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'Get rich culture killing hopes of young people'
Nicholas Cecil, Chief Political Correspondent14.08.08
Children are turning their back on school because they fear dying before adulthood, a government minister warned today.
In a strong echo of David Cameron's depiction of Britain as a "broken society", Skills minister David Lammy said some youths in London were caught up in a "get rich or die trying" culture.
The Tottenham MP spoke out against a shocking "disregard for humanity" as he admitted crying in his advice surgery after a mother and father told him how their daughter had been gang-raped and then had acid poured over her body.
"In a 'bling' culture, criminality easily becomes a short cut to symbols of wealth and power that will otherwise take years of hard work to achieve," he wrote in an article in the New Statesman.
"Inequality plays its part, as young men from poor backgrounds feel they have the least to lose. Why, one boy asked me, was I worried about his grades at school, when he might not live long enough to get a job? This is the world of 'get rich or die trying'," he added, echoing the title of US rapper 50 Cent's smash album.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has rejected the Tory leader's claim of society having broken down.
While barrister Mr Lammy, 36, did not use this phrase, the picture he painted of social problems facing the country was alarming.
He stressed: "A resilient economy cannot substitute for a good society."
Absent fathers were a core problem which needed tackling and children also should be given more "time" by their parents and other adults to stop them going off the rails - both themes that Mr Cameron has been voicing.
But Mr Lammy, while highlighting that 59 per cent of black Caribbean children were looked after by a lone parent, rejected the Tory leader's recent focus on the responsibility of black fathers. He said: "While there may be young men on estates missing fathers who left them, there are also children in Middle Britain whose parents become strangers in a culture of long working hours."
He argued that a generation of young men were struggling to control their emotions and faced a crisis in masculine "self-image", carrying knives and guns as symbols of status. He added: ""An inability to delay gratification - whether with food, alcohol, money or sex - is becoming a hallmark of our age."
But Uanu Seshmi, co-founder of The From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation based in Peckham, believes that young people are starting to reject the gang culture and outlook.
"There is a nihilistic attitude at the moment of helplessness, hopelessness and worst of all of lovelessness," he said. "A lot of young men are moving away from that and understanding that they can take control of their lives."
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