View from the Bridge: 55
by John Morrison
Contents
Combine a morbid imagination, a flawed view of risk assessment and a paranoia fuelled
by watching too many episodes of Crimewatch... and you've got an Identikit picture
of Mr and Mrs Middle England at the fag-end of the millennium. They've been led to
believe that violence is something that happens - routinely, randomly and explosively
- on our city streets. They lock their doors every night, switch on their burglar
alarms and pull their duvets apprehensively up to their chins. Sleep doesn't come
easily to the fearful. They hope they'll survive till morning without having their throats cut
from ear to ear, but they expect the worst.
The mad axeman, lurking in the shadows for his unwary victims, is a familiar template
for demonic violence. Gangs of kids, high on crack and way out of control, roam the
means streets of the nation's overactive imaginations, prepared to bludgeon little
old ladies to death to fund their spiralling drug habits. Men with khaki fatigues, staring
eyes and a grudge against society are loading pump-action rifles, before heading
off to rake a crowded shopping mall with bullets. Or so the sensation-seeking press
would have us believe. These cultural stereotypes help to create a conveniently supine
electorate, too frightened of spectres and bogey-men to start the revolution. As
long as they're worried about having their purse nicked, they won't be manning the
barricades.
An Englishman's home isn't so much a castle... as a prison. Mothers keep their children
in; old folk are frightened to venture out at night. We've traded in our precious
liberty for what we fondly imagine is the safety of our own homes.
The truth, alas, is that our homes are probably the most dangerous places we will
ever visit. It's here, behind those locked doors, that we are most likely to encounter
violence, perpetrated by the people we know best: the very people who have promised
to love and protect us. The locks that keep the burglars out also give protection and
impunity to domestic tyrants, wife-beaters and child-abusers. The inescapable conclusion is that if you are walking late at night down a dark alley, and hear footsteps behind you... best hope it's a total stranger and
not someone you know.
Milltown, thankfully, doesn't have a big problem with crime. With everybody knowing
just about everybody else, most robberies culminate with a red-faced burglar returning
a bin-bag of valuables with an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders and the offer of
a conciliatory pint. OK, we have our fair share of roughnecks, shysters and ne'er-do-wells,
but they mostly drink out of harm's way, at the Grievous Bodily Arms, where the people
most at risk from their crazed outbursts are each other.
Instead of celebrity felons, with their mobile phones, business cards and web-sites,
Milltown just has a handful of incompetent losers. To talk of a 'criminal fraternity'
makes it all sound rather cosy: a friendly freemasonry of light-fingered gentlemen,
with members' ties and special handshakes. But it's not like that here. The regulars
at the Grievous Bodily Arms have no need of funny handshakes; an arm twisted sharply
up the back is all that's needed to engage the attention of a fellow drinker for
a few eye-watering moments.
On most nights of the week they will be huddled around a corner table, planning some
new scam. But, in truth, it's pretty tame stuff. Selling contraband snuff, forging
library tickets, rustling geese and organising protection rackets ("That's a lovely
front yard you've got there; I'm sure you'd like it to stay that way...") represents the
height of their criminal ambitions.
The young folk of Milltown know better; they don't want to follow in the footsteps
of their fathers. Thanks to a series of evening classes about digital technology,
they are turning their backs on pointless and petty street-crime to concentrate on
more rewarding areas of opportunity, such as computer fraud.
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