To those of us who were brought up in a Britain containing so few immigrants, that many of us had never seen any, or only those in dock areas or Greater London, it comes as shock then, to discover that there are gangs of up to 40 youthful immigrants from the African continent, who are rampaging in wars of their own, on our streets, using knives, guns and hammers, and killing people.
I found on the Internet, a report put up by a newspaper and relayed by Google, that the only son of Idi Amin, one, Faisal Wangita, had led such a gang in Camberwell, London. Recently, at a bus stop, part of the gang set upon an 18-year-old African student, a member of yet another African gang, killing him as a result of 25 stab wounds and being beaten with a hammer, all in a one-minute attack. In May, Wangita was cleared of murder by an Old Bailey jury, but found guilty of conspiracy to wound, violent disorder and possession etc,. and sentenced to five years detention..
A senior police officer stated that more intervention was needed to stop large numbers of traumatised young men, here from civil wars in Africa, forming street gangs. He said the level of violence used by these groups was extreme.
I believe that the question that presents itself, is how does one intervene? It seems that the rules governing the invasion of civil rights are so stringent, and so strongly upheld by members in both the government and the public, that to a great extent the hands of the police are tied. Continually we are hearing the police accused of selecting candidates for stop and search, from mainly ethnic societies. It may sound totally crazy, and will certainly be objected to by some members of the population, but the only solution that I can see is to set up, at some point, portable through-passes similar to those at airports which pick out people carrying metal objects. If these were set out randomly, quickly, on both sides, and at the two ends of a main thoroughfare, with no side alleys, it might just give people pause for thought, if being caught carrying offensive weapons, resulted in tagging. Those ‘suddenly’ entering shops could be asked to go through the screen Definitely sneaky! Unselective, with the civil rights of everybody being abused, but perhaps it could be the solution to an unmanageable and unimaginable problem. The advantage of random selection is that only a small portion of people are affected, while a large proportion are made to think twice, the principle currently used with cameras for speeding.
Allegedly is a word constantly used by the press when they want to make a statement for which they could, or might, be taken to court for libel. The problem with this it is that it enables them to say pretty much what they like, with often horrendous effects being inflicted on the individual being reported about, and when it is proven that the whole matter was a mistake, the charges withdrawn and the person given a clean bill, the damage is already done, because the latter stages of the matter are not sufficiently dramatic to deserve the same headline withdrawals.
A True Case A man, with a strong rural accent, was trapped one night in an airport through missing his flight. He found a small child wandering alone in this empty space looking for its parents. He took the child to find an attendant to take the responsibility, and while doing so was photographed on closed-circuit television. The only person he spoke to, to get help, was one of the staff going off duty, who didn’t clearly understand the English language. He was taken, charged with kidnapping and, I believe locked in jail. Many important people gave testimonials to the man’s honesty and ultimately, after a considerable time had elapsed, the woman who had gone off duty and had then gone on holiday, was discovered and the whole matter cleared up. His reputation was so badly damaged, and as his work involved sports, which placed him in the realms of children, he had to go to another country to be employed, where his alleged reputation was unknown.
The word allegedly should be outlawed when used in this sort of context. It is heavily overworked, and a screen behind which any amount of slander can be implied, irresponsibly and randomly. The recent mistake with the TV recording of the Queen, possibly allegedly, refusing to be interviewed, shows the level of lack of research by the media, before someone is libelled. The race to be first to state or print, in this competitive environment, is too strong to allow reasoned revision.