Things can only get worse

Policing, yet another area where the Government is demanding cuts, is likely to mean, says Peter White, more inaction in one of the most concerning areas of our lives

It’s hard to know how to react to something as venomous, as mindless, as anti-human as mass-bullying; particularly when you remember some of the things you did as a kid. Brian, Rodney, David – wherever you are, I apologise; it was unforgivable. And yet what I’m remembering happened not in a deprived comprehensive, or on the back streets of an inner-city estate: it occurred in two special schools for blind children where parents sent their kids in the belief that their problems would be understood better than in a mainstream school.

At the time I’m sure I – and most of the people involved or standing on the sidelines knew it was wrong, but lacked the guts, and to be honest, the means, to stop it.

So what does this tell us about the kind of hate crime perpetrated against disabled people by gangs, or by individuals backed by the ethos of gangs in an atmosphere of fear or indifference by the rest of the community. Well, first of all I’m not entirely sure they are hate crimes!

Hate almost invests the people who do this kind of thing with too much credit: that at least is a positive emotion, implying a line of thought, or a position; but surely what we more often have here is people who are acting mindlessly because they are being allowed to go unchecked. I don’t always find myself instinctively supportive of Teresa May, the new Home Secretary, but I have to admit I did find myself mentally agreeing with her contention that the streets had been to some extent abandoned by the police, allowing people to be intimidated and frightened by bullying behaviour – not just disabled people, but whole communities.

Of course Ms May wasn’t seeking to blame the police: she was making a party political point about the previous Government: nonetheless, the consequences she described where people just walk by on the other side or stay in are unarguably true. The problem is: it’s hard to see how that situation is going to be much helped by 25 per cent cuts in police expenditure. Bullying of disabled people or anyone else isn’t stopped by trying to improve human nature: it’s stopped by there being enough people around who are bigger and nastier than you, who are committed to stopping you! I’m sure some members of the police would see that as a good use of their time: but you need commitment from the top to the bottom to make it happen: plus funding, of course. We wouldn’t have bullied Brian, Rodney and David if the people we were scared of had been around to put a spoke in our wheels!