4 hours ago
9
It is right to reject the hysterical fiction of London as a city in moral freefall after the disorder in Clapham (Editorial, 8 April). But the deeper issue is not only exaggeration. It is the ease with which young people, once visible in public space, are turned into signs of disorder before they have done anything at all.
Society does not merely fear what some young people do; it fears their collective presence. Teenagers gathering on a high street are too quickly read as menace, excess or incipient criminality. In that sense, the language surrounding Clapham matters as much as the incident itself. Terms such as “feral”, “swarm” and “gang” do not neutrally describe behaviour. They help produce a belief in the young person as threat, as someone to be monitored and contained rather than understood socially.
This matters because moral panic does more than distort events. It organises sympathy. The adult public is invited to see itself as the rational, vulnerable subject in need of protection, while the young are cast as morally suspect bodies whose visibility alone seems to justify intervention. Once that framing takes hold, the political horizon narrows. Questions of youth provision, social space, inequality and abandonment are pushed aside by demands for tougher policing and faster punishment.
Of course serious antisocial behaviour requires a response. But if we address young people only through the language of nuisance and control, we will simply reproduce the conditions we claim to deplore. Safer cities are not built by treating youth as a population to be managed out of sight. They are built by recognising young people as social subjects, entitled not only to boundaries, but also to space, dignity and a future.
Sum Kung
Cambridge
More objective assessments of London’s merits come to different conclusions from those of Donald Trump and social media posts (Sadiq Khan demands stronger action on social media ‘outrage economy’, 9 April). Every year since 2012, London has come top of the annual survey of world cities undertaken by the Mori Memorial Foundation, a Japanese urban research centre.
Its Global Power City Index ranks 48 major cities according to their “magnetism” or power to attract people, capital and enterprises from around the world. It measures six functions – economy, research and development, cultural interaction, livability, environment and accessibility.
London comes top in cultural interaction and accessibility, and second to New York in economy and research and development. In livability, which includes security and safety, life expectancy, social freedom and equality, as well as in environment, it is still far above all the American cities. Good news is seldom noticed. Bad news – truth or lies – gets attention.
David Hutchinson
Lewes, East Sussex
We were in London visiting a wonderful community garden, off Gray’s Inn Road, not far from King’s Cross, when Sadiq Khan was elected mayor for the first time. We were delighted for him and the community he serves, as were the many locals we interacted with. We have admired him, his approach, what he has done and, hopefully, will long continue to do for our wonderful capital city.
We are devastated, but sadly not surprised, by the abuse he has to sustain from numerous sources and we applaud his commitment to the post he has undertaken. Far from believing any of the bile on the internet, we are planning a family hen weekend in London and aim to enjoy the unique delights the city has to offer. We will go out of our way to respect others and to behave ourselves. I am practising my raised-eyebrows routine.
Jacqueline Simpson
Garforth, West Yorkshire
