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Newspaper
photographs showing the victims of the gratuitous
violence stalking West Belfast streets, even without
the accompanying text, tell a story which makes for
gloomy contemplation. Whatever about the enhancement
that the ceasefires may have added to the quality
of life in Belfast’s more impoverished communities,
for a substantial number of people fear and trepidation
still accompany them throughout their day. Their lot
amounts to new sources of misery having replaced the
old ones. When the forces of the state were on the
rampage - killing, torturing, wrecking and raiding
- the communities had a fallback position; resistance
from which they could acquire a sense of their own
empowerment. But today, confronted with, not a new
menace but one that has taken centre stage - the phenomenon
of anti-social behaviour - there is a palpable sense
of frustration born of impotence. Many within the
communities feel utterly disempowered by what they
regard as ‘the enemy within.’
Doubtless,
there are some critics who would, with good reason,
feel that such a negative characterisation is a step
too far. But its usage is nothing new, nor is it exclusive
to West Belfast or indeed Ireland. The type of debates,
discourses, polemic and rhetoric that revolve round
the issue of anti-social behaviour have figured prominently
in working class communities across the world. And
however people choose to depict those engaged in tormenting
their neighbours, we hardly need an editorial or a
front-page lead to persuade us that the people who
inflicted the injuries on the photographed victims
splashed across the papers constitute a serious threat
to those round them.
While
not the most grievous act of wanton violence to afflict
the Ballymurphy community since the start of the millennium,
the savagery of the attack on local republican Patrick
Adams at best lends itself to a mind numbing torpor
and at worst to a vengeful anger. Either way, even
if those infuriated by the assault do not wish to
see it repaid in kind on the attackers, their threshold
for disapproval towards the employment of reciprocal
violence against those responsible is lowered considerably.
It runs against the human grain to turn the other
cheek; it is the exception rather than the rule among
the tormented who find it within themselves to caution
restraint when their tormentors are forced to eat
what they dish out to others. People who have acquired
a sense of how to respond to threats to the community
are loathe to sit inert while thugs put it up to them.
But such sentiments, if licensed to run at their own
speed, can only result in victim’s justice, where
a victimology not in the least informed by broader
sociological perspectives becomes the prism through
which anti-social behaviour is interpreted and remedied
- ultimately unsatisfactorily.
Something
of the manner in which a skewed victimology is constructed
is already visible in the attempts to create a dominant
public discourse about anti-social behaviour. Those
behind the creation of this ‘official community
narrative’ including local newspapers, politicians
and community workers are not without vested interests
to protect. And it is to be expected that they will
discursively shape a community in a manner that best
protects their own interests. Their depiction of the
community and its problems is neither necessarily
accurate nor complete. As was once written, ‘until
the lions have their historians, tales of hunting
will always glorify the hunter.’
Patrick
Adams has contributed more to his community in one
day than the thugs who brutalised him have in their
entire hedonistic lives. That he was a victim of their
viciousness is beyond dispute. But it is ill-conceived
of public representatives to seek to explain the anti-social
phenomenon by criminalising an extended family network
because of the actions of a minority of individuals.
There is not just one family in this community which
has more than one of its members displaying a predilection
towards the self-gratifying use of violence. Moreover,
if those who are selected to ‘properly’
speak about and thus define the nature of the problem
are salaried employees comfortably perched in the
locus of community control, while those they identify
as being the source of the problem are unemployed
and marginalised, then the new administrative forms
of disciplinary power mushrooming within the community
- financed by the state because they pose no threat
to the state - will never address the social and economic
inequality that separates the definers of community
morality from those they seek to discipline. The employed
managerial strata sitting in judgement of the dole
queue will produce plenty in the way of self-serving
cant and little in the way of justice. Capping this
is the existence of a regime of silence when violence
within the community dovetails with the interests
of those who have created the very discourse which
defines the problems and classifies the perpetrators,
while at the same time ignoring other problems and
different sets of perpetrators. Nobody for example
is called an anti-social element and subjected to
a punishment beating if they pay their workers £2
an hour, defraud the local centre of money ostensibly
put in for the benefit of the community, or engage
in domestic violence.
Despite
the image of West Belfast that the powerful and prosperous
within it wish to promote, the area is no Manichean
universe where the forces of ‘good’ are
made up of those employed in funded centres and the
‘bad’ are the unemployed from the streets.
This
in no way is to mitigate those responsible for the
attack on Patrick Adams. The forfeiture of any claim
they may have to reside here is in the eyes of many
a sanction too mild. On seeing the photographs of
Patrick Adams the first thought that crossed my mind
was to irrationally question the human essence of
his attackers. And regaining a sense of reason was
made no easier when reading the beaten man’s
words: ‘they were all kicking, beating and biting
me at the same time … they were like a pack of
wild animals, kicking and biting me.’ The man
or dog question seemed an appropriate one to ask.
What type of creature bites into a person’s ear
with the seeming intention of severing it and leaving
the amputee scarred both mentally and physically for
life? Who would contemplate sending a father and husband
home to his wife and children covered in bite marks
and other injuries? Were it to have been dogs, the
Community Watch would have faced demands to snare
them and put them down.
While
their biting tactics might lead people to assume that
Patrick Adams’ assailants were no better than
dogs, the fact remains that they were community members.
So, whatever the attraction of a response that might
be adopted when confronting dangerous animals, while
easily applicable, is hardly appropriate. But within
communities where due process has long played second
fiddle to the quick fix answer, proposed solutions
such as the punishment beating quickly make up ground
on the inside track when other options don’t
seem to hit the spot. And if its attraction as a form
of community justice is to be eradicated sooner rather
than later the process of its withering away will
be aided greatly if people like those who maimed Patrick
Adams make the first move and cease punishing the
community in which they live.
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