Blair blames spate of murders on black culture

Tony Blair went to Cardiff yesterday to give the Callaghan lecture, a lecture that aims to commemorate the political leadership of the Labour PM Jim Callaghan, and used the occasion to make some astonishing remarks about black kids in Britain and the knife culture that Blair claims is unique to them.

This came home to me when, at the recent summit I held on knife and gun crime, the black Pastor of a London church said bluntly: when are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it.

Comparing the way to end this knife culture to the way Britain tackled football hooliganism when that blighted the national character he stated:

The black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won't stop this by pretending it isn't young black kids doing it.

Blair claims to be "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership, but the problem with this speech is not that it is "too frank", but rather that the black Pastor of the London church that he quotes, claims that Blair is misquoting him.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. ... He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."

As always when Blair is faced with a problem, especially a problem involving social dimensions, his first and only instinct is to legislate.

In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened. There needs to be an intensive police focus, on these groups. The ring-leaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation.

Blair has, since he came to office, introduced an astonishing 3,023 new offences since May 1997, creating offences at twice the rate of the previous Major and Thatcher governments.

And the rate at which offences are being created is accelerating the longer that Tony Blair remains in Downing Street. In 1998, Labour's first full year in power, 160 new offences passed into legislation, rising to 346 in 2000 and 527 in 2005.

So now Blair, "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership, has turned his attention towards Britain's young black population and acting as if the black community is somehow in denial over an issue that only his "total frankness" has the courage to face.

There are two problems with Blair's stance. The first is that he has somehow removed the entire issue of social deprivation from his understanding of the problem, preferring to see this as cultural rather than related to poverty, which goes against what his own Home Office minister, Lady Scotland, told the home affairs select committee last month. She stated then that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.

Secondly, he appears to be implying that we are all somehow in denial that this problem even exists.

Lee Jasper, adviser on policing to London's mayor, said: "For years we have said this is an issue the black community has to deal with. The PM is spectacularly ill-informed if he thinks otherwise.

This is vintage Blair. Take a problem that everyone recognises, congratulate yourself for having the courage to be the only person brave enough to discuss it, and then come up with a solution that calls for the creation of more laws and totally ignores any social dimension or poverty related aspect of the issue.

It's no wonder that the Daily Mail loves this Labour leader and more traditionally Labour leaning newspapers treat him with such outright contempt.

Answering questions later Mr Blair said: "Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.

"I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them."

Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in "real trouble" later, he said.

Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.

It's single moms that are to blame, stupid! He really is the best Prime Minister that the Tories never had.

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."

Come on, Keith, given that it's Blair talking, it's not really that curious at all is it?

Click title for full speech.

Tags: Blair, Cardiff, Callaghan lecture, black knife crime, social deprivation, crime