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Never have I seen my working-class neighbours as angry as they are about the motiveless murder of Ben Kinsella. Everyone knows the family. Everyone knows that he was a good boy who never went looking for trouble.
That he could be killed for no reason on an Islington street is inducing something close to despair.
"I'm not proud to be English," cried one friend. "I hate this country. It's a horrible country. I'd leave if I could. All we see are pretend policemen the yobs just stick two fingers up to. When is Labour going to do something about it? Are we going to have to wait until their children are murdered?"
There are still sociologists who say that fear of violent crime is a crazy "moral panic" whipped up by a cynical media trying to increase sales. They would learn that there is nothing panicky about the alarm in inner London if they grasped the scale of the violence going on beneath the media's radar.
Around the corner from me is Essex Road, which runs from up from the Angel towards Newington-Green. It's not some terrible slum by any means, but a mixed street with designer shops and modish restaurants for the gentrifiers, and greasy spoons and old-style bakeries for the working class.
On what is, in other words, an ordinary London road two women have been murdered in little more than a fortnight. Rhamona Ahemdin was stabbed to death. Her killer stuffed her body into a suitcase and set it alight. Police have charged a man.
About 200 yards north of her Peabody flat, 40-year-old Abiodun Illumoka was stabbed and beaten to death. Police have charged her partner with her murder. The poor woman was six months pregnant.
I suspect this is the first you've heard of their murders. Because the emphasis is on teenagers rather than abused women, the cruel deaths of Ms Ahemdin and Ms Illumoka never made the national media.
Then again, most violence against teenagers goes unreported too. In March our local MP, Emily Thornberry, infuriated the Met when she said that virtually every teenager in Islington had been mugged at some stage.
Don't be hysterical, said the cops, but an investigation by Islington council bore out Thornberry's suspicion that the young had to cope with a vast amount of violence the adult world knew nothing about. Teenagers told the council inquiry that gangs threatened them with further punishment if they grassed. Victims didn't talk to the police or even their parents.
Today's young are breaking the cliché that you get more conservative as you get older. Council officials I spoke to were struck by how anxious they were for tough measures to be taken against the gangs which persecute them.
When the new generation grows up and takes over this country, liberals should prepare themselves for a shock. I'm sure they will be more tolerant than their parents of many things, but not, I think, of crime.
Reader views (2)
Each motiveless killing make us despair and fear for the innocent. But that is the tip of the iceberg. The bigger picture is of thousands of attacks resulting in minor or serious injuries, grudges to settle, respect and gang honour to be earned. While the government has been enforcing no smoking in pubs, and sending troops to protect Afghans, it fails to enforce laws on the street corners of London and support families until it is too late.
- Nick London, London, 03/07/2008 11:17
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Sorry, but there is a link between multiculturalism, the influx of immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and the establishment of ethnic gang warfare. Notice this has increased in the 11 years of Labour, as the floodgates have been left wide open. This is not to mention the black on black shootings. I am not a racist, but these are facts, and cannot be ignored any longer.
- Eddie, london, 02/07/2008 21:41
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