Have your say: is the UK heading towards anarchy?

Fiqikhayre · August 23, 2007

It’s anarchy on the streets. An 11-year-old boy has been shot dead in Liverpool in the latest tragic incident of a particularly violent year. Feral youths are prowling around making it unsafe for people to go out after dark. Knife crime has doubled in two years and life is becoming increasingly cheap. Anyone that stands up to this emerging yob culture is likely to get seriously hurt or worse. This is the current state of Britain, or so a large percentage of the media would have us believe.

Living in fear

The Mirror recently ran a survey which revealed that Britain is a nation living in fear. The paper’s study found that 42% of people would rather stay at home at night because of the perceived threat posed by street corner gangs, hoodies and muggers. The poll also concluded that 50% of people feel less safe than 10 years ago. Echoing the Mirror survey, MSN’s own online poll revealed that 69% of people who voted don’t leave home at night unless they have to.

It seems that people are frightened. In fact the situation has got so bad that record numbers of British citizens are fleeing the country. Figures released this week from the Office for National Statistics showed that more Britons than ever are migrating. Last year, 196,000 Brits left the country and although specific information on why they did so is not available, this climate of fear must surely have been a factor.

Hoodies (Image © Martin Rickett/PA Wire)

Not a ghetto

While it would be foolish to deny that there is a problem, Britain has certainly not turned into the ghetto that it is often portrayed as. Perhaps we are slightly more at risk of getting mugged if we go out after dark than we were 10 years ago, but it’s not as if it’s a certainty every time you leave the safety of your own home. It’s been blown out of all proportion. If people are afraid to leave their homes after dark, they shouldn’t be. Of course bad things do happen to some people, they always have, but it’s taking things too far if people feel like prisoners in their own homes.

There might be certain areas it’s worth avoiding, particularly after dark, but we must not forget that the vast majority of people in Britain are good, honest, well-meaning people. It’s a minority that has caused this atmosphere of fear and it’s a minority consisting of two parts: firstly the toe-rags responsible for intimidating people and, secondly, the sections of the media that have given the impression that nobody is safe.

No cause for hiding away

Murders, muggings and violent attacks are still newsworthy – that is why they get reported in the media. They are newsworthy for the sole reason that they are still relatively uncommon. We only need to start really worrying when they no longer make the news because they are happening so frequently. Until then, there is no cause for hiding away once the sun sets, assuming of course that we do get to see the sun sometime this year.

Village green (Image © PA/PA Archive/PA Photos)

Britain is still a great place to live. The problems causing people to say they are afraid to go out at night must be put into context. When you compare the risks people face in Britain to those faced in much of the rest of the world, it becomes clear we don’t have much to moan about. Our worries are relatively insignificant. You might be concerned about getting your wallet or purse stolen on a trip to the local store, whereas people in other countries have to contend with suicide bombers and mortar attacks every time they step outside their homes. Others have gunshots ringing out in their streets on a daily basis. These are the people who have a right to fear leaving their homes. A crop of deviant kids sends Britain into a state of paranoia, but in war-torn parts of the Middle East, people are getting on with their lives against all the odds. We’re guilty of making mountains out of molehills and it’s embarrassing when the ‘trials’ we face are compared to the hardships elsewhere.

We should count ourselves lucky

The problems we face in the UK aren’t in the same league as those in many other countries and that is something we forget all too easily. We may have had some floods this summer, but we don’t get hurricanes and tornadoes on the same scale as other nations; tsunamis don’t make it to our shores and earthquakes in Britain are pretty pathetic. The flooding wasn’t nice, but if that’s the worst we have to deal with then we should count ourselves lucky. A summer without much sun is disappointing, but it’s hardly the “tragedy” some people are making it out to be.

It’s about time we stopped navel-gazing and started to appreciate that, as a nation, we really haven’t been dealt such a bad hand. There aren’t that many places more pleasant to live. After all, where else in the world can you get cricket on the village green, afternoon tea and a proper pint of bitter?