Shaun Bailey: Youth Worker & Peter Power: former senior officer at Scotland Yard HARDtalk

it is time for HARDtalk. Cities burning, shops looted, police

seemingly overwhelmed. London and a host of other English cities have

seen the worst outbreak of street violence in a generation. What

prompted these summer riots? How will David Cameron deliver his

promised fightback against what he calls sick elements in British

society? I am joined by a community youth worker turned conservative

politician, Shaun Bailey. A former senior policeman, Peter Power. How

deep is this English malaise? Peter Power, Shaun Bailey, welcome to

HARDtalk. Shaun Bailey, I will start with you. David Cameron calls

what has happened in recent days across England criminality.

Criminality pure and simple. Is it as simple as that? Clearly that is

true. If you look at the random and sporadic nature of the violence. To

say that they are young people who are angry, that is often said. But

what has happened has a lot to do with criminality. That does not

explain why it is happening now. If it is criminality, why would so

many young people decide to act collectively at this particular

time? They are not acting collectively. They are acting in

small groups. I'm a youth worker, I see the Facebook pages, the Twitter

comments, I know what it means for people aged 18 and under. Young

adults are making deliberate calculated actions in small groups.

It is not as complex as the trouble we had in the 1980s. As a top

policeman, you were intimately involved with the police handling

of the Brixton riots one generation ago. Is it fundamentally different

from that? Yes and no. The more things change the more they stay

the same. Some things are different. On the one hand, people are being

very naive saying this is nothing more than aggressive late-night

shopping with the benefit of not paying for anything. Others are

saying, this is an outburst on the basis of being repressed for years.

I see no evidence of the latter. The police are giving them a free

run. That was apparent on the first night of violence. You see it as an

expression of a complete lack of credibility for the British police

force? That is part of it to be honest. There was a very long delay.

People are being fed up with feeling sorry for police officers.

They would rather be proud of them. The lessons from the 80s are not

being learned. I want to talk a lot about the

lessons. Let's begin with something simple. A discussion about who the

rioters, looters, really are. You have worked with a lot of youth in

London. Who do you believe these people are? The vast majority of

British youth are at home watching the television. What you are seeing

here is the result of 20 years of liberal treatment of our youth. We

what a family is... Who is responsible for these young people?

In Britain, the biggest thing I see going on, shing on, shpolice we can

do what we want to do. We are showing the police who is in charge.

It is about confronting authority. That is what the youth do. We have

centralised abuse so far it has been brought out into the public

arena. There are other black community workers, they have a

slightly different perspective. One says: There have been warning signs

for a long time that something like this could happen. To behave in

this manner, young people have to believe they have no stake in their

neighbourhood and consequently no stake in the wider society. He is

pointing to social problems, poverty, as a driver, as a context

in which this is happening? It is not right to talk about this as a

black problem. If you look at this, it is a universal problem. There

are just as many white people as anyone else. The tensions between

the police and the black society are historic. There are communities

that have nothing to do with the black community taking part. To say

that poverty leads to criminality of this type is wrong. These people

have been poor for years. Because of the amount of community groups

involved, this mainly is about criminality. That is interesting.

Talking about your experience in Brixton, there is no question there

was a major race problem in south London during that particular time.

That was a generation ago. Many international media organisations

are still saying that at heart there is a racial tension problem

in London and other big English cities. As a former policeman, do

you think that is wrong? It is slightly off-target. Yes, there has

been a lot of conflict following the Ian Tomlinson inquiry. The

police came out of these inquiries very badly. Institutionally racist.

To go back to the question. You have only got to look at the

occupation of the people. Most people are employed, it is not a

question of property at all. There are university students, there are

youth workers, amazingly today we have one person in the court who is

a primary-school teacher. What does that tell us? One person I was

looking at was convicted and given one day in prison but walked away

free because he spent the night in police custody waiting for trial.

That is not punishment. Primary school teaches are deeply

worrying... I have heard Martin Luther King being mentioned behind

this, it is nonsense. Where do we go with this? If one listens to

what young people are saying, they often refer to free stuff. There

seems to be a materialism and greed about what some people is doing

which I have not heard before. you have a look in the 80s, as it

came to its conclusion, there was a big social problem. We are looking

at the consumerisation of our children. They are breaking into

shops because they have the latest technology. I work with the

children. I am not responsible for them. That is one of the things

wrong in this country. Everything in this country, everyone looks to

the government. What is the government going to do about it? I

ask what are you going to do about it? We need to talk about who is in

charge. Who is responsible? If the parents are not capable of imposing

the ethical codes you are pointing towards, either you write these

children off, they are permanent danger to society, or you have to

come up with different public policies that can turn them around?

All of our public policies concentrate on the children not on

the family unit. Not on the adults. If your child who is ten years-old

or something, it is no longer your concern. We have the biggest youth

population in Europe. In prison. We do not educate our children in

there. We have the moral right to educate for their own good. We do

not. That is the kind of policy that is to change for this country.

I want to talk about the policies you think that could change that. I

want to talk about language a little bit. David Cameron in his

most recent statement said, there are pockets of English, British

society, that are sick. He used this word: Sick. What do you think

is the use of using a word like this? Talking about whole pockets

of Britain as sick. It is a bad thing to use language like this as

a political football for some gain. Some of the language coming out is

about vigilante groups setting up on the street. Protecting their own

properties because they do not believe the police are doing it.

Three young men trying to defend their own property in Birmingham.

That is very worrying. There is a language and emotion behind that,

how much to blame are the media? want to speak about something

peculiarly British about the sickness. You talk about the youth

you work with. The failure of the parents to inculcate values. Let me

read you something from one of Britain's most respected

journalists. Talking of the people doing the looting. They are

essentially wild beasts. They are the product of a culture that gives

them so much they are let off learning how to become human beings.

My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher set of values

that the young rioters we see on the streets. How do you react to

that sort of analysis? If you work with young people, we are so busy...

But we should not be dehumanising them, comparem, comparnfavourably

to dogs. I would not have used those words, but he is referring to

the fact that we have a nation that is split in two parts on these

people. The press, who are all over them, and others, who defend them

at all costs. We need a middle ground. There is a culture of

entitlement. There is a real culture of "I will not get in

trouble." There is a culture. The words that my boys are saying...

If we are talking about poverty, the poverty we are not talking

about is material lack but a poverty of values, ambition and

aspiration and the sense that a person can make something of

themselves. Absolutely. Why is it so prevalent in this country today?

Because we are the most PC nation in the world. We will not say no to

anybody. We will not tell people that they are wrong or force them

to face the consequences of their actions. And we abdicate power.

This is what happens. Those children rioting - and I use the

word children - were just showing you that this is what we do.

catastrophic mistrust in authority. There is such a disbelief in

politicians as well. And you cannot blame people for feeling that way,

sometimes. You have already made the case that the police have got

to be more aggressive and self confident, that they have to show

more leadership and be less restrained. But frankly, the last

20 years of policing have time and again throw up problems where the

police have been too aggressive and the British public does not seem to

like that sort of in-your-face policing. I know what you mean but

policing has always been important. Taking reasonable steps. It is a

definition of proportionate. One problem is that the police force

across the country has a mild version of institutional

schizophrenia in the sense that they do not know if they are a

police service or a police force. A service sounds better and more

politically correct. But as recently as a few months ago, there

was an analysis of how many police forces have tested their

mobilisation plans. Only half. Suddenly, they are all doing it. We

have a problem where we have slipped into the area of social

engineering rather than upholding the law. But Britain has been very

proud in the past of its community consensus in policing techniques.

Now, David Cameron is saying that all bets are off, nothing is off

the table. There is discussion about water cannon, plastic bullets

and so on. I saw one newspaper opinion poll that suggested that

the British public would prefer to see the army on the streets. Is

that the direction you want to take? Firstly about the army, the

police are a scalpel compared to the army. You cannot bring the

soldiers of this country onto the street. That would be a complete

disaster. What I would say is that if the police intend to be more

robust and self confident in their policing, what they need to address

is their communication. The initial incident that sparked these riots

could have been avoided by a few words being said by the police

instead of that clamping down, not putting anything out. If the police

had just said, "Listen, we have had this incident. We are going to

suspend these officers until we go through the evidence" We are

talking about the opening incident when an individual called Mark

Duggan was shot dead by policemen and the family were very upset by

the way the police then tried to explain that. And rightly so. They

have put a bureaucracy in the middle, the IPCC. It needs to be

looked at. One thing we need to say about bringing in the army is that

it is absolute nonsense. Police officers have always had the

authority to use baton rounds and so on. And they have not. Apart

from Northern Ireland, they have not used it. What we are talking

about, what we learnt that Northern Ireland only works when you have

fixed points. But when you look at some of the recommendations, that

worries me. There is a more general point. There is hysteria in the UK

at the moment, a great passion to see security and law and order

restored to our streets and that has led to calls for the police to

be much more proactive. It has also led David Cameron to say that

"phoney concerns" about human rights should not get in the way.

For years, there have been concerns that Britain is one of the most

heavily surveiled societies in the entire world. We have more CCTV

cameras than any other society in the world. Do we want to go further

down that road? Sometimes we tolerate surveillance on the back

of another key threat, which is terrorism. This is different.

People all around the world are wondering what has happened to the

UK? We are now policed by people who look like Darth Vader from Star

Wars. There has been a huge reluctance to do this. But the fear

is, and it is real, that so many senior police officers for so long

have been signed up to the doctrine that use of force is only a last

resort. The proportionate use of force early on - proportionate -

can prevent more prolonged trouble. You do not want to spread the

message that you are enfeebled. Does that not worry you? You work

in some deprived parts of London and if the people you work with it

saw that the police had a new remit to use full force not as a last

resort but as an intermediate resort, that is going to lead to

all sorts of troubles, isn't it? would say that the police leaning

back from using aggressive tactics is always a good thing. Because

that is what damages communities and their relationship with police

in the long-term. But in our current situation, police are

trapped. People say that this community is turning in on itself

and we expect you to deal with it. So, who do they defend? Who do they

go after? There is a balance between private, individual rights

and privacies on the one hand and collective security on the other.

One final point for you, do you believe it is right that police

should assume new powers to intercept the currently encrypted

BlackBerry messenger services that so many people appear to have used?

Would you be happy with this? Short-term fixes lead to long-term

problems. Invading something that in the 21st century we now see as a

right has an element of Big Brother that will not be tolerated. Hasty

legislation does not work. We need cooler heads now and not snap

judgements. This is one of the things that will be discussed by

politicians. But front and centre of those discussions will be what

you have already alluded to, which is how to inculcate a different set

of values, a greater sense of value and responsibility, into young

people. You have suggested there were ways public policy could help

that process. What are they? We have a young set of children who

will be easy to teach. There are older ones who will be more

stubborn. And many with a broken families, so we can forget about

the parents. I don't think we should. We should force these

people to take responsibility. We have a system that from the very

top to the very bottom rewards failure. You are a Conservative. I

imagine you believe in small government, opposing the nanny

state, and here you sit saying that the government in the future has to

force parents to moralise and control their children.

government has got to have a reaction that provides a better

course to take for your children. Currently, not looking after

children has no impact on your life because we will clothe, feed and

reprimand any action they take. That needs to be turned around. We

do not need a large state to do that. But we do need a better

discourse both in the state and in the public. In public, the

discourse is very weak and that needs to change. You have consulted

on the handling of crises. security of the nation is in

question. Boris Johnson has said that specific programme he believes

might work might be making mandatory national community

service for young people. Do you buy into that? It is a typical

Boris Johnson quote. Returning to the point that the security of the

country is in question, I do not think that it is. But people have

lost their businesses. I had thugs running down my own street in west

London and I was calling the police on 999 but they could not answer

and they were too busy and I wanted to know where the security of

Britain was right then! Taken on a national scale, if you put a pin in

a map of the UK and say that this is where the disorder is, in huge

amounts of land, there is no disorder at all. Let us hope it

stays that way. The UK has certain physiological needs in order to

carry on working. We need food and so on. None of that is jeopardised

on a grand scale. But the perception is far worse, perhaps.

Perception. Let us end by thinking about the international perception

of this. Do you think there is something particularly sick about

Britain right now? I think that the word sick is a very powerful word

and it is a good word. Many people in the world will be astonished at

the way we govern ourselves, the way we talk about our children, our

families, the way in which we school children, the way in which

our judicial system works. Most of the world may have an old-fashioned

view of what goes on. They will be surprised by how liberal and PC we

have become. Shaun Bailey and Peter Power, thank you both of you for

Power, thank you both of you for joining me.

The rain in Scotland has been easing off. It has been a very wet

couple of days for central and eastern Scotland. It has been a

very wet month. Over twice the monthly rainfall already. It has

always -- also been a very wet start to the Edinburgh Festival. It

is the western side of the UK that was the most of the rain. It could

be a bright start for the north- east of Scotland. A cloudy start

for the rest of Scotland. Not much rain is falling. It is largely dry

in Northern Ireland but rain is waiting in the wings. Rain and

drizzle in the south-west of Scotland. It is a gloomy start for

Wales and the south-west of England. A lot of low cloud a sitting over

the hills. In the south-east of England it is not so gloomy. Skies

are brighter. The dry weather extends through the Midlands.

Eastern areas of England will see what is left of any sunshine.

Further west there is not much sunshine at all. The cloud is

thickening and we see rain settling-in in Northern Ireland.

Some rain is developing in Wales and western England. Temperatures

18-19 degrees. For the cricket, there will be a lot of cloud. Not

much rain around. We may get some rain in the evening. We will see

rain crossing from west to east as some weather fronts moving from off

the Atlantic. There is a lot of cloud around. Some rain Friday

night into Saturday morning. 14-15 degrees in the south. The weekend

starts off cloudy. The rain will linger across East Anglia and the

south-east all morning. Further west it brightens up. We have a few