A Frightened Society
Last week we took our granddaughter to a play park in Leominster, there were quite a few people there, which was good to see. As we entered the play area we noticed, amidst the small children and on looking adults, four teenaged boys playing on the swings designed for infants. The boys were pushing the swings as hard as they could in an attempt to wrap the chains and chairs of the swings over the bar from which they hung. Comments from other adults we spoke to as we walked towards the swings indicated an irritation at their behaviour, but a total lack of inclination to do anything about it.

As I approached the boys to reason with them, one comment made to my wife was “if you try to stop them they will probably pull a knife on you”. The response I got from the teenage boys was a silent insolence until one of them claimed that he only wanted to play on the swings. There was a momentary lull in there behaviour, but as I walked away they resumed their activity. I sat looking at them and heard one of them say “that old guy is still watching us” and then almost as an act of defiance they turned their attention to the big swings and attempted to wrap them over the cross bar; having achieved their goal left the play park.

I was not so much surprised at the behaviour of the boys, their mischief and response to me was probably typical of my own generation at their age; what was so disappointing was the attitude of the adults in the park. Over a dozen adults in the park, mature men and women their mid twenties and upwards and all disinclined to admonish a group of boys who were in effect preventing their own children/grandchildr
en from making use of the very equipment designed for the infants they had brought to the park.

Subsequent conversations with a few of the adults in the park at the time, seemed to reflect a fear that exists in our society, a fear that if we intervene, we are likely to suffer violence at the hands of the perpetrators or that by attempting to uphold standards of ‘sociable behaviour’ we are not fully supported by those public servants that are funded through our taxation system. We appear to exist in a world where minority groups have precedence, where mitigating circumstances are sought as a means of excusing wrong doing, where sentencing judgements are made on the basis of long term costs and there appears to be no obvious or effective deterrents for antisocial behaviour. The silent majority are left to ponder where they stand on the subject of social responsibility; do we stand together and act as responsible citizens or do we do as those in the play park did and look away from what we know to be wrong?