Fiona Pilkington: politicians must 'think again' says Frank Field

The case of Fiona Pilkington shows that politicians must think again in the struggle against anti-social behaviour, suggests Frank Field.

Anti-social behaviour, cruelly, has come of age, says Frank Field, writing in the Daily Telegraph. "The Prime Minister was right in his conference speech on Tuesday to focus on the 50,000 feral families who are ruthlessly destroying what was once Britain's peaceful kingdom. The public was right to be sickened by the outcome of the little thugs' sustained campaign against Fiona Pilkington and her family. The worry Gordon Brown must have is whether anyone believes he has a solution."

The public, says Field, is entitled to ask why, if crisis moves are required now, the Government didn't act sooner to counter the hothouse in which neighbours from hell are so easily bred. "After all, if the defence offered up over the banking crisis is that no one saw it coming, the same cannot be said in relation to anti-social behaviour. There was plenty of evidence that lives were being destroyed long before poor Mrs Pilkington set her car alight. 

"I was part of the discussion in the 1990s when Labour was formulating a strategy to counter the collapse of decent behaviour. Ministers went down the route of Asbos; I argued, in contrast, that the local bobby should be given the role of surrogate parent, with powers to impose immediate sanctions. Many disorders would thereby have been nipped in the bud. Anti-social behaviour remains an issue we have failed properly to address. Politicians must now rethink the struggle against this blight. Our first move must be to confront and nail the fatalistic big lie that "there has always been trouble" – that is true, to a point, but that trouble used to be spasmodic and exceptional. Proponents of the big lie also claim that people like me, who decry the loss of our once safe kingdom, and want it restored, are escapists retreating into an imaginary past. Nothing serious will be achieved unless we defeat this argument..."

To read the full article from the Daily Telegraph, click here