PM blames socialism for crime: Labour rejects Major attack on urban roots of violence as hypocrisy

JOHN MAJOR last night blamed socialism for vandalism and violent crime in Britain's inner cities.

In a keynote speech to the Carlton Club in St James's Street, London, the Prime Minister said he wanted to bring dignity, security, independence and respect within the grasp of every citizen in the 1990s.

Mr Major also raised the possibility of the unemployed being required to do some kind of community service in return for their benefit. 'I increasingly wonder whether paying unemployment benefit, without offering or requiring any activity in return, serves unemployed people or society well.'

That passage provoked Donald Dewar, Labour's social security spokesman, to comment: 'What the unemployed want is work and new skills. What is unacceptable is workfare by any name.'

But the theme to which the Prime Minister returned repeatedly during his speech to the Tory club was crime and its roots. Contrasting the impact of the free market and socialism on communities, Mr Major said 'the big problem' was in the inner cities, rather than the suburbs, small towns and villages. 'It is from the inner cities, where the state is dominant, that businesses have fled. It is in the inner cities that vandalism is rife and property uncared for. It is here that fear of violent crime makes a misery of old people's lives.'

Labour, he added, sought to explain the difference between the inner cities and the more peaceful and prosperous suburbs, towns and villages in terms of wealth and poverty. But the Prime Minister condemned that as an insult 'to those families who may face all the problems of unemployment and yet do not resort to crime'.

'Socialism must face up to its failures. It must recognise the harsh truth that it is where, over many years, the state has intervened most heavily, that local communities have been most effectively destroyed.'

But John Smith, the Labour leader, said the Conservatives had been in office since 1979 and had provided neither protection nor prevention to the people.

Tony Blair, Labour's home affairs spokesman, said: 'After 14 years of the most abject failure on crime, to attempt to smear the Labour Party, and blame it for rising crime, is an act of breathtaking hypocrisy.

'He is also mistaken in suggesting that crime is confined to the inner cities. Indeed some of the areas where crime is increasing most are the very suburbs and towns to which he is referring.'

Mr Major appeared to accept that point later in his speech, saying: 'In our cities - yes, and in our countryside, too - we need to counterattack the twin problems of crime and the fear of crime.

'The crucial test of our police forces is their ability to deliver what the citizen wants: safety on our streets and security in their homes. Change is needed, and the best of our policemen know it. But they also need co-operation: from the citizen, industry, local government. And the courts must have the powers they need.

'In particular, I believe, we need new powers to take persistent young offenders off the streets and into secure accommodation where they can be taught and trained for a useful future.'

But Mr Major also conceded that punishment alone was not enough. It was inevitable, he said, that old assumptions about order and social cohesion should be breaking down. He warned: 'There is a concern that respect for other people is disappearing: respect for what they achieve, respect for their property - yes, and their privacy, too.'

However, he added: 'Just because we can no longer hope to enforce good behaviour by simple threats of hell-fire, I do not think we are debarred from talking of right and wrong.

'The definition of what is criminal changes from generation to generation. But our attitude to crime should not change. We must make that clear, in particular, to those youngsters in danger of settling into a life of persistent crime and intermittent punishment.'

Mr Smith told Channel 4 News it was right Mr Major should address crime: 'It's gone up by 50 per cent in the last three years. We have a large problem of crime after 14 years of Conservative government. It has reached intolerable levels in some areas.

'But what he ought to be tackling, and what the people need, is protection and prevention - and that means better policing on the beat, in our villages, in our towns, paying proper attention to that.'

Workfare accusation, page 4

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