Alan Bennett on Identity
I read a lovely comment on group identity by Alan Bennett the other day.
6 April, Yorkshire. The new organic shop in the village continues to do well, the walk down the lane to the Nissen hut always a pleasure even in the bitterest weather…Today there are one or two customers in the shop. Everyone speaks, a little too readily for me sometimes, this friendliness engendered by the nature of the enterprise. It’s a kind of camaraderie biologique. In the same way, halted on my bike at traffic lights I will occasionally chat to another cyclist, cycling a similar undertaking with a creed and an agenda and its own esprit de corps de vélos.
I read an interesting one yesterday. (I’d read it before at some point, and it’s possible that I’ve even typed it into here before, so if I’m repeating myself and you’re aware of it, then your memory is a lot better than mine, and I apologize for self-repetition.)
10 August. Appalling scenes on the Portsmouth housing estate which is conducting a witch hunt against suspected paedophiles and the nation is treated to the spectacle of a tatooed mother with a fag dangling from her lips and a baby in her arms proclaiming how concerned she is for her kiddies.
The joy of being a mob, particularly these days, is that it’s probably the first time the people on this estate have found common cause on anything; it’s the ‘community’ they’ve been told so much about and for the first time in their lives each day seems purposeful and exciting.
Just so.
What sort of lives do those people have, that becoming a mob against some ill-defined (or even not so ill-defined) threat is the first time their lives have actually become exciting?
Reminds me of my last um, discussion with my cousin over her obsession with her weight. She said it gave her something in common with her friends and relations, a shared concern that helped bind them together, and all I could say was if you can’t come up with something better than that to induce (or sustain) fellow-feeling, then the future of social coherence is in deep yogurt.
The answer to Angiportus’ question is: ….
A football crowd (mob) ….
The bundle of sticks (fasces) is stronger than a single twig.
They have shit lives, of course, like most people at most times. Thus, they lack the cultural resources to be quietly reflective and gently ironical, like Alan Bennett.
Whether their lives are shit because they don’t have much money, relatively speaking, or because they are a self-selecting biological underclass of those who have failed to escape their fate through lack of initiative and application, that you can debate…
Knowing Bennett he would probably be considering the long-term effects of 80s social atomisation and unemployment as much as the repulsive nature of this behaviour.
>They all probably lacked ‘the cultural resources to be quietly reflective< In the heel of the hunt the young family moved into their new home. OB
You can say that again about them probably lacking the cultural resources etc.
My hunch is that “the valley of the squinting windows” mentality will take over which could be more sinister and insidious in the long run than the outward expression of protest.
Sorry, I ran away a bit with that one. Residue of reading too much Madeleine Bunting…
Nick S:- I don’t really understand your scenario 3. Could you give examples?
No 1 – villagers under Nazism hiding Jews/any resistance group against a despotic government
No 2 – Little Rock/ Northern Irish Protestants demonstrating against Catholic kids going to Holy Cross School
No 3 – ???
The women of Paulsgrove get a bad press, but they did have a point. After the disturbances, lots of liberals said “But children are more likely to be abused by someone in their own family.” as if that settled it.
This statement might be true of the population of the UK as a whole. It probably isn’t true for children living on an estate (US: ‘project’) where the local council has decided to re-house 20+ sex offenders. Living in a social dumping ground is not pleasant.
“This statement might be true of the population of the UK as a whole.”
It’s not. The truth is that a child is most likely to be abused by someone known to their family. This is quite different and is often misleadingly presented to imply fathers, mothers and uncles etc. In fact, blood realtives very, very rarely sexually abuse children. The people most likly to abuse are the boyfriends of single mothers, sometimes raferred to as ‘part of the family’ but not what most people understand by that.
I take your point, John. But mine still stands: strangers are not an objective danger _except in places like Paulsgrove_.
Looks like yet another subject I ought to know more about…
[clutches aching head]
“I take your point, John. But mine still stands: strangers are not an objective danger _except in places like Paulsgrove”
Yes, you are right about that. Abuse rarely comes from strangers, even in places like Paulsgrove, in fact.
Meanwhile, I have been chided by a colleague for misrepresenteding the subject somewhat. Most ‘child abuse’ does indeed happen within blood families, but this is a broad category that includes neglect in its various guises. Sexual abuse, however, is rare among blood reltives. It is not just chance that the wicked step-parent is such a stock villain in folklore.
John M, my addition is somewhat unscientific, but I asked my partner last night about this – she having worked over the last 20 years in social work, mental health, psychotherapy and also worked in a team in a medium-secure unit with some of the most dangerous (to themselves and others) teenagers in the UK, many of them had been sexually abused, many in child sex-abuse rings. She said, frankly, the bassline data, nationwide-speaking is extremely hard to get hold of; it’s hard to get a complete picture. Depressing really, whichever way you cut it. But yeah, there are not many strangers do it compared to persons known to the victim, but this isn’t to deny what Chris is saying either – pushing these characters off-radar by dumping them on sink estates is obviouisly going to be pretty counterproductive. But no authority wants to own the problem, there’s rarely the budget or political will, and hardly ever both.
Thanks for the response Nick S. I think that helped, but the “universal human rights” and freedom of association (or perhaps, more exactly, freedom of non-association) is still a little murky. I’m thinkly particularly about the oppression that smokers are currently being subjected to.
May have to come back to this some other time, must go and make dinner.
Sure e-b, thanks, just a lounge-bar warrior really though.