Holy Shit, Here Comes ASBO!

Some months ago I wrote about the dangers inherent in an emerging coalition of conservatives and former liberals united by their abhorrence of the seamier aspects of modern Ireland. At the time I suggested that they had it within them to make exactly the same mistakes already foisted on Britain by the Blair Project.

I was right.
At first it was just the great and good of Official Ireland, opinion-shapers like RTE’s Prime Time and the Irish Times. And it wasn’t just straightforward coverage of drunkenness and misbehaviour nor indeed the usual pieties from right-wing columnists. Great space and attention was also given to opinion pieces by thinking conservatives like Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly.
Breastbeating was much in evidence. Reformed radicals reflected ruefully. Revolutionaries were revolted and revised regretfully. Perhaps we went too far. We threw out what was good as well as what was bad. Look at us now, the drunks of Europe, spitting and shouting and shagging. All we asked for was Sodom, but we also got Begorrah.
And so on.
Revulsion at the state of things, especially in the streets and A&E wards on weekends and at times of celebration like the end of exams, was a core theme. And to be honest, there’s a serious problem there. But behind the fulmination the discerning could identify another and much more worrying phenomenon.
At its core is a dislike and a distrust, sometimes even hatred, of young people, and in particular those from working class backgrounds, that is deeply ingrained in both chattering-class and political/administrative cultures. Irish people may love their own children but they do not love children.
The project has advanced significantly in recent weeks. The key development has been the announcement by Michael McDowell that he intends to introduce the so-called Anti-Social Behaviour Orders usually known as ASBOs.
But we also had the very unfortunate contribution by the Labour Party’s Pat Rabbitte in the Dáil recently in which he expressed concern at the increase in anti-social behaviour.
That the leader of the Labour Party would stick his chin out like this is consistent with the view that former radicals and conservatives are uniting in a no-nonsense get-tough-on-hooligans policy.
But Rabbitte’s contribution allowed Bertie Ahern to respond with the news that the Government was going to do something about this hooliganism, thank you for raising it, by introducing ASBOs.
In taking centre-stage in the no-nonsense crusade, Ahern also expressed the view that ‘the reality is that if young people do not get a bit of a rough time from the police, we will never address these issues’.
And there you have it. As the Morris tribunal works its way through the maze that was the Donegal wing of the Garda Síochána and as a case from the Reclaim the Streets violence is still before the courts, the Taoiseach reckons that young people need a bit of roughing up by the Gardaí.
One accepts that he was talking about thuggery in which elderly people and immigrants and lone parents have been routinely targeted and bullied. And it was probably a throw-away remark not well-thought out. To be scrupulously fair to Ahern, he has done more in real terms for young people than most of those who talk about it.
At the same time, he has given vent to the new authoritarianism. Is this what Emily O’Reilly had in mind? Is this what the shapers of Prime Time want? A bit of roughing up?
In fact, young people do get a bit of a rough time from the Gardaí. If more than four or five hang about on a street corner they’ll be told to move along.
But this happens on street corners where they can be seen from patrol cars and in the kind of places where people complain and the police patrol. In other words, it doesn’t happen in the wilds of sink estates. Which is where the worst thuggery happens.
Into this policing vacuum come Sinn Féin. It is not at all uncommon in this jurisdiction, as in Northern Ireland, to find allegedly errant young males getting ‘a bit of a rough time’ from paramilitary bullies. And in many areas, largely because of the collapse of meaningful policing, local communities accept this with a measure of gratitude.
Quite how Michael McDowell can square this with his opposition to the Shinners is beyond me.
But his proposition of ASBOs on one hand and continental-style café bars on the other is also baffling. Why? Because continental café bars are part of a way of life central to which is an inter-generational accommodation between parents and children. They eat and drink and promenade together in a way almost unknown in Ireland or the UK.
Many factors cause or facilitate anti-social behaviour. Lack of policing is just one. And new laws aren’t needed either. All the Government needs to do is implement existing ones and in particular the Children Act of 2001.
This is a big issue with very big implications. We’ll return to ASBOs in two weeks time.