Breaking the Law…

Hoodies in different clothing?

According to the popular media, until recently everyone in society was perfectly well behaved. But all of a sudden, every young person in the country has turned into a criminal, society is rotting and its the end of life as we know it.

You could be forgiven for thinking that if you only read the Sun, and especially if you’ve got no idea what happened in the past. Crime is not a modern thing. Anti-social behaviour is not a modern thing. It just looks slightly different dressed in modern clothes. I’ve studied crime at University and it is a fascinating subject. The bad things people do to each other can be a real eye-opener, its one of those subjects that lets you peer into peoples souls.

All through time, every generation has looked on the one following it, and thought ‘shit, the youth of today, we’re in trouble’. The generation before them thought the same about them. In Roman times one famous philosopher, whose name escapes me, wrote about his fears that young Romans were spending too much time having fun and drinking wine, and that it would cause the collapse of the Roman Empire. Thousands of years later, we don’t remember the Romans for being drunken yobs, rather as philosophers, epic warriors, architects and engineers.

There are plenty of records out there that show crime is by no means a modern phenomenon. The Old Bailey’s proceedings from 1674-1913 are avilable to search online, and fascinating reading they make. In 1675 we read that “J. D. a little boy about 14 years of age, for murthering a Citizen and Silkman in Milk-street , which he confessed: Young in years but old in wickedness: yet had he been older he could not have been more sensible of his fact, nor more apprehensive”. Despite weeping uncontrollably in the dock, the 14 year old was put to death. This is just one case among thousands.

We see the same in Portsmouth too. Some years ago the records of the Seventeenth Century Portsmouth Quarter Sessions were catalogued in a fascinating volume, which is full of cases of people abusing the Mayor, using illegal scales, fornication, and popery. What is striking, both in the Old Bailey and in Portsmouth, is that crime against propery is seen as just as serious, and often more serious, than violent crime against a person. Why? Well, property of the main things that demonstrates a persons class. For one person to steal something from someone else, it must be a challenge against the class system. On the other hand, who is to worry if one poor person kills another? In any case, life was more expendable back in time than it is to us now. And during the second world war the Government hushed up reports of looting in bombed out areas. The stereotypical view of blitzed brits singing ‘roll out the barrell’ airbrush out any mention of looting or panic.

But back to the theme of young people. Read Charles Dickens, and the characters jump right out of the pages. Dickens books arent just stories, but commentaries on the world he lived in. In Oliver Twist in particular, we see that youth crime is not a new thing at all. It just wears different clothes depending on the place in time. You could almost teleport the Artful Dodger into 2009, and you could imagine him hotwiring a moped. People have always been worried about crime, and young people. Geoffrey Pearson, in his pivotal book ‘Hooligan: a history of respectable fears’, argues most convincingly that moral panics say more about the respectable classes and their insecurities than they do about young people.

So, are chavs and hoodies a new thing? Of course not. The clothes are different, but the people wearing them and the people fearing them are strikingly similar. In the 1950’s people thought that Elivs and his gyratory danding would lead to moral collapse, and then in the 60’s we had the Beatles. But time and time again, generations prove that actually, they’re not so bad. It isnt just young people who perpetrate crime, just as crime is not a modern thing.

65 years ago today – the charge of the Para Brigades

As dawn broke on the 19th September the battle of Arnhem had reached a critical balance.

4 Battalions of British airborne troops began their advance into Arnhem at daybreak. The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Parachute Regiment began to advance along the riverside. The 2nd South Staffords, slightly to the north, attacked near the Arnhem Museum, supported by the 11th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. However, the Germans had thrown together a strong blocking line on three sides, supported by half-tracks, machine guns and mortars. As dawn broke the attack into this urban valley of death ground the a halt. The British were fighting in such a narrow area, with no room for maneouvre of flanking movements. Fighting with no overall commander, the Paras were neither trained or equipped for such a situation. They were forced back to the area around St Elisabeth’s Hospital, taking heavy casualties. However, one positive note was that Major-General Urquhart had re-appeared, after the house he had been sheltering in was over-run by the British.

St Elisabeth's Hospital on the outskirts of Arnhem

Elsewhere further to the north, the 4th Brigade under Brigadier Hackett were advancing down from the north. Meeting the same German blocking line in the north, they also suffered heavy casualties and were forced to fall back. The 11th Battalion, holding firm in the area to the south, were ordered to attack a piece of high ground to support the 4th Brigades advance. They were spotted by the Germans while forming up and didnt stand a chance. They were heavily mortarted and machine gunned. Many were taken prisoner, and the survivors fell back to Oosterbeek, where the rest of the Division remained. One of these was my Grandfather Private Henry Miller, who was wounded and fell back to the Dressing Station at the Schoonoord crossroads in Oosterbeek.

Just one mile from the Bridge, where the attack ground to a halt

Thus ended the last serious attempt to reach Arnhem Bridge. Urquhart pulled his troops back to the area around Oosterbeek, reluctantly coming to the conclusion that nothing could be done to reach John Frost’s force at the Bridge, and that they would have to be left to their own fate. A plan was rapidly developing, almost by accident, to hold firm on the banks of the Rhine and hope that Horrocks tanks could link up with them. There was still a chain-ferry across the Rhine at Heavedorp. But a lack of communication due to poorly performing radios that they had no idea what was going on at Nijmegen or further south, and no-one outside of Arnhem had any news of the Urquhart and his men.

However, the catalogue of errors was firmly coming together. Lack of preparation and training, the distance from the landing zone to the bridge, poor use of intelligence, the underestimation of the enemy and the lack of urgency in XXX Corps advance had already swung the battle of Arnhem firmly away from the Allies had left Operation Market Garden hanging by a thread.

With the British at Arnhem rapidly being forced into a pocket on the banks of the Rhine and fighting for their lives, what was happening further south? Where was XXX Corps?