January 2008

Making the cut

By Paul Macey, Words of Colour Creative Arts Director

According to a recent small poll of young people across London the main source of support they receive to alleviate the pressures of school, fear of violence and society’s disdain is not from organisations or helplines, but from their peers. It is, they report, their peers who listen, support, encourage and offer hope of a brighter future. As one said, ‘I would have gone over the edge without the support of my friends when my mum died. I was really angry and wanted to lash out. Where else could I have gone to?’

The poll will be reported on in February in the first edition of The Cut, a new newspaper written and produced by, and for young people across the capital. The initiative bears testimony to the fact that there is an alternative story to the one that is trotted out daily by politicians and many in the media that our young people are all ‘feral and out of control’.

Without doubt, the behaviour of some young people is appalling and needs to be challenged. It is also tragic that so many young people are victims of knife and gun crime across the capital and many other cities (there were 1,273 knife and gun crime victims across London last year).

It is also increasingly troubling that many seek refuge from violence by joining gangs who offer some form of protection and kudos. But it is disingenuous for those in power to wring their hands in false angst and shed crocodile tears while laying the blame squarely at the feet of young people. To solve the problem we need to understand it first and who better to ask but young people themselves?

Many young people support each other to make sense of the contradictions, challenges and injustices they experience around them, and are given very little credit for doing so. They are also acutely aware of the hypocrisy of a Prime Minister who calls gun summits at Downing Street in response to a spate of shootings an hour before jetting off to Iraq to survey the carnage caused by the government’s illegal war.

Working with the young journalists, photographers and designers who are producing The Cut in their own time after finishing gruelling days at college, school and work amid exams and other responsibilities, is a true education. Here are young people not only developing skills and contributing to the greater good of their communities, but also setting the record straight. They are telling another side of a story that the rest of society would do well to listen to and learn from.

Their honesty, energy and talent demand that they are heard and that society, if is serious about ending violence and crime, and we need to be, must take the radical step of putting young people at the heart of the solution. They may make our media and politicians address the fact that unemployment among the under-24-year-olds is rising, that one quarter of those people under 19 do not have the minimum required qualifications, or that 3.4 million children live in poverty. In London, where the poll took place, 39 per cent of children live in poverty.

Poverty and a lack of opportunity don’t necessarily lead a person into a life of crime, yet it often can. It is an institutionally generated violence against young people, which is rarely discussed in the same dramatic terms as so-called youth crimes by our media and politicians.

Honesty is the key and the debate is currently not based on this quality. Meanwhile every new report of violence and death is a testament to this. If there is one New Year resolution for politicians to keep to, it is to seek out the ‘not so hard to reach’ young people from projects such as The Cut and listen and learn.

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