Violence is scourge of our times

TWO pictures in a newspaper were the abiding images of the past few days for me. Both showed young men on the ground being kicked by assailants - one by two teenagers, the other by a man old enough to know a lot better. The first picture was with an alarming article about the growth of violent crime, the other a "disagreement" between star footballers (team-mates) in training.

The two incidents are not connected, of course - or are they? Not directly, maybe. One is a piece of street thuggishness, with two cowards ganging up on an easy victim; the other a wild loss of control in a training fracas. But there is a link - the increase in one kind of violent rage or another in many walks of life.

I grew up in a mining town, and have seen miners settling their disputes outside pubs in toe-to-toe fist fights - but never kicking lumps out of a fallen opponent, which they would despise as unmanly. I watched top-class soccer when tackling was much more robust than the rules allow today - but never saw the nastiness and rule-bending which we now see every week.

Even the World Cup was marred by the shirt-pulling, elbow-jabbing, histrionic diving for penalties and, worst of all, the attempts to persuade referees to send off opponents. Then we have the hostile way in which wildly gesticulating players threaten referees when they disagree with decisions. Plus the clearly obscene remarks spitting from viciously contorted lips.

The recent referee-pushing merely highlighted a general trend of indiscipline. The way in which West Ham player John Hartson kicked his team-mate Eyal Berkovic full in the face has shocked the football world, hopefully into some kind of action against the tide of violence.

It does not help that his club initially tried to cover up the offence and, despite a £10,000 fine on Hartson (just two weeks wages) still seeks to play it all down.

Hartson's action shows an alarming lack of control. What kind of message does it send to youngsters who may get involved in a street punch-up?

Wherever violent behaviour occurs it merits punishment, particularly when it is nasty and cowardly. We must make this clear to all potential assailants. whether they be street-corner thugs or prima donna footballers on film star wages.

FIGHTING crime is not made any easier when the processes of law and order are seen as ineffectual or, worse, unevenly carried through. All too often diligent work by the police is thrown back in their faces by inadequate court sentences or, worse, sloppy procedures by the Crown Prosecution Service.

There are also quite remarkable decisions on whether or not to prosecute. Labour's Attorney-General John Morris QC has astonished the police and outraged many lawyers by ruling that Judge Richard Gee should not be tried on very serious charges regarding an alleged £1 million mortgage swindle.

The Attorney-General decided that Judge Gee was "too depressed... the stress of a trial would endanger his life." No doubt there are hundreds of people throughout Britain who are deeply stressed by thoughts of their approaching trial - on charges much less serious than those facing Judge Gee.

It also concerns many people, including me, that Judge Gee got £1 million in legal aid to fight a case which has cost taxpayers £3 million in all. Yet he is said to be a very wealthy man - it is alleged he transferred his considerable asset (including holiday homes in New York and Portugal) to his wife to avoid paying his own legal costs.

Strangely enough, Mr and Mrs John Faragher, whose baby died after a mix-up in a children's hospital, do not qualify for legal aid if they wish to dispute the miserly £7,500 compensation they have been offered. Stinks, doesn't it?

13/10/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.