Hideously diverse Britain: The world is getting smaller

 

This article titled “Hideously diverse Britain: The world is getting smaller” was written by Hugh Muir, for The Guardian on Tuesday 17th August 2010 21.00 UTC

Sometimes, when people speak directly, it is hard to absorb immediately what they are saying. That was how it was when I stood on a pavement in east London and asked “Ripper” about his freedom of movement. “I can go down there and turn left and that would be OK,” he told me, pointing at a T-junction. “But I can’t go down there and turn right. It just wouldn’t be safe.”

That was three years ago, but it stayed with me because it seemed to symbolise the extent to which people who divide their world into turf and postcodes have effectively narrowed it. I grew up in east London, but as a teenager I walked north, west and south and rode buses to explore the city. A couple of generations later, a cohort of young men can’t walk to the end of the street.

Hackney council spent almost £4,000 last year ferrying vulnerable youngsters around in taxis – a pretty sum for those who can’t use public transport for fear that they might be caught in the wrong territory by young men from a neighbouring area. A youth worker friend tells me of others who for the same debilitating reason can’t work. If anything, things are getting worse. What’s going on?

Ian Joseph is an old friend, an author and social researcher, and he knows the district where Ripper lived hemmed in. He has written a report about it called Life on a Knife’s Edge. “It is not even just about geography,” he tells me. “It’s about time of day too. A street that is safe in the day might be dangerous at night. One that’s safe at night might be dangerous in the day.” Worse still, he says, the postcode boundaries are not strict. Sometimes housing estate allegiances are more important. Sometimes the requirement that says turf must be defended and encroachers attacked is superseded by the depth of individual friendship. That’s the most difficult problem.

Watching, as we do, from the outside, you can’t know. The horrible downside is that he works with youngsters of 14 who only know their school and their estate. Nothing else. But there is hope to cling to. Most seem willing to see life differently if they are given different things to see.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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