Jun
29
Disillusioned young people
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment
This weekend we spent some time in Lytham and St Annes. It was a really good day out and coincided with a carnival in the town. One key feature of the carnival was drinking. It was striking just how many people were having a drink; from women pushing buggies to teenagers. Many were drinking lagers and WKDs but a fair number were swigging straight from bottles of cheap vodka. And this was at around midday.
This may, of course, have been exceptional to that particular day in Lytham. And it may also be that once I’d noticed a couple of people drinking , I was much more aware of those who were than those who weren’t.
The young people drinking seemed to share a number of characteristics:
- boredom – very few of the young people out, drinking, to have a good time actually seemed to be having a good time. I know youthful boredom from being young in a small town and this looked just like that.
- identity – within every group there were obviously some who wanted acceptance from that group. Some groups had an identity with a football team (PNE or Blackpool mostly). Few appeared had a wider sense of identity with their community or other people in their community. Or at least, not one that helped regulate their behaviour.
Very few seemed to be causing any trouble. But as the day wore on, the drunkness kicked in and the police presence was increased from very little doing even less to quite a few police, putting themselves about a bit. And of course the police presence escalated into confrontation and so wider unease amongst the sober, the young and the old.
But the challenge wasn’t just for policing the system. This community event didn’t really engage with the young people. They were sat outside looking on – too old for carnival too cool for the funfair.
There was a disconnectedness in their sense of identity, also. Following PNE costs about £20 per home game, a lot of money across a football season and that’s if you don’t support one of the premiership teams in the area. Football was always a key release for many young working class men in Britain – and particularly the north west.
The world of Twitter, young entreprenuership, social networking felt a world away. There appeared to be slim chance of social mobility through employment. Education had inspired too few of these young people.
New Labour has achieved a lot. A lot that there is much to be proud of. But long term issues (structural if you will) have proved to be very difficult. These are the people that are suffering first from the economic downturn. They may not fall the furthest but it will take them longer to recover. They will face the brunt of cuts in public services, of meaningless rhetoric from Westminster politicians.
Is giving structure, power, a voice, meaning, direction and hope to young people beyond the capacity of British politicians?
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