Society
Don't conform, break the rules
Published 27 September 2004
Observations on antisocial behaviour
Earlier this year, along with four or five other people, I was queuing patiently for a bus ticket, but the man at the front was trying noisily to break into the machine. Having calculated that this rather scrawny criminal was unlikely to put up much of a fight, I strolled to the head of the queue and sent him on his way. Then I took out a coin, ready to feed it into the machine. The man immediately behind me, who 30 seconds earlier had been passively watching a crime in progress, tapped me on the shoulder and protested: "Oi, I'm next."
The incident, which took place near Piccadilly Circus in London, captured a peculiar coexistence of civic disengagement with unthinking conformism. Conservative commentators, as well as new Labour ministers, make a great deal of declining civility, cataloguing everything from public drunkenness to litter as evidence of social breakdown. I wonder if they have it quite right.
Take urinating in the street. This is usually regarded as an example of people showing complete disregard for their fellow citizens. Indeed, they often relieve themselves just round the corner from open pubs, suggesting deliberate defiance. Yet the generally furtive and apologetic bearing of public urinators suggests a different interpretation. My suspicion is that, for many, their inhibition about peeing in public is outweighed by their fear of braving those signs in pubs which declare that the toilets are for customers' use only. There is less chance of confrontation with unfortunate passers-by in an alley than with a pub landlord jealously guarding his urinals. And confrontation is what people seem to want to avoid.
During this government's early experiments with the politics of antisocial behaviour, the then home secretary Jack Straw challenged what he called a "walk-on-by" culture, and implored the public to intervene when kids were vandalising bus shelters, and so on. He was condemned for inviting citizens to endanger themselves. Yet it is not just caution and self-preservation that dissuade people from intervening. They doubt whether it is even the right thing to do. Might there not be something vaguely loutish about "getting involved"?
The government learned its lesson. Rather than confront miscreants directly and on the spot, the public is now invited to apply for antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos) against them. Asbos perfectly express a society in which interaction between its citizens can take place only through the state. This is a peculiarly uncivil model of civic engagement, a bit like tapping a brolly against a no-smoking sign, rather than just asking someone to put out a cigarette.
The problem, then, is not so much rampant individualism as shrinking-violetism. New laws, rules and regulations simply reinforce the public's passivity. The government's fondness for "contracts" to promote neighbourliness on estates and good behaviour in schools reflects a desire to harness conformism in the service of public spirit, but the result is a distinctly spiritless public. It would be to our benefit, as well as society's, if we were willing to break the odd rule, and risk confrontation with blinkered queuers, small-minded landlords and teenage tearaways.
Dolan Cummings is editorial director of the Institute of Ideas, and editor of a forthcoming paper on antisocial behaviour
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