This winter, the streets of Scotland’s capital were witness to pitched battles between local youths and an army of Police officers.
Exchanging barrages of fireworks, bricks, and bottles, the contending forces excitedly chased each other around poor neighbourhoods of Glasgow like Niddrie and Sighthill throughout the holiday season.
The trouble around Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) has been closely followed by the press, reporting over 40 arrests and quoting frightened residents.
Police Scotland’s stern condemnations add to the atmosphere of an escalating war on the streets, with youths ‘mobbing and rioting’ across the country, armed with supermarket-bought fireworks, attacking Police cars and buses.
Such scenes have become an annual occurrence, with the Police now regularly deployed in force, ready for action against this teenage horde.
2024 Santa dash 🏃♂️ pic.twitter.com/ONX0ETz7OI
— Andy (@andymck505) December 15, 2024
Knowing that they are the main target, the Police jumped at the chance to retaliate in a heavy-handed manner.
Vicious cycle
Meanwhile, the local press has whipped up hysteria over anti-social behavior.
Headlines such as, “Edinburgh local says ‘it’s not been this bad since the 80s’ as young teams strike” and “Huge crowd of Edinburgh football fans set off fireworks as they march to Tynecastle” appeared across Edinburgh Live.
Troubling content about ‘masked youths’ and naming of all the rival ‘young teams’ (groups of working-class kids) certainly paint an alarming picture, as if the capital was overrun by violent gangs.
A few incidents of graffiti in Leith and some football fans gathering before a Hearts game – many of whom look to be no older than twelve or thirteen – are being portrayed as a menace to society.
While nobody wants to see reckless behavior or violence, there is a clear tendency towards the criminalisation of working-class youth among the Police and the press, which will only create a vicious cycle of more anti-social behaviour.
Though working-class young people are more likely to be the victims of crime than perpetrators, the mouthpieces of the ruling class smear them as inherently violent, nihilistic, and anti-social.
These kids are condemned for irrationally ransacking ‘their own’ communities. But few dare to ask the question of why this is taking place.
Why would deprived youths feel any sense of ownership over supposed ‘public’ or council property? For many, they feel like they are hitting back at the same authorities that exclude and degrade them.
Who is really guilty?
The ‘young teams’ have had their communities cut to the bone. The state has been attacking working-class communities with cuts against all manner of services from housing to community centres to schools to care homes.
Despite 97 percent of young people in Scotland valuing youth work services such as youth clubs, music groups, and community sports clubs, their funding has been slashed.
A staggering 24 percent of children in Scotland live in poverty. Many parents have to take on second jobs just to provide for their children. Only 12 percent of parents feel their work-life balance works for their family, due to long hours and low pay. Is this not anti-social?
And when young people desperately rebel against their miserable conditions, they are brutalised by the state and demonised by the media for hanging around on the streets with nothing else to do.
An inquiry into the misconduct of Police Scotland found that children in Scotland were twice as likely to be victims of force used by officers – a practice that the UN has suggested be banned altogether.
Over 1000 incidents including using batons, spray gas, and leg restraints were recorded between March 2023 and April 2024. Is this not reckless violence?
Violence, alienation, and inequality are baked into capitalist society. It is any surprise that young people – with little hope for the future, facing extreme poverty, police persecution, and a society crumbling around them – wish to rebel in whatever way seems possible?
Ultimately, running riot is a dead end. Violence within working-class communities achieves nothing, and the price to pay for this outlet of anger is a steep one.
The anger that simmers in Scottish society, especially amongst young people, is a righteous one but it needs to be directed down the right channels. Not into the young teams or football rivalries, but at the ruling class and their system.
The parasites who decimate our communities for the sake of profits, the politicians who take our tax money and spend it on genocide abroad – they are the enemy.
Scottish government confronts epidemic of youth violence
Shaun Morris, Glasgow
The Scottish Government held an emergency summit on youth crime and violence on 13 January, after a number of assaults and murders gained prominence in the press and on social media.
In September last year, a 15-year-old boy who had only been released from Police custody in Glasgow after allegedly assaulting a shopkeeper was involved in another violent incident thirty minutes later that left a pensioner dead. There have also been several high-profile stories describing attacks between school-age children.
The Daily Record had campaigned with victims and families to get a hearing with the First Minister John Swinney, after a similar conference in 2023. That was following a broad survey of the Educational Institute of Scotland teachers’ union which exposed shocking levels of violence in schools.
63 percent of survey respondents reported daily incidents of physical violence or intimidation between staff and pupils. This rate increases to 90 percent in cases of children with additional support needs, which teachers broadly blame on a lack of resources. 88 percent of teachers said the problem of violence in schools had increased over the previous four years.
This year, the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit – which was set up to treat the problem of violence as a public health and safety issue, rather than a criminal one – will turn twenty years old.
While a progressive idea when it was first founded, its limited interventions and successes have been undermined by the growing social malaise of austerity Britain.
The First Minister says that reducing child poverty remains one of his government’s priorities, despite persistently missing targets on this issue over the years.
Announced plans to mitigate Labour’s two-child benefit cap are certainly welcome, though the funds are still in doubt. Here, and with so many worsening social issues, we see the direct cost of capitalism for working-class people.
