation to anti social behaviour, criminal justice and our communities.

Children and young people that come to the attention of the Children's reporter and social work departments are the most marginalised of Scotland's youth. Many are suffering from neglect, physical, emotional and sexual abuse and violence from their parents, care givers or adults close to them. Some children need to be secured for their own and their communities' safety. But because of a lack of secure accommodation these children remain on secure orders living at home. Local Authorities are unable to cope with the pressures on them because of inadequate funding.

Many children and young people that need to be looked after cannot be due to the lack of Young People Units, Crisis Centres and foster parents. The chronic shortage of residential care staff due to stress, low pay and terrible conditions has resulted in a greater use of agency staff and a resulting constant turnover of staff. This is distressing to the children and young people who are in need of consistent, high quality care.

Tagging children may assist some young people to live at home but if it is used as an alternative to looking after children, securing them when they need to be kept safe or offering good quality services, then it will only add to the problems of children and the communities they live in.

Without adequate public funding, local authorities are unable to recruit and retain staff, maintain good quality resources for children and, most increasingly, even to provide what is statutorily necessary within the Children's Act and the Education Act.

Anti social behaviour and juvenile offending are symptoms of the problem but the root cause is the crippling poverty, social exclusion, drug abuse and hopelessness that have cut like a scythe through our communities.

Fury as 'Brutal Warrant Sales Brought Back

ONE of the first Scottish councils to abolish warrant sales has sparked fury by reintroducing the controversial policy. Council chiefs in one of Scotland's poorest areas have re-employed sheriff officers to collect unpaid council tax - four years after scrapping the practice. Politicians and opposition councillors condemned the move by West Dunbartonshire Council, saying poverty-stricken families would be targeted. It means sheriff officers can force their way into debtors' homes to value and sell off property.

Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan, who launched the campaign to abolish the "draconian" practice in 1999, attacked council chiefs. He said: "They are humiliating rather than helping the poor, and the sheriff officers are their paid humiliators."

Mr Sheridan introduced a Private Member's Bill in December 2000 to abolish warrant sales, which was backed by MSPs. A group was created to establish a replacement for the scheme and The Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act came into force earlier this year. However, warrant sales will still be allowed in the most extreme cases.

Mr Sheridan added: "New Labour is back in control in West Dunbartonshire and introducing old Tory methods to claim council tax arrears. "It's sad West Dunbartonshire Council is returning to the old methods of debt collection."

In a gesture of support for Mr Sheridan, West Dunbartonshire was one of the first councils to change its debt recovery methods in 1999. Instead, it funded debt support agencies and employed council workers to chase up arrears. But SSP councillor Jim Bollan, who voted against the proposals, warned the poor would still suffer. He said: "West Dunbartonshire has one of the highest levels of poverty in Scotland and the second highest unemployment level. "Its child mortality rates are among the highest in Britain. "But the council has insisted on using brutal and draconian methods to punish the poor. "Under the old system the evidence was that people on benefits were getting targeted. "There's a lot of people on partial benefits and low incomes and they are not people who can pay their tax - they are on the edge of poverty." But council leaders have voted to reintroduce the old system to target those who "can pay but won't pay".

A spokeswoman for the council said: "We have taken the decision to target residents who can afford to pay, but who deliberately don't pay their council tax. "People on benefits will not be affected by this new ruling." Glasgow Evening Times

Biz Ivol - End of a desperate legal battle? The Scotsman

SSP joy at union's new cash gift rule

Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan today welcomed a move by the UK's biggest rail workers' union to let members give cash to his party. In the "watershed" decision at their annual conference in Glasgow, Rail Maritime and Transport Union delegates said total disaffiliation from Labour was inevitable after they launched bitter attacks against the government. As well as the move to let members give financial support to other political parties, the union also decided to halve its annual donation to Labour to £12,500. Senior Scottish Labour Party sources said the RMT had been "semi-detached" from the party for years and that the loss of the union's affiliation fee would cost it just £310 north of the border. A Labour insider said: "It's not the end of the world as far as money is concerned."

Mr Sheridan said the union's decision was "truly historic" and at the heart of creating a party to represent working class Scots. He said: "The SSP has survived and developed over four years without a single penny of trade union funding or official trade union support. That is coming to an end. "The RMT's decision will enable the further development of the SSP. "The question now for other trade unionists is whether they continue to support the big business anti-trade union Labour Party or the pro-socialist, anti-war SSP." Mr Sheridan recently became the first non-Labour politician to address the general council of the RMT. Glasgow Evening Times


Blair Govt. rift with unions widens The Hindu (India)

RMT Leader calls for union to back SSP.

Historic break with Labour.




Rail union leader attacks Labour ‘war criminals’ The Herald

UK rail union turns its fire against Labour

The descendant of one of the Labour Party's founding unions could see itself branded an outcast under the party's rules after it voted on Tuesday to seek "closer links" with a range of other parties, including the Scottish Socialist Party, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the 65,000-strong Rail Maritime and Transport union, went further still by exhorting his union's Scottish branches to affiliate to the far-left SSP. Financial Times

WHY DO WE PAY FOR TORY BLAIR?

TONY Blair's relationship with the unions sunk to a new low yesterday as the RMT slashed financial support for the Labour Party.

The country's biggest rail union said it would now donate just £12,000 a year, compared with £150,000 in 2001, and seek closer ties with other political parties.

General Secretary Bob Crow said branches should be allowed to support other parties because New Labour had "betrayed" its grass roots.

He said: "Like a marriage, sometimes it is better if there is a divorce. I am not urging a divorce but how long can we sit back and support a party that has gone further than the Tory party?

"People say do we want the Tories in again. I say, how would we know?"

A stream of delegates were cheered as they attacked New Labour at the union's annual conference in Glasgow.

Craig Johnston, from Carlisle, said: "We waited 18 years for this Government only to find out that we have Tony's Tories in Downing Street."

The RMT has 65,000 members but only 1,000 are in the Labour Party. It will seek closer ties with the Scottish Socialist Party, Plaid Cymru and Green Party, as well as London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Bobby Law, who represents London Underground, said Labour had betrayed workers. He said: "We are going to have to bang heads together so we have an alternative in England."

Mr Crow also accused the Cabinet of being "war criminals" over the "illegal" war with Iraq and said he expected his union to support George Galloway if the Labour MP was expelled. Many delegates accepted the decision could lead to the union being expelled from Labour for breaking party rules. The Mirror

RMT halves its Labour funding

The conference overwhelmingly agreed that RMT branches will now be allowed to seek authority to support other organisations, a decision described as a "watershed" by officials. The Guardian

Union goes to war with Labour The Guardian


RMT votes to let branches reduce links with Labour The Independent

Letter to The Herald

Dreadful drugs failure presented as success

ON June 30 you uncritically presented the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency's annual report as a success when it was in fact one of the most devastating indictments of the failure of the law-enforcement agencies in Scotland to make even the slightest of impacts on the black market in illegal drugs.

The SDEA report stated that £55m of Class A and Class B drugs were seized in Scotland by the SDEA, the police forces, Customs and Excise, and other law enforcement agencies. This was presented as a seemingly huge haul which had Jim Orr (SDEA director) and Cathy Jamieson (justice minister) patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The report implied that the law-enforcement side of the war against drugs was making good progress. Simple arithmetic suggests otherwise.

Heroin addicts spend an average of £17,500 a year maintaining their habits. There are some 30,000-55,000 opiate addicts in Scotland. Even if we exclude methadone addicts and use a conservative estimate of 30,000 Scottish heroin addicts, the lowest possible estimate of the value of the heroin market in Scotland is £525m. The UK cannabis market is estimated to be around £5bn a year (Observer, February 2, 2003). For Scotland an annual cannabis black-market estimate of £500m won't be far off the mark.

To go back to the SDEA's annual seizure of £55m, it was stated in the report that it included a single record bust of a £25m consignment of cocaine. Therefore the total of all the heroin and cannabis seized last year by all law-enforcement agencies in Scotland would be included among the remaining £30m of seizures - along with all the rest of the cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD intercepted.

Only when you compare this paltry £55m of seizures with the very conservative estimates of Scotland's heroin black market (£525m) and cannabis black market (£500m) do you realise that all the law-enforcement agencies put together are incapable of taking off the streets even 5% of Scotland's illegal market in Class A and Class B drugs.

But it gets worse. If the total UK black market in illegal drugs - estimated at £20bn annually - is accurate then that would mean the total black market in illegal drugs in Scotland - where drug use is higher than the rest of the UK - is closer to £2bn per annum. The SDEA, police, and Customs may therefore be intercepting around 2½% of the Scottish illegal drugs market in a record year.

This isn't a success. This SDEA report is a devastating indictment of failure being presented as its complete opposite. This report should be held up as further confirmation - if it was ever needed - that every law-enforcement initiative against drug use has made practically no difference to the amount of black-market drugs hitting the streets.

The damage that drug prohibition does to our society is bad enough without the government and its agencies trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public in order to maintain funding for a futile and destructive war against drugs that was lost a long time ago.

Kevin Williamson, drugs spokesperson, Scottish Socialist Party, 73 Robertson Street, Glasgow.

Don't brand us neds say city's teens

The Edinburgh Youth Social Inclusion Partnership (EYSIP) created the Citizen Y campaign in an attempt to break the negative perceptions of young people and give teenagers a voice...

The campaign is backed by Edinburgh-born actor Gary McCormack, star of Scottish film Sweet Sixteen, and Scottish Socialist Party MSP Rosie Kane, who helped unveil the St John’s mural at the weekend.

Ms Kane, who called on the Scottish Parliament to condemn the use of the word "ned" at the start of June, said Citizen Y would promote the image of youngsters and save them from a sustained attack by the Executive. "What young people need is justice and full citizen rights," she said.

An SSP spokesman added that the campaign was not a short-term solution to the problem, but would hopefully lead to the reopening of facilities for teenagers and a campaign for 16-17 year-olds to be given the vote. He said: "Young people are being tarred with the same brush, being accused of criminality and branded hooligans, but this is simply an attack by the Executive who see 16-17-year-olds as an easy target to demonise.

"These youngsters get taxed and pay National Insurance but they can’t vote, so they are effectively a powerless group that is being unfairly attacked. What Citizen Y, and similar groups, are providing is a great initiative that shows young people in a positive light."

After the summer events, Citizen Y and the EYSIP hopes to attract other youth bodies to the cause. Edinburgh Evening News

BBC NEWS | Union's threat to switch allegiance

One of Britain's biggest trade unions is considering giving money to a political party other than Labour.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), said the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) shared common ground with his union.

He told BBC Radio Scotland that union members are getting "fed up" with New Labour and have already cut the amount of money it gives them.

The RMT boss sounded the warning as the union prepared for its annual conference in Glasgow.
Mr Crow said his union was not going to give money to "people who would put the boot into us" and said the union movement would be "kicking up hell" if the Tories had introduced some of Labour's current policies.

He said of the SSP: "They want to renationalise the railway network, new Labour doesn't - so why should our members carry on supporting them?"

Mr Crow said his union's Scottish members were increasingly viewing the SSP as a better alternative to Labour.

"Certainly I believe we will be looking to support the SSP," he said.

"Our position at the moment is that we will remain affiliated to the Labour Party until somebody else comes along.

"That could well be the SSP. If they are going to campaign for stopping Caledonian MacBrayne being sold off, if they're going to fight for the renationalisation of the railway, I think our members in Scotland will look to support the SSP."

The SSP have six MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and can trace their origins to the campaign against the poll tax.

They favour higher taxes, renationalisation and big increases in public spending to end poverty.

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The Scotsman - Rail Union set to dump Labour in favour of SSP

THE RMT rail union could dump Labour in Scotland and switch its allegiance to the Scottish Socialist Party, it warned yesterday, writes Hamish MacDonell.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union, sounded the warning as the union prepared for its annual conference in Glasgow later today.

Mr Crow claimed relations with Labour were "very fragile", and declared: "The New Labour government has been a disaster for us." And, in what represented a major fillip for the Scottish Socialist Party, he warned the union was likely to reduce its funding of Labour and to look increasingly to the SSP in Scotland.

Asked about his union’s funding for Labour’s election kitty, he told BBC Radio Scotland’s Eye to Eye programme: "I think we are going to severely reduce it again.

"We reduced it severely last year, and I think we are going to reduce it again this year. We will be looking for people like the Scottish Socialist Party to campaign for us."

He said of the SSP: "They want to renationalise the railway network, new Labour doesn’t - so why should our members carry on supporting them?"

Mr Crow said his union’s Scottish members were increasingly viewing the SSP as a better alternative to Labour.

"Certainly I believe we will be looking to support the SSP," he said.

"Our position at the moment is that we will remain affiliated to the Labour Party until somebody else comes along.

"That could well be the SSP. If they are going to campaign for stopping Caledonian MacBrayne being sold off, if they’re going to fight for the renationalisation of the railway, I think our members in Scotland will look to support the SSP."

At present, however, there was no alternative party for his union in England, although in Wales it backed an independent member of the Welsh Assembly, said Mr Crow.

"In England at the moment, we haven’t an alternative and that’s why we are sticking with New Labour," he said.

"But certainly in Scotland there is an alternative, and if that alternative is the SSP and that’s what our members want, then we will affiliate to them."

SCOTLAND: Socialist youth conference opposes war drive Green Left Weekly, Australia