PRIME Minister Boris Johnson has declared war on youth in the UK with his ‘Beating Crime Plan’ which labels youth as ‘criminal’ and targets youth for working on ‘chain gangs’, as in the southern states of the USA.
These ‘chain gangs’ of youth are to ‘combat crime and anti-social behaviour’. In fact at the centre of repeated crimes and anti-social behaviour in the UK is the ruling capitalist class and its political servants.
Tory PM Boris Johnson, addressing youth, said: ‘If you are guilty of anti-social behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society.’
In fact it is his government that needs to be in a ‘chain gang’ to repay the massive debts it has dumped on society and the injuries that it has imposed.
It has just presided over the deaths of tens of thousands of elderly people that Johnson’s regime shifted out of hospitals, without any Covid-19 testing, and placed in care homes, where tens of thousands died of the epidemic.
His government has spent its time in office gambling with people’s lives, putting the interests of the UK capitalists and bankers first, hoping for the best and fearing the worst, while running up massive debts, currently near to £1 trillion.
Now all the debts will have to be paid off by smashing the living standards of the working class, the middle class and the pensioners.
This is why the just-announced plans for ‘chain gangs’ of youth is in fact a massive diversion from the real enemy, the UK’s bankers and bosses. While his cabinet is busily discussing massive attacks on wages and pensions, Johnson wants to ignite a fear of youth to try and split the working class, all the better to defeat it.
His government is backing up to the hilt the UK’s discredited police forces to lead the assault against working class youth. This pro-police state policy comes at a time when the London Metropolitan Police has been found to be both institutionally racist and institutionally corrupt.
So great is the need of the ruling class for this type of police force, not even the law of gravity can bring down the discredited chief of the Met, Cressida Dick.
She gave the order for armed police to assassinate the entirely innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, on the London tube, with a fusillade of bullets.
Despite this, and other recent disastrous actions, her job is safe. The ruling class likes her style and her methods, as the recent award that was given to her by the Prince of Wales showed.
After all, to tackle the youth of the great cities and force them onto ‘chain gangs’, a particular kind of police force will be required.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s message for youth remains: ‘If you are guilty of anti-social behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society.’
Under his ‘Beating Crime Plan’, more burglars, robbers and thieves would have their location monitored with electronic tags 24 hours a day after leaving prison.
Ministers are also removing rules introduced by former Prime Minister Theresa May which made it harder for officers to use their section 60 stop and search powers. The powers allow officers to search people without reasonable suspicion in places where serious violence may occur. These stop and search provocations will cause a massive movement of youth.
There is no doubt that the mass of youth will fight against chain gangs, and any other gangs that PM Johnson may well come up with.
Under the ‘Beating Crime Plan’, released prisoners are to be victimised. As part of a trial, probation services in Wales will be able to require prisoners released on license to wear ankle tags for up to a year to monitor the amount of alcohol in their sweat.
Probation officers will be able to impose the tags where drinking alcohol is believed to increase their likelihood of committing another crime. The object of the ‘Beating Crime Plan’ is to depict the mass of youth in the UK as a criminal force, and that the public should be in fear of its youth and turn to the state for support.
This tactic will not work, and will rebound on the Tories and the ruling class. After all, everybody knows that the capitalist ruling class are the biggest gang of professional thieves in the UK.
In fact, in the period ahead masses of youth will join the Young Socialists and the WRP. Many already know that the full force of the working class will have to be used to resolve this crisis through the organisation and victory of the British socialist revolution.
