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...freedom enables individuals to participate actively in creating their own solutions to community problems; consciously engage in political discourse and influence its outcome; and become flourishing contributors to their own society. Drawing on emotive sentiments following the collapse of the Twin Towers in September 2001, Blunkett described his feeling at being handed a British flag taken from the shattered remains and rubble. America's pain was Blunkett's pain and, as those who follow the home secretary's career are aware, Blunkett insists that his pain is Britain's pain.
There will be little disagreement with David Blunkett over the importance of citizenship, and there will be even less disagreement with his view that citizenship is a challenging term to contextualise. Yet when he goes on to discuss programmes of 'active citizenship' and how to instil the codes of individual responsibility--'responsibilisation' (1)--then it behoves us to be wary, for it is from this vantage point that we can begin to comprehend the nature of the citizenship that is under discussion. The home secretary took it for granted that his American audience understood the nature of the citizenship that he was talking about since it was based on a framework of core values that, he explained, the people of the United States are already familiar with. At their best, he argued, these values result in a society, cohered by an American identity, under which 'communities flourish', where there is a 'culture of self-help', where individuals are supported and equipped with necessary skills and assets. This, he explained, is 'the type of truly free society we should be seeking to build'. (2)
It is by no means surprising that the home secretary should assume his audience's familiarity with this type of articulation of citizenship values. The predominant New Labour orthodoxy has drawn frequently from American ideals of communitarianism which are vastly influential within American political thought and unquestionably favoured by New Labour policies. Such policies attempt to formulate an interdependent relationship between individual responsibilities, on the one hand, and the obligation of the state to 'extend opportunities', on the other. (3) Academically led by Professor Amitai Etzioni, communitarianism calls for the imposition of a dominant moral order that encompasses and frames the actions and voices of communities. In turn, the individual is expected to realign his or her allegiance and personal value system so that it accords with the moral commitments expressed and enacted by these same communities. According to Etzioni:
As our moral order is shored up, we need to concern ourselves with the civic order. Individuals' rights are to be matched with social responsibilities. If people want to be tried before juries of their social peers, they must be willing to serve on them ... We need to remind one another that no rights are absolute. (4)
While 'community' is undoubtedly a term of paramount importance in New Labour's political rhetoric, it is difficult to trace just how it has become part of the rhetoric of political ideology. Community has always been a highly theorised notion in political discourse. (5) Under New Labour's 'take' on Etzioni, it has, however, been used as a bridge between the concept of citizenship (and its obligations) and ever-widening notions of criminality. It is to the latter issue that this paper is addressed. First, however, we need to look at the ways that 'community' and 'criminality' have come to be paired.
From community cohesion to cohesive criminalisation
The ideological joining of 'community' and 'criminality' cannot, in Britain, be considered without taking into account notions of race. But 'race' is not a term that exists in social or structural isolation; nor is 'race', or our perceptions of it, static. In Gilroy's words:
'Race' has to be socially and politically constructed and elaborate ideological work is done to secure and maintain the different forms of 'racialisation' which have characterised capitalist development. Recognising this makes it all the more important to compare and evaluate different historical situations in which 'race' has become politically pertinent. (6)
It is within this recognition of 'race' as a fluid concept, on which is mounted a continuous strategy of criminalising legislation, that we need to understand the 'cohesive citizenship' at the heart of New Labour domestic policy. We need to recognise how New Labour's reliance upon emotive sentiment or emotionalism legitimises an extension of state governance, the practice of which both alienates and stigmatises those against whom it is targeted.
Northern uprisings
The summer of 2001 bore witness to the frustrated anger of a generation of marginalised Asian youth, which manifested itself in the 'riots' (uprisings) of northern towns and cities. Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, among others, became backdrops for scenes of embittered violence in which white and Asian men battled in the streets, while the police followed their own agenda, of control. The tabloid coverage was instant and ferocious. The Sun gleefully highlighted CCTV footage from Bradford of Asian 'yobs' attacking a lone white male and emphasised the dignity of police heroism in the face of mindless aggression. (7) The Daily Mirror chose to take a more 'rational' perspective, condensing a history of tension and structural isolation into one simplistic interpretation. The fault, it held, lay with the bigoted formalities of family life in the city because of which different communities bred mutual intolerance. Furthermore, it was suggested that where 'multiethnic and multi-racial' policies had failed, 'mad Mullahs' had capitalised, manipulating ongoing religious feuds. (8)
That both these accounts agree in apportioning blame to the Asian communities is not surprising. Almost all such tabloid narratives tend towards populist hysteria. (9) But underlying such hysteria is an identification with a particular theoretical and ideological concept of nationhood; one that supports a view of citizenship that relies upon the criminalisation of communities. It is a historical 'reading' of the nation and the citizen that, by its very nature, seeks to exclude those assumed to be 'criminogenic', whilst upholding those perceived to be 'law-abiding'.
What is particularly interesting here is that a significant proportion of the individuals directly involved in the violent summer of 2001 shared one common factor: they were young males a social group that has long been linked in the public mind with crime and deviance and has grown used to being cast as the 'archetypal offender'. Of course, this is not necessarily linked to racialisation. Simply 'being' male youth and being associated with a particular youth culture can, in certain contexts, be enough to incur aggressive state regulation. As Cohen argued over thirty years ago:
One...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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