VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

HL Deb 12 February 1969 vol 299 cc422-570

2.49 p.m.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY rose to call attention to the dangers of violence in contemporary society; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I do so with a diffidence that comes entirely from a doubt of my own competence and not in the least from doubts as to the importance or topicality of the subject. While it may possibly be true that we have less violence in Great Britain than other countries have, I also believe, for reasons that I will explain, that we stand to lose more from it.

I hope that noble Lords will approve my action in drafting the Motion widely in the hope that the debate may range freely over what is unquestionably an extensive and varied subject. The number and distinction of noble Lords who have thought it worth while to put their names on the list at once promise a long and authoritative debate and cast me into a certain perplexity as to what my function should be in initiating it. I have concluded that it should be to sketch in a kind of backdrop against which others may speak their parts and, in so doing, let fall perhaps—who knows?—a clue or two which others may feel disposed to pick up, and to waste no time in preliminaries.

In using the term "dangers of violence in contemporary society", I personally am thinking of violence in times of peace; and, in all conscience, the catalogue is long enough. What is more disturbing is the number of items in the catalogue which are new, or comparatively new, or new in form. Ordinary hooliganism I pass over with no more than a word as being a permanent nuisance, though constantly changeable in form. Other noble Lords may perhaps touch upon that subject later. More serious than random hooliganism, because more deep-rooted, is gang warfare in those cities where it occurs, for here we have organised violence for its own sake bred upon a hotbed of social evil. I ask your Lordships to listen to these words: If I see a boy looking at me in a way I don't like I hit him, with a bottle and whatever I've got… You live with a gang and you die with a gang. I'm taking that risk myself. If I go with a gang I may end up with a knife in my stomach; I know that.

Those are the words of a boy of 16 or thereabouts in Glasgow. It may be merely tough talk—I do not know—but at least it represents an attitude of mind.

I turn to crimes of violence. In the Criminal Statistics Report (Cmnd. 3689) there appears, near the beginning, a graph of great significance showing the number of indictable offences known to the police during the years 1950 to 1967. Of all the lines representing different classes of crime—and there are six altogether—it is noticeable that the graph representing violence against the person not only climbs more steeply than any of the others, but is also the only one in all those 17 years which has climbed consistently every year. In this morning's Hansard, in cols. 408 to 412, there appear some highly relevant statistics concerning crimes of violence in sample years 1950, 1960 and 1967. I certainly will not give a detailed analysis of the figures since it would take up too much time, and furthermore my arithmetic is not particularly good, but a sample abstraction or two may perhaps prove illuminating. For example, in England and Wales over the 17 year period covered the number of indictable offences against the person known to the police increased at an average rate of 16 or 17 per cent. per year. Of all persons found guilty of violence against the person, in 1950 one-quarter of the total number were under 21; in 1960 about three-quarters of the total number were under 21, and in 1967 rather less, some 64 per cent.—from which it appears that something like two-thirds of all such crimes are committed by persons of under 21 years of age.

THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM)

My Lords, the noble Lord said that his arithmetic was not very reliable. I should like him to look at his figures again because, although the figures of crimes committed by persons under 21 are large and have increased, they are nothing like the percentage he mentioned. The figures are 40 per cent. and 39 per cent.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. I stand corrected. I am quite certain that my arithmetic is at fault, and I hope noble Lords will accept the figure I have given, whether right or wrong, as merely an indication that crime has increased to a rather alarming extent.

In Scotland, murders, attempted murders, culpable homicides and assaults known to the police increased in the first ten years by 120 per cent. and in the last seven years by 150 per cent., while the somewhat striking fact emerges that among convicted persons in England and Wales the population of under-21s in the total is a very great deal more than is the case in Scotland—I nearly said twice as great, but if I did I should invite another correction from the noble Lord.

I should enter two caveats. I have already entered one caveat to the effect that my arithmetic is my own—a point which we have disposed of. The other is that the figures are not in every case comparable. However, I think that they give the general impression I desire. It may perhaps be informative to add, from information that I have from Scotland Yard, that in the Metropolitan Police area in 1968 there was an increase of only 1.7 per cent. in all offences against the person and of 3.3 per cent. in offences of wounding and assault; while they claim a clear-up rate of 73 per cent., which is well over 10 per cent. higher than that in the country as a whole. In London, it seems, there is a particularly high risk of being caught—the great deterrent.

There is no comfort in these statistics. What of certain types of assault that lie hidden within them? Attacks, sometimes lethal, on elderly postmistresses or on lonely and defenceless old men? And sexual assaults on children? Am I not. right in thinking that we read of such horrors more often than we did? Unfortunately, it seems that there are no figures for crimes involving the use of firearms available before 1967, which I find rather surprising. They come lumped in under indictable offences simply along with such items as "Shooting at revenue vessels" and "Impeding the saving of life from shipwreck". I think it would be a good idea if we had more information as to the increase in the use of firearms. I suggest that this is a new and ugly feature of our times, for the criminal used never to carry a gun. Why then does he do so now? Is it because the risk is less than it used to be? I think that that may be the case.

The suspension of the death penalty for murder may or may not have resulted in an increase in murder; the graph suggests that perhaps it has done so, but we do not yet know since it is too early to tell. But is it not possible that by reducing the risk attending an accidental or unpremeditated killing, it may have made the carrying of a loaded firearm seem more worth while? I suggest that the possibility at least is one that should be examined and, with it, the wisdom or otherwise of increasing the penalties for illegally bearing arms. There are, of course, also other weapons, notably ammonia, which is a weapon of indiscriminate and unspeakable cruelty.

I turn now to deal with student violence. This in Britain is something new; so new that universities and colleges are, generally speaking, at a loss to cope with it—with notable exceptions such as, for example, Bradford and Queen's University, Belfast—yes, Belfast! I refer in particular to violence within the universities, and here I think it is reasonable to include as violence the type of activity which its practitioners sometimes describe as non-violence—that is to say, the physical occupation of premises in order to deny them to others, including other students. The most spectacular instance of all so far, involving revolutionary and even anarchial behaviour, is, I suppose, that of the London School of Political Science. I use the second half of the full name of the London School of Economics in order to remind your Lordships of just what it is that is supposed to be learnt in this now sadly humiliated and discredited institution. I have no wish to dwell on this particular case, but it may be apposite to remember what the trouble is all about. Basically it is against Dr. Walter Adams, the Director, as an alleged racialist. Dr. Adams is known to be a dedicated opponent of racial discrimination, so that the first casualty in this campaign is, as so often, truth.

The question that I should like to ask here is this. What is the part played by, and what is the background of, students from overseas, particularly from the United States of America? Who are these students? Are they militant Marcusians? From what universities or colleges do they come, and what were their activities while they were there? Finally—and I put this question to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham—is there any good reason why the Home Secretary should not immediately expel foreign visitors who come here and "kick up hell" at the expense of British students and their seats of learning?

There is a question of law—and this may be worth investigation—which has to do with the law of trespass. For as things are it is impossible for any foundation to call upon the police for assistance, except in cases of assault or damage. Would it be advisable to consider whether or not the law should be amended, so that such institutions should be allowed to call in the police in other circumstances for their own assistance? I simply ask this question without coupling it with any advocacy or opposition of any sort.

In surveying the university scene—and, I freely admit, surveying it from outside—I am troubled by one phenomenon above all others; the systematic use of violence to stifle freedom of speech. It it not confined to universities. Have we not had Paisleys in St. Pauls? But a university exists for the free interchange of thought and opinion, and it is therefore the last place where we should expect to find militant intolerance appearing. In my view, revolutionary-anarchical activities are in the long run less deeply ominous than the systematic (I use the sinister word again) denial of the right to speak and to be heard. To quote Mr. Maurice Edelman, writing last month in the Daily Express The right to be wrong is part of democracy and to stifle the dissenter is to play the game of its enemies. Each time Enoch Powell is shouted down by a student mob, democracy loses a round. And so, I may add, does the ordinary discipline of manners.

We have good reason to be on our guard. Some complain that the noisy minority attract far too much publicity, while the quiet majority go unremarked; and, consequently, that the mass media would serve the public interest better by ignoring the noisy ones. I sympathise heartily with that view, but I also dissent from it: for these matters are important, and in focusing attention on them the Press and television are performing one of the functions which we chiefly value—that of the public watchdog. I leave this matter now but I shall return to it shortly.

"No man is an Island", said Donne. He might add now that "no island is an island either. There are deep tides flowing in the world, tides which, so far from being deflected from our shores by the waves of the sea, are brought surging in upon us by the waves of the air. Thus, whenever violence breaks out anywhere in the world, we are likely to know about it immediately, and even to see its effects or the thing itself, especially on the television screen. Race riots in the United States, student riots in Paris, Tokyo or Mexico City—all these are presented to us, often as they actually occur, as part of our daily experience mixed in with the evening ration of entertainment. Thanks to the sheer speed and efficiency of communications, we thus have world causes operating by example towards an increase in certain forms of violence in Britain, and I do not see that we have any protection against them. What is more, the full force of propaganda by satellite is yet to fall upon us.

What have we as domestic seeds of violence, for which we can hardly put the blame on foreigners? We have the so-called "permissive society" which perhaps most people think of as being permissive in matters of sex. Personally, I think it is permissiveness in something rather more dangerous—the mass of writing designed to be read or to be acted that has been well described as the pornography of violence. The word is not perfectly accurate, because pornography means writing about harlots and their activities, but it is near enough, since no one will doubt that violence can be, and very often is, obscene. We remember the flood of horror comics. How completely has it been stemmed, I wonder.

For more "adult" reading, look around some of the little book shops within a mile or two of here, and see if you will not find paperbacks and magazines that rely for their effect and their popularity on violence in its obscener forms. Would anyone seriously argue that this kind of thing has no harmful effect? If so, I refer him to but one example—the effect that it is known to have had on Ian Brady, the murderer in the "Moors" case. It might be interesting to know whether the Home Office have any particular views on the type of obscene literature that deals ostensibly with violence rather than with sex, and perhaps the Minister may have a word to say on this.

As part of the general climate of violence, we have the example of Governments—not this Government, particularly, but Governments—which regard the selling of weapons of death to all and sundry as not merely legitimate trading but vital to the economy. This is perhaps the supreme manifestation of irreligious materialism, which tends to respect the man with money without inquiring too closely into how he got it. Some will attribute our troubles to easy money and too much leisure at an early age, some to bad upbringing, meaning lack of discipline in the home. Some will find signicance, as I do myself, in the fact that anyone in his early twenties was probably brought up as a child in a home in which "fiddling" the rations and such things were openly talked of as normal and in no way dishonourable. Such things as these, of course, do not necessarily lead to violence, but they do tend towards a disrespect for other people's rights and property, and from there it is but a step to the top of the slippery slope. Bad social conditions in overcrowded towns unquestionably breed violence. So does a shortage of healthy outlets for surplus energy, such as that deeply to be regretted compulsory National Service.

And what are we to say about television? Some are convinced that the portrayal of violence in television programmes is harmful, particularly in plays and particularly to children, while others say that it is cathartic in effect, providing a vicarious release from the rougher instincts and therefore actually beneficial. It is an old and continuing debate in—to quote some words of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, in a letter that he was kind enough to write to me on the subject— an area in which there is so much assertion and so little proof". As Chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation, he pleads for more research. For the Independent Television Authority, the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, has expressed a similar view. It is our misfortune that I believe these two noble Lords are precluded by the Addison Rules from taking part in this debate.

It is not that there has been no research. There has been plenty of it and it goes on both here and abroad. As long ago as 1961 the Television Research Committee was set up with the support of funds provided by the I.T.A. I understand that the Final Report of this Committee is expected in March and, in the meantime, the B.B.C. are—again in the words of their Chairman— in the process of putting together the available evidence and considering what steps might usefully be taken next to extend our knowledge". I take it that the I.T.A. are proceeding along similar lines. This is a Home Office Committee, however, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will be able to shed a little helpful light upon that subject.

Myself, I am rather more concerned about another possible effect of violence on the television screen; the effect not of plays but of news reporting, and not only upon children or adolescents or the over-impressionable, but on us al. We have seen murder, we have seen executions, we have seen mob violence and police brutality. We see horrors and we see war—not fictitious, but the real things. I ask a blunt question and I wonder whether anyone can answer it—I certainly cannot. By presenting the world's horrors to us, is television doing us a great service or is it committing an offence against humanity?

Perhaps, that requires a little explanation. My Lords, we witness heartrending scenes of, let us say, suffering in Vietnam or Biafra, and I suppose that each succeeding one shocks us fractionally less than the one before. Familiarity dulls the edge of the knife. What I want to know is this: which of two possible reactions does this repetition of horror pictures induce in you, in me, in all of us—compassion or indifference? If compassion, then the effect is good; but if indifference then we are in great danger, both moral and physical, because it means we come to accept the evils that we see and our will to fight for their prevention is undermined. This seems to me a greater peril, because it is more insidious and more widely effective, than any that might come from television plays. As a kind of footnote, I might draw the attention of those noble Lords who are interested to what is happening in this way in America, as represented by Mr. Milton Shulman in these last few days in the Evening Standard.

Less abstruse is the question of preventing violent crime. As things are going, it seems likely that before long the police will have to be either increased or armed, as they are now greatly under strength: or, if they are not armed, at least equipped with such things as water cannon, tear-gas, riot shields, visors, respirators and the like. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Mansfield has already, put down a Question for Written Answer concerning the desirability or otherwise of these very things. If that is what the police want, perhaps they ought to have them, but personally I feel it would be a calamity, although I must say I have wondered for years why on earth a policeman cannot have a serviceable chin-strap to keep his helmet from being knocked off.

I know about financial and economic stringency and the difficulty of balancing priority against priority where public expenditure is concerned, but I question whether defence—and the police are our defence at home—should have to compete for priorities at all. We may talk about cutting our coat according to our cloth, but should it not be the first business of Government to see that we have a cuirass of finest proof to protect the coat, when we finally cut it, from being rent by sword-cuts and bullet-holes? The police are our cuirass, and I suggest that argument about priorities ought not to begin, even, until their minimum requirement for our safety has been met. I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, can tell us whether, since our last debate on this thorny subject, the Government have had any further thoughts on the matter of strengthening the police.

My Lords, the immediate reaction to the words "dangers of violence in contemporary society" is most likely different in every one of us, as I expect we shall see as the debate unfolds. To me, the dangers which cause the most unease are not the obvious and immediate ones, such as hooliganism or armed robbery. They are two in number. I have touched on them both already, and they are both ones as to which it lies within the power of society to make sure that they never materialise. The first is the forcible denial of the freedom to express opinion. Let us not underrate this, my Lords, and let us not airily dismiss its practitioners as a noisy minority. All dangerous movements begin as minorities, usually noisy. Indeed, some continue as minorities right up to the very end, the classical example of that being the Nazi Party in Germany. They who do these things to us are not hooligans: they are students, soon to become persons of responsibility. They tend to be "intellectuals"—a deadly word—and might throw up a leader who would co-ordinate them and turn them into something resembling the nucleus of a latter-day British Union of Fascists.

I mention that unpleasing phenomenon for two reasons: first, because the Mosleyites used the Nazi technique of provoking violent reaction in their opponents in order to stamp on it with greater violence, while pretending that they were doing so in defence of their own freedom of speech—and that could be tried again; and, secondly, because so many of those who knew what happened at that time have since then somehow managed to forget. When Sir Oswald Mosley published his autobiography recently, many who ought to have known better—who had known better forty years ago—committed themselves to print in support of the myth that the innocent Black-shirts had been unfairly misunderstood. Fortunately, there were some at hand to set the matter right—notably, to name but three, Mr. Bernard Levin, who was too young to remember what happened but took the trouble to find out; the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, who knew because he reported it at the time and who, if he were not in the United States, I am sure would be speaking in this debate this afternoon; and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, himself, who wrote a reminiscent protest of great power which must have impressed profoundly all who had the good fortune to read it.

My Lords, we should do well to bear in mind, I suggest, the oft misquoted words of John Philpot Curran: The condition on which God has given liberty to men is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. To me, the greatest danger of all is this: that we should cease to see that antisocial violence is an affront to God and man—the danger of acceptance.

I demur to Mr. Dean Acheson's pronouncement that Britain has not yet found a role. We may have lost sight of it temporarily, but a role we certainly have, and it has long been recognised by others. I cannot define it better than it has been defined already by one of the youngest Members of your Lordships' House. In the course of a notable maiden speech in the debate on the White Paper on House of Lords Reform, my noble friend Lord Gowrie said this: … what I feel—and I believe that I feel it as passionately as any of your Lordships—is that the greatest, the supreme, contribution that Britain can make in foreign affairs to-day is to be discovered in the continuing stability of her political institutions at home, and in the courtesy and lack of violence with which she conducts her own often difficult and very contentious affairs".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20/11/68; col. 886.] "Courtesy and lack of violence"—these are hallmarks of civilisation; banners under which Britain, of all nations, can lead the world by sheer force of example. That, my Lords, is our role.

At this point—and it is my last—I make no apology for referring once more to the police. A country's police, I submit, provide a remarkably accurate reflection of the country itself, its national attitudes and characteristics. Not wishing to give offence to our friends abroad, I give no examples, but cast a mental eye round the world at recent police activities, and I think your Lordships will see what I mean. Then, having done that, recall the scene in Grosvenor Square on October 27 last, and once again I think you will see what I mean. There, represented by the Metropolitan Police, stood the British people for all the world to see. Thanks to the television, the world did see, and I have no doubt that the lesson was not lost. I think it can be said that no other police force in the world could have handled that situation without bloodshed and emerged from it with enhanced prestige. Let us see that the lesson is not lost at home, and see to it that the world looks to us in the future, as in the past, as a nation resolute, efficient, calm, relying not upon weapons but upon good manners and restraint. That is our role, and as long as we remain true to it our place is fixed among the great nations of the earth. Let violence in, and we sink down among the disregarded and the second-rate; and I do not think the rest of the civilised world would, or should, forgive us. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.20 p.m.

LORD BYERS

My Lords, the House is deeply indebted to the noble Earl who has just spoken for initiating this debate on a topical and important subject and for doing so with a great deal of restraint. I suspect that I am not the only Member of your Lordships' House who finds it singularly difficult to find his way through the annual statistics on crime and to discover the truth. I think that the noble Earl proved that you can do anything with figures whether your arithmetic is good or bad. In fact, the headlines in the newspapers recently were more than confusing—some of them in the same paper: "New spurt in crime figures"; "Crime rise lowest in 10 years"; Lowest increase in crime since 1955"; "Provincial crime rate soaring" "First fall in London crime since 1954"; "More cases of violence"; and so it goes on. I am not clear what we are meant to deduce from this as a true picture of crime in our society to-day. I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who is to reply to the Government, could tell us simply what is really happening in this field.

I should like to make my own position quite clear. In so far as there has been a serious, genuine increase in crimes of violence, this is certainly to be deplored; but before we jump to regressive and panic conclusions and regressive measures—which may well be suggested later on in the debate—I hope that we in this House will try to get this picture into the right perspective. No one can be complacent and crime must be suitably punished; but what is important is to encourage as much research as possible into the reasons why certain types of crime, and particularly crimes of violence, are in fact committed. Work done by the Cambridge institute of Criminology, by Dr. MacLintock and others, is beginning to put a new complexion on some of the traditional ideas about causes and remedies. This is not a field in which generalisation helps very much. It is more a question of patient analysis of individual situations to see what conclusions, if any, can be drawn.

It used to be thought that Londoners were more prone to crimes of violence than others. This, apparently, is now untrue. Indeed, the Provinces seem to have a bigger problem than the metropolis. The age group most responsible for violence is fairly clearly defined as the 17 to 21 year-olds with the 14 to 17 teenagers running second. This is no surprise, but it prompts the question: Why is this so? Again, an analysis done in London in the early 1960s showed that one-third of crimes of violence arose from domestic quarrels and one-third from street attacks—two very different circumstances, not necessarily amenable to the same remedies or punishments. Under this study, apparently only 2 per cent. of all crime involved firearms.

No doubt the noble Lord will say something as to whether there has been a genuine serious increase in the use of firearms in crimes of violence. In four out of five cases it was the first time that the offender had committed a crime of violence, but nearly half the offenders had previous convictions for something else. This must mean that there is a field for tremendous research before one can draw any generalised conclusions. When we talk about crime we tend to forget that about 60 per cent. of the statistics relate to traffic offences and that only about 2 per cent. are really crimes of violence. The rate for murder is less than four murders per million of the population. We should be grateful that we do not have anything like the incidence of violence that they have in the United States. There were more homicides in 1967 on Manhattan Island, with a population of just under 2 million, than in the whole of England and Wales. I hope that we shall not have demands for reintroducing capital punishment with every fluctuation in the annual murder rate. I agree with the Home Secretary that it is far too early to draw conclusions; and I think that that was the conclusion of the noble Earl who initiated the debate.

My Lords, the truth is that the majority of murderers suffer from abnormal mental strain or disorder. One-third of them, I believe, commit suicide before arrest; one-third are found to be insane or of diminished responsibility, and only the remainder are sentenced on what is regarded at that point as being normal—though some of these are later discovered to be seriously disordered. The act, in fact, is seldom premeditated; it is usually the result of a sudden flare-up. I hope that we shall keep this question of crimes of violence well in perspective. I need say no more on this because the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, are far better versed in this than I am.

I had not intended in this speech to deal with the matter of students, but the noble Earl has led me to do so. Student violence is not, in my view, a crime of violence; it is occasionally accompanied by violence. But my plea is that we should stop this wholesale condemnation of the student movement. The vast majority of students are absolutely first-class citizens. There is a very small militant minority—very small indeed—who are out to destroy the university system. The worrying thing to me—and I have talked to many people about it—is that they have nothing with which to replace it. I am thinking of the very serious nucleus, the militants. They say that their philosophy is to destroy the university system and then to see what emerges. They say that they do not know what will emerge but that it will be better than the present system.

These people, if they are carrying out their militant actions to the point where they are preventing the rest of the students from getting on with their work, should be sent down—and they should be sent down through a proper system of discipline which has the confidence of the student body, so that it is not just the Establishment sending them down. This is where the universities must reorganise the whole of their disciplinary system so that it has behind it the sanction of the student force. There is a vast number of students who are absolutely fed up with the stuffiness of the university Establishment; and these are the people who are normally moderates but who will join the militants if their grievances are not attended to and remedied, or if it appears that a great deal of injustice is being done to students by the Establishment of that university. Most of the grievances, the world over, when they are analysed, are found to be pretty reasonable ones. Certainly, the ones in France are; and also those in some of our universities. And certainly the university students of Czechoslovakia have something really to be worried about and to protest about.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord. I think that I may perhaps have given a false impression. The last thing I intended to do was to suggest any condemnation of students as a whole.

LORD BYERS

My Lords, I had not intended to give the impression that the noble Earl was doing this; but in my view he brought in the question of student violence in the same connotation as violence generally. There is a great deal of difference between crimes of violence and what is happening in our universities.

My Lords, I do not want to get mixed up in the London School of Economics dispute; but I must say that if you erect gates and do not remedy the grievances quickly enough, then the militants will take the gates down and the moderates will support them. This is the worrying thing. If you institute witch-hunts, instead of putting grievances right, then you turn more moderates into militants. This is why my only plea is to understand the tremendous problems of the Establishment and the genuine grievances of the students. And here they must get together. In this country we have a wonderful reputation for solving these problems. Do not let us condemn the whole of the student movement. It is the militants who make the difficulties. We should have some sympathy with the Establishment; but I plead with them to get on with remedying the grievances.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the militants are laissez-faire liberals?

LORD BYERS

My Lords, I wish they were. We should know how to deal with them. But they are not. It is important not to confuse this issue. They are semi-Marxists; some of them have a smattering of laissez-faire liberalism. But essentially they are nihilists; they want to destroy everything, yet they have nothing to put in its place. The noble Lord is not helping tile argument by trying to generalise. If he will sit with these students as I have done, and listen to them—and the great thing is to listen to them—he will discover that there are a great many things wrong. This is what the universities must do—and many of them are doing it. Some of the Vice-Chancellors that I know are first-class at this job of listening to the students. You will not find violence in their universities.

My Lords, I feel that we ought to be looking more strenuously at the problems of vandalism, hooliganism and juvenile delinquency. These are the things which will affect the future crime rates if they are not dealt with sensibly. I have been interested in some articles in New Society, by Roger Barnard, on vandalism. If I am inaccurate in condensing what he says, I hope that he will forgive me. What I think he is saying is this: that juvenile delinquency in various forms is spreading throughout our urban communities and throughout the civilised world; and what is worrying is that it is spreading into places where it has never been known before. There is an enormous sense of rebellion in youth against the canons of the adult world. This, coupled with the fact that so few of our young people seem able to find something meaningful to do sets up frustrations which lead to delinquency and often to violence.

I think that the recent National Opinion Poll in the Daily Mail was interesting. They asked young people of this country whether they would back a Youth Service. This exposed a tremendous gap. Over 70 per cent. of the young people asked wanted to do something in the way of youth service—not compulsory; voluntary youth service. This, I think, showed a vacuum, an unsatisfied desire. I think we have to take it seriously and see what we can do to give as many as possible of the young people of this country much more meaningful things to do. Unless we attempt to understand that problem we are not going to salve it, and I do not believe that there is any one solution to it, either.

Vandalism, my Lords, is defined as the ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable. To the majority of people vandalism, normally gang vandalism, is seen as stupid, reckless and pointless. But very often the vandal does not see it like that. To him his acts are eminently sensible, just as the Luddites justified their destruction of equipment and property. Take, for instance, the vandal in racial disturbances. In American cities over the past few years there was an almost rational pattern of property destruction. In at least nine of the cities studied, the damage, at least in part, was the result of deliberate attacks on white-owned businesses which the negroes reckoned had been unfair to the negro community. Studies made in this country showed that far from being wanton or pointless, many acts of vandalism have quite good reasons behind them when you analyse them.

School vandalism often arises from something being radically wrong with the school. But what it is that motivates young children to derail trains I simply do not know. Most of these acts are apparently carried out by 10 to 12-yearolds and I do not know whether anybody knows why this happens. Telephone vandalism is, apparently, a phenomenon of the adolescent and the adult. Is it boredom? Is it yearning for adventure? If so, how can it be satisfied? Why is there so much vandalism among derelict houses in the big cities? The answer is probably just because the areas look derelict, they look awful; an open-ended invitation to further destruction. In the same way a road like Kennington Park Road is the target for so much litter that it attracts even more litter, until it looks an absolute disgrace. I believe that there is a lesson to be learned; namely, that the maintenance of high standards in our environment may well be a way to limit "below-standard" behaviour. I was interested the other day when I went round that magnificent place, Waddesdon. It is a National Trust house now. They have no litter baskets and they have no litter. It all looks so beautiful and it is so beautifully kept that people take their litter home and do not despoil the place, and I think there is a lesson to be learned in that.

My Lords, just one word on hooliganism. This, I think, is an equally disturbing phenomenon of modern life and something which needs a great deal more study, as was shown by the excellent report on soccer hooliganism by a Birmingham research group directed by Dr. J. A. Harrington. A number of things came out of this study. For instance, the influence of stadium design and the inadequacy or adequacy of ground facilities were found to be very important in the control of hooliganism. The knowledge that the hooligan will probably get away with it encourages more hooliganism. The combination of advanced ground design with the latest police techniques in crowd control could, according to this report, lead to a considerable reduction in hooliganism; but how often is this applied? The majority of clubs co-operate with the police, but many of them are not prepared to hire the number of policemen required. The fact is that not enough soccer clubs are treating this as a social problem, and probably they will not do so until they feel the pinch at the gate. The main thing, apparently, is to ensure a high degree of detection of hooliganism immediately it occurs. This can be done only by working far more closely with the police and picking their brains.

Another worrying feature of soccer hooliganism, which applies in other fields, too, is the lack of support for the police by the public at football matches. If the public showed a willingness to give open support to the police, this would discourage hooliganism. I witnessed an incident on Saturday, in Bath. I was walking to the railway station and discovered that the traffic was stopped. I came round a corner and found two policemen dealing with a maniac. They had just got him into the police car. The man was fighting, hitting the policemen and they were having a terrible time. About a hundred civilians were watching. One of the policemen shouted. "For heaven's sake! get some help from the police station." Having been a runner in my young days, I set out. I was not followed by anybody. Eventually we managed to get five people, but it might have been a Saturday afternoon entertainment. We must do as much as we can to encourage the public to support the police when dealing with these social problems.

I suppose that hooliganism is really another reflection of the failure of education at home and at school, but it is a problem which must be grasped. One feature of all this was exposed in an article on soccer hooliganism by J. L. Manning in the Daily Mail recently, when he said that there does not appear to be any easily identifiable authority responsible for licensing football grounds and ensuring that they are designed in a manner which would facilitate the job of crowd control. This is something which we could do, to deal with this problem.

My Lords, I have only one more comment to make and that is on something which was said by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. I hope that he was not advocating that we should give the police water cannons and other instruments with which to retaliate against the public. The Grosvenor Square demonstration revealed that there is nothing wrong with our police. The brainwork, apart from the physical courage, that went into that method of tackling crowd control was absolutely magnificent. But if we once get water cannons and all those pikes and things which they use in Japan and elsewhere, you will get the crowd reacting; you will get students reacting; you will escalate the problem into something with which we cannot possibly deal. This is what I mean, my Lords, by keeping this matter in perspective.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Byers, sits down, may I put in this small interjection? I meant to say—I think I did, but if I did not I left it out by mistake—that I believe that to supply the police with water cannons would be a calamity.

3.37 p.m.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I am sure we all agree that we are greatly indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for this opportunity to debate a subject which is not only one of pressing importance but one that could affect the whole fabric of our future way of life. He has drawn a backcloth depicting the growth of violence throughout the world; what virtually amounts to anarchy (I think that was the word for which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, was searching) against a just, free and liberal society. He has pointed to the danger that, unless we are vigilant, we can come to accept these things as part of the British way of life.

A debate ranging so widely presents a problem for the Government spokesman who intends, as I intend, to deal with the subject, if not comprehensively, at least on the same broad front. To a Home Office Minister concerned with police, criminal statistics, criminal courts and the penal system, the term "violence" has a strong connotation of crimes of violence, and specifically the criminal offences traditionally grouped under that heading—murder, manslaughter, wounding, assault and so on. But there is a much wider connotation, as the noble Earl made clear: the violence of the society in which we live, demonstrated in Grosvenor Square and at the L.S.E. and elsewhere; football rowdies; the violence, both fact and fiction (and some presented as fact which is near to fiction), brought into our living rooms through the television and other mass media.

To bring these various elements into perspective I must find, somewhere in this picture, a place for the most lethal piece of modern equipment of all; a piece of modern equipment which was not mentioned by either of the noble Lords who have spoken and which is neither the pistol nor the cosh, but the motor vehicle. My Lords, last year in the Metropolitan Police area, there were 99 offences of causing death by dangerous or reckless driving, compared with 57 murders. If my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport could bring the annual 7,000 total of road deaths down to near the murder rate, and the 360,000 injured on the roads down to the figure for crimes of violence, he would be a happy man. Every day I am on tit; roads and see people driving. I see many who drive with violence.

But let me consider first violence in the conventional sense, of crimes of violence. In the last 18 years, the total of all indictable offences known to the police has increased almost threefold to a present annual level of about 1¼ million, but within this total offences of Violence against the person have increased almost fivefold to an annual level of some 30,000. The figures rightly cause concern, and I have no wish to play down their seriousness. Nevertheless, they can cause undue alarm, if not seen in their context, and as the noble Earl suggested, it may be helpful to put them in perspective.

First, only one crime in 40 is a crime of violence, and a very high proportion of offences classified in this way consist of minor woundings. Out of every 40 crimes, 37 are theft, breaking and entering, or other offences against property. So, my Lords, to the, I hope, limited extent that we are a criminal nation, we are a nation of thieves, not a nation of thugs. Secondly, though the recent rapid rate of increase in crimes of violence as a whole gives cause for concern, the rate of increase has not been uniform for all offences within the classification. The most rapid increase has been in malicious woundings, the lesser offence. In the more serious category of felonious woundings, the increase has been a good deal less rapid. A study of the long-term trend from the beginning of the century shows a similar pattern.

Thirdly (though I recognise that this is no comfort to the victims), the odds against being the victim of a crime of violence are still about 1,700 to 1, and analysis shows that the majority of offences of violence occur in disputes between acquaintances and relatives rather than in attacks on strangers. There is something like a twelve times greater risk of being a casualty in a traffic accident. I think that it is fair to show this in perspective. Fourthly—and this is important in relation to the noble Earl's theme that violence may be becoming an accepted part of our society—our experts believe that part of the recorded increase of crimes of violence is due to the fact that the public are very properly much less ready to tolerate violence and increasingly ready to report such offences to the police. I can remember when fights in public-houses and domestic brawls, which were commonplace 30 or 40 years ago, went virtually unnoticed. Now they are more likely to be reported and to result in a charge. There is a welcome general tendency to treat casual violence more seriously.

But this is not to say that there is not a real increase and a real problem. The serious offences, although proportionately few in number, cause great public concern; and these have shown some increase, especially in the last few years. This anxiety has not gone unheeded by the police, who give considerable attention to the detection of violent offenders, and they deserve high praise for the fact that consistently some 85 per cent. of these offences are cleared up every year. This is a very high level.

There has been a considerable increase in indictable offences involving firearms or imitation firearms—which amounts to the same thing so far as the charge is concerned. In 1961, when the figures were first compiled, there were 552 recorded offences. By 1967 this figure had grown 'to 2,337. But, as will be seen from this morning's Hansard, to which the noble Earl referred, we have had this figure specially analysed, and in only 791 cases was a firearm used; in the other 1,500 cases, the firearm was stolen or misappropriated. Again, "used" does not necessarily mean "fired". Two-thirds of the 791 offences were simple violence against the person, mainly malicious wounding. There were, in fact, only 275 offences of robbery in which firearms were used or carried for use, and of these 210 were in the Metropolitan Police District. That, of course, is 275 too many, but we are very fortunate compared with America, where in the last five years the sale of hand guns has increased 400 per cent. and where 37 per cent. of all American households—nearly two out of every five—think it necessary to have guns for self-defence.

But, my Lords, there is no room for complacency. The Government are certainly not resigned to any increase in crime that could be regarded as a serious challenge to law enforcement and the penal system. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary considers that the principal ways of combating crime are to maintain the strength and efficiency of the police—the first line of defence against the criminal—and to ensure that the criminal courts have the powers and facilities which they need in order to deal with offenders brought before them. In the long term, of course, the best hope of reducing the incidence of these offences lies in co-ordinated social action to get at the roots of violent criminal behaviour.

As regards the police, and in answer to the noble Earl's questions, recent years have seen a considerable increase in police strength and a far-reaching amalgamation programme designed to reorganise the police into larger administrative units, as well as the development of such specialised services as the Police Research and Development Branch and the regional crime squads. In 1955 the total strength of the police service was about 65,000. By March next year, it is expected that this figure will have increased to about 94,000—that is getting on towards a 50 per cent. increase in 14 years. There will also be increases in civilian staffs and traffic wardens. Important advances have also been made by the provision of modern equipment, such as Panda cars and pocket radio sets. The Government are confident that all these measures will lead to greater efficiency in the Police Service to enable them to maintain law and order by preventing crime and detecting offenders. As regards weapons, chief officers of police have made it clear that they do not wish their forces to be armed with guns, water cannons and the other weapons mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. These are matters which we are content to leave them to decide in the light of their experience and of their assessment of the needs of the situation. This is exactly what happened on that Sunday in Grosvenor Square to which the noble Earl referred, when the world was able to see how we did it and how much better we did it than some other countries.

I come now to the powers of the courts. Much legislation has been passed in recent years aimed at bringing the criminal law up to date and widening the range of facilities available to the courts. The Criminal Justice Act, the Drugs Acts, the Firearms Act and the Theft Act are some examples. My right honourable friend does not consider that the maximum penalties available to the courts are in any way inadequate. The law enables very substantial periods of imprisonment to be imposed on offenders convicted of offences of violence; for example, manslaughter, robbery with violence, and wounding with intent to maim or cause grievous bodily harm, are punishable with a maximum of life imprisonment. We could not have more than that. This has also been the mandatory penalty for all offences of murder since November, 1965. It is for the courts to decide what penalty to impose in an individual case, having regard to the requirements of justice and to all the circumstances of the offence and the offender, and we have no knowledge of any serious crime for which an adequate penalty is not available.

A disturbing feature, which is revealed by the special analysis published in to-day's Hansard, in response to the noble Earl's Question—and it is a matter to which he has already referred—is the increase both relatively and quantitatively in the number of crimes of violence committed by young persons. If he does not mind, I will now give the arithmetic. In 1950, when 783 people under 21 were found guilty of such offences, they comprised only 20 per cent. of the total of persons found guilty; that is, one-fifth, not one quarter. In 1960, 4,345 young persons were found guilty, that is 42 per cent. of the total; and in 1967, 6,689, 39 per cent. of the total under 21. Another significant matter is that in 1967 the number of young people under 21 found guilty of drugs offences was only 10 per cent. less than the number of adults convicted. These facts need and are receiving the most careful consideration. The Government take the view that, while it is essential to maintain the penal deterrents, the best hope of improving the situation in respect of the hooliganism, vandalism and juvenile delinquency, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, lies in social action, such as the Government's urban programme and the proposals in the White Paper, Children in Trouble, to enlarge the functions of local authority children's departments.

I agree entirely with what the noble Lord said about, "the areas look derelict, and the kids make them more derelict". A few months ago I visited the Borstal Allocation Centre at Wormwood Scrubs. It was at a time when it was badly in need of decoration. We had, of course, started on "B" hall, and had got it more than half done. "A" hall was in a deplorable condition. The weather was cold, and yet in "A" hall every single cell window and every single pane of glass had been smashed out by the boys to make it even more uncomfortable. In "B" hall tot a single window had gone. This, in my view, is a significant psychological fact.

We have other positive defences against crime and violence, and not the least hopeful of these is the paroling of prisoners. This applies almost by definition only to medium and longer sentence prisoners, who have committed a serious crime—and this naturally includes crimes of violence—all of whom I see personally when they are the subject of a favourable recommendation from a local review committee. The Parole Board have, I know, felt a particular responsibility in viewing these cases, and it is a 11 the more encouraging that of the 1,157 cases with determinate sentences in which they had recommended parole in the nine months up to the end of 1968, over 200 related to crimes of violence. And as the House may be aware, out of this total of 1,157 prisoners released on parole it has been necessary to revoke the parole licences of only 33 men. It is, of curse, too early to form definite conclusions, but if this experience continues we shall clearly have found an important way to reduce the numbers of serious crimes, including crimes of violence.

My Lords, I turn to the wider aspects of violence in our society, where the balance sheet is no easier to draw. There are respects in which we are a less violent society now than in the past. Our ancestors tolerated and apparently watched with enjoyment public hangings and floggings, and regarded as acceptable other methods of punishment which have long since been rejected as cruel, humiliating and pointless. More recently we have abolished corporal punishment as a penalty available to the courts, and also—subject to a review before the middle of next year—capital punishment. We have abolished corporal punishment also as a disciplinary penalty in our penal establishments, and I believe there is far less physical punishment and general rough handling of children, both at school and at home, than there was even a generation ago.

There are those who say that these changes are the cause of much of the present trouble, and that if we could get back to the penal methods of earlier days there would be much less criminal violence. I doubt this. In the first place, the roots of violence and aggression go deep—deeper, I believe, than the spades of punishment can dig. We understand little, though we speculate a lot, about what causes an increase in the amount of violent behaviour; but I suggest that these changes reflect developments in our society and civilisation, and are not likely to be influenced, except marginally and in the short term, by fiercer penal sanctions. I believe that violence should be met with firmness, not with opposing violence. This accords with the fact that Britain subscribes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which means that we acknowledge human rights as the criterion by which man should live. And, my Lords, by every act of personal violence we infringe the human rights and freedom of others.

At the present time, the violent behaviour of a tiny minority of students—1 in 200 was the estimate of the Secretary of State—much exercises university and college authorities and is a source of exasperated annoyance to the public. A good deal has been said on the subject by the students, and notably by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science, who in his recent speech in another place spoke, I believe, for most of us. On that aspect there is nothing left to say. But I was a student at the London School of Economics some 40-odd years ago, and I should just like to say that it was then as free academically and in every other way as any place in which I have been either then or since. I cannot imagine for the life of me that it is any less completely free now than it was then; and probably it is much more so. However, I should like to make three points relevant to this debate.

First, this problem of students is essentially not a problem for Government, central or local, but for the university authorities. This is implicitly acknowledged by the wise words of Dr. Walter Adams, the Director of the L.S.E., in his recent letter to each member of the School. He said: If force is used and the community's life is disrupted, the schools authorities must be prepared to use legal remedies, whether through the courts or through duly constituted internal disciplinary procedures. Affirming his belief that L.S.E. is an academic community, Dr. Adams said: This means that the values we hold—the values of freedom of opinion and tolerance, of respect for truth and disinterested inquiry—must be shared values. It means that the rules by which we conduct our affairs must derive their strength from the positive support—not just the acquiescence—of the overwhelming majority of the community's members. My Lords, I am convinced that that is the answer wherever violence is encountered.

My second point is that we must see student unrest and violence in perspective. As the noble Lord, Lord Byers, said, we should stop the wholesale condemnation of the student movement. The young people who have hit the headlines and filled the television screen are not only not typical of students, they are not typical of young people generally. I believe that the present generation of youngsters is probably more altruistic than we were; more anxious to be of service to others through such ways as helping the elderly, the sick, the disabled, those who still suffer front bad housing and an impoverished environment. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred to the National Opinion Poll survey of attitudes, and this produces a quite remarkable result. But, of course, that result is not dramatic enough for the television screens, but it is vastly more important and more truly representative than the samples we do see on the screen. It is not that the present generation is cast in a different mould from previous generations—human nature is more constant than that; it is rather that the social and economic improvements in the life of our people during this century, and particularly since the war, have removed some previous constraints and released fresh energy. It is these same broad social and economic changes that have produced the features in our contemporary society that worry us. We must learn to take the rough with the smooth.

Thirdly, I personally share the widespread view that the mass media, in particular television, play into the hands of the violent minority by giving them a significance beyond anything they could otherwise enjoy. Understandably, violence is news and controlled behaviour is not. The trouble is that the television screen is a small one, easily tilled by a few shouting, struggling bodies and giving an impression—and it may be a false impression—that there is a much larger crowd in the background. We must not reach the situation where it you coin a slogan, paint a banner and rent a crowd, the "telly" will take you into millions of homes. Of course, cameramen have their job to do, but it may be that if they were less assiduous in filming and publicising violence there would be less of it.

The noble Earl, Lord Cork, asked about foreign students who cause trouble. A foreign student's record is considered when we have to decide about admission and about his continued stay. It is a serious matter to terminate the stay of someone who is living here while engaged in a course of full-time study, or perhaps in employment, and there would have to be fully adequate grounds for taking such a step. The responsibility for accepting a foreign student lies with the educational establishment, and the general position is that one who has been so accepted for a course of study and who has adequate means to maintain himself will be admitted without difficulty unless it is known that he has a criminal record, or there are security objections or medical grounds for refusing admission.

To a large extent, therefore, control over entry of foreign students is exercised by the educational establishments themselves in accepting these students for courses here. But if a foreign student misbehaves and is expelled from the college, his further stay in this country is automatically in jeopardy. His continued stay here will also be placed in jeopardy if, although he is not expelled by his college, he is convicted of a criminal offence here. For example, we sent warnings to all the foreigners, including students, who were involved in demonstrations in 1968, and this appears to have had a salutary effect.

The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, and the noble Lord, Lord Byers, also spoke of football violence, which takes a number of forms. The thugs who smash up shops and trains, both before and after matches, and who erupt violently before, during and after the game are committing criminal offences, and the police can, and do, take care of them. But what is the basis of this phenomenon—a comparatively new phenomenon? I. heard Mr. Alan Hardaker, the Football League Secretary, give what may be a clue to it when on television the other evening he said that some football managers attributed the rise in attendances to increasing violence—violence on the field. This seems to have been born out of the demand for success at any price, by any method. On the same programme I saw and heard a football club manager give frank expression to this philosophy when he pithily declared, "Nice people"—meaning managers—"get nowhere". When asked if he would fine one of his players if he was sent: off for violence, he said that would be dangerous. He said, "If you ask for 150 per cent. effort and you fine the player who gets sent off, you cannot ask him for 155 per cent. effort the next week". The unmistakable inference, though doubtless unintentional, was that extra effort is synonymous with violent play.

I said just now that Dr. Adams's declaration for duly constituted internal disciplinary procedures and the support of the community's members was the remedy in many fields. It is certainly true of football which, whether paying or watching, is one of the finest games in the world. Violence could be stopped very quickly by the courageous actions of the ruling bodies and the overwhelming condemnation of the football community. If referees instantly ordered wrongdoers from the field, knowing that the League would back them 100 per cent. and inflict condign suspensions on offenders and on grounds, I believe violence on the field and in crowds would stop.

The noble Earl asked me about horror comics. The Harmful Publications Act 1955, which was designed to stop the flood of comics, has been completely successful. We have not had any here at all, and in fact it has been so successful that there has been no need for any prosecutions. The noble Earl also raised the question of connection between violent behaviour and violence on the television screen and in other mass media. The whole question of the impact of television on society is one on which, as the noble Earl mentioned, more than one view has been expressed by research workers. In 1963 Lord Brooke of Cumnor, then Home Secretary, appointed a Committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. Noble, Vice-Chancellor of Leicester University, to initiate and co-ordinate research into the impact of television, in relation to other influences, in fostering attitudes, and particularly in developing the moral concepts and attitudes of young people. That Committee were financed by a very generous grant of £250,000 from the Independent Television Authority. The Committee have published two working papers, designed to stimulate public debate, on The Effects of Mass Communication with Special Reference to Television, and Attitude Formation and Change, and have sponsored a number of research projects. Only a few days ago my right honourable friend the Home Secretary received the Committee's Final Report, which will be published shortly—I expect next month.

I must express the gratitude of my right honourable friend to the members of the Committee for the work they have done and for their recommendations about the development of research in this field, which will be most carefully considered. I have been able to glance at the Report. Its theme is that a lot more research needs to be carried out into the effects of the mass media, with specific reference to aggression and violence and, more importantly, in a wider context. But one might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing that is at all clear is that nothing is clear on this subject.

Looking at the evidence made available by the research so far done, the Report concludes that one might, while making it clear that it is pointless to talk in general terms about mass media causing delinquency, assert that, for some people, violence in the media can be unhealthy and detrimental. The difficulties of the frustrated, maladjusted and isolated can be intensified, and already existing patterns of behaviour reinforced. In the Committee's view the risks here should not be underestimated and a high degree of responsibility needs to be shown by the media producers. It seems probable that the maximum impact of television will occur where there is repetition of the message, where emotional reactions are brought into play, where the values presented link with the individual's immediate needs and interests and where there is an uncritical attachment to the medium in circumstances in which no correction in value judgments has been supplied through environment and social relationships. Some of the research already commissioned by the Committee will take some time yet to complete; but it is clear that we cannot expect unequivocal answers to some questions about the influence of the mass media, and in particular about its effect on delinquency, in a form that will serve as a reliable basis in the formulation of social policies.

And so, my Lords, I come to what I regard as the truly vital question posed by the noble Earl's Motion: Do we, as a society, accept violence as part of our way of life? My answer is, certainly not; but we must be vigilant. The United States' experience provides an indication and a warning of what can happen. Mr. Rap Brown, the militant American coloured leader, said that, "violence is as American as cherry pie". My Lords, we must not let it become as British as fish and chips. The Times carried recently an article about the progress report of a United States National Commission on the cause and prevention of violence. This painted a sombre picture both of group violence and of individual violence. There were more than 12,000 homicide victims there in 1967. I repeat these figures in no "holier than thou" spirit: we all know that American violence can be explained in terms of the make-up and tradition of United States society. We should be thankful that, compared with the United States, we are at present a safe and orderly society; and we must keep it that way.

There is more violence in Britain than we like. I have pointed to some of the difficulties in quantifying violence and making comparisons with earlier eras, and I have also pointed to evidence that we do not accept contemporary violence as inevitable. To keep in check and to reject violence is, as Dr. Walter Adams said in the remarks I quoted earlier, the responsibility of the whole community—whether it is the academic community, the sporting community, or the nation at large. The chosen instruments of the community are the police, the courts, the penal institutions and the rest of the penal system. But they can be fully effective only if they operate against a background of firm and broadly based community support—not merely acquiescence. With that support they can, and will, be effective bulwarks against the spread of violence.

4.12 p.m.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

My Lords, this debate has continued for only an hour and twenty minutes and there are many further speakers, but I think the action of my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery in tabling the Motion for the debate is already justified, because even if nothing further were to be said the Government would have received a number of suggestions and your Lordships' House would, very properly, have displayed its interest in this most important and very sad feature of British public life. While I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that this is a worldwide disease, and not confined to this country, it would be lamentable if we derived any satisfaction whatever from that fact. This is our job: if things go wrong here it is we who are responsible, and we cannot look with any sort of complacency on the figures for the rise in violence which have been given this afternoon.

I cannot help thinking that in a field like this we have got to go right back and inquire and analyse whether acts of violence performed by the young derive from defects in their education—and when I say "education" I am not for one moment confining that to education in the narrow sense, education in school or at college: I am thinking of all the influences that bear upon the young. Up to the age of twenty or so we are all being educated or moulded, though I know the Government would say that this process ends on one's eighteenth birthday, and at that point everyone is qualified for full citizenship in every respect. I doubt that. But the problem, at any rate at present—for it may worsen—is a problem of the young.

Look at any demonstration or protest meeting, or at any affair that ends in disorder. Look at vandalism; look at hooliganism look at crimes of violence. I think the noble Lord said that 39 per cent. of those found guilty of crimes of violence were under the age of 21. I believe I shall not incur correction from him if I say that nearly 75 per cent. of those found guilty of crimes of violence are under 30. In passing, may I mention that the criminal statistics are really not as clear and lucid and informative as they might be; and I wonder whether the Government can tell us anything about the work of the Committee on the Criminal Statistics which I set up some four or five years ago. I confess I was hoping that by now the Committee would have made fruitful recommendations which would have simplified the collection and meaningful presentation of criminal statistics, which are so important for factual reasons in debates in Parliament.

My Lords, all this violent misbehaviour among the young is linked with lack of respect for authority, but it stems down to lack of respect for anyone who stands in your way.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

My Lords, if one has never been taught respect for anybody who stands in one's way, is it surprising? The teaching should come first from the parents: the teaching that when you are very young you must obey, and that as you grow older you must still respect. But if parents surrender the early insistence on obedience, either through their own weakness or, sometimes, through blind acceptance of bad psychological advice, can one blame the children if they have no respect for anybody? Violence connotes an absence of respect. The opposite of violence in a society is respect for law. One gets that if the law-givers and the law seem worthy of respect. One gets it if the law is enforced. Whether the law is enforced depends partly on the strength or weakness of those who have the duty of enforcement, and partly on the willingness of ordinary people to put themselves out to help in its enforcement. I am afraid that willingness to help has been reduced in this country by all the teaching, which has deeply penetrated the minds of hosts of people, that one should count on State help before self-help.

It would be easy to put all the blame on parents and to leave it at that. It would be easy, but it would be wrong, to put down all delinquency and crime to weak parents and unhappy homes. That fails to explain how the sons of some of the best parents go wrong and get involved in this violence. More significant still, it fails to explain the very many boys and young men whose background, one might say, simply had not given them a chance in life, and yet who turn out to be splendid citizens. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is going to take part in this debate, knows many cases of this sort. Often, of course, those boys come out right because they have come under fine teachers at school, who have given them by example the standards and values which they have missed getting at home.

Education can be a ladder, it can also be a lottery. Had I a free hand in this, and all the money in the Exchequer available, one of the first things I should do towards producing a more law-abiding and less violent society would be to cut the sizes of classes in schools down to numbers which a teacher can both teach and control. I am expressing a purely personal view now, but it seems to me madness to talk of raising the school-leaving age before one has got classes in primary schools down to manageable size.

We should be able to rely on the schools to inculcate not only knowledge, but standards of values too. We ought to be able to look upon teaching as one of the noble professions, along with medicine and some others. That time cannot come so long as members of the teaching profession drag it down by talk of going on strike, neglecting their duty to the children, as no doctors would do towards their patients. A much wiser member of the teaching profession who recently sensed some sympathy with violent student protest among some of her girls simply told them that if they wanted to become student protesters they would have to work a lot harder for their "A" levels, otherwise they would not become university students at all.

Parents, schools, television, radio, films, newspapers, all these are potent influences. But I think parents and schools are the greatest of all, and next after them television. In days gone by, a boy "had up" for violence used to give the explanation that he had seen it on the cinema, which was usually an excuse for brutishness or sheer thoughtless mischief in himself. Nowadays the similar excuse is television, and there is probably just as much or as little truth in the excuse. But television, surely, is more important than the cinema ever was, because there is much more continuous exposure to it.

In a sense, I am sorry in this respect for those whose work is to plan television programmes. I am certain that they do not want to corrupt the young, but there is far too little authoritative knowledge available to them about the effects of different scenes or ideas in programmes upon the young who watch. That is why I seized the chance to set up that Committee which noble Lords have mentioned to co-ordinate research into the effects of television on the young. I regret that, to the best of my knowledge, the research sponsored by that Committee seems as yet to have produced almost nothing of practical value to the television authorities. It has been said in this debate that that Committee is producing a further report next month. I hope that that report will not merely recommend that more and more money should be found for what they call mass communication research, but will start to justify all the money that has already been spent, by producing findings and recommendations which will be of practical interest both to those who control television programmes and to all those who are deeply interested in children and young people and their development. It is not specific enough for the Committee to say, as I gather from the noble Lord it is going to say, that a high degree of responsibility needs to be shown by the television authorities. We knew that when the Committee was set up five years ago.

Often this whole question is narrowed down to the effects of scenes of violence on the screen. I believe it goes much wider than that. When a body such as the B.B.C. conceives it as one of its duties to call in question all kinds of accepted standards and to disparage and satirise and ridicule them, it may be contributing something to the education of sophisticated adult people. It may be; I am not sure. But I am quite sure that it has not shown itself fully aware of its grievous responsibility for mis-educating those less sophisticated, and especially the young who have not yet developed the critical faculties, or indeed had sufficiently long experience of life, to form thoughtful judgments and distinguish false from true.

If there are dangers in violence, as this Motion says, I do not believe one can sufficiently counter them by simply looking at acts of violence and aiming to check them on the spot. One has to look much further back, right back to some of the fields I have been mentioning. By starting further back, one then needs to learn how to blend more successfully than we in this country have recently been doing the value of the experience of older people with the perennial mutiny of the young against states of affairs which they believe older people ought to have put right. Just now the revolt against authority is strong, and in a few, but only a comparative few, it bursts out in violence. When people say that all students must not be condemned for what is happening in the universities I profoundly agree, but I do not find people condemning all students; I believe it is universally recognised that this is the work of a handful. Nevertheless, a handful can damage the reputation of many, and that is what the many must resist.

This handful is like the people who are too impatient to obey the rule of the road or the Highway Code. I was glad the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, mentioned traffic, because I can use this to illustrate my point. These irresponsible people defy the Code, and then their dangerous driving wounds and murders. If there were no traffic police they would be a still greater menace. And it is the same with crimes of violence. Only a tiny percentage of the population yield to temptations to violence. That is principally thanks to their upbringing and to their own inbred standards of conduct, but it is partly due, too, at moments of strain and tension, to fear of the law. A mature society cannot let the right of its members to live their lives in peace and safety be disrupted by acts of violence, and if those who indulge in violence succeed in getting away with it the violence spreads, as indeed we have been seeing in the universities.

May I say that I did not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, when he sought to draw a deep distinction between violence in universities and violence in society. I believe violence in the sense of lawlessness must be condemned everywhere. That is where the Home Secretary comes in. The Home Secretary, on behalf of the Government, must be constantly watching the criminal law to make certain that its scope is right in relation to the form that current violence is taking. My noble friend made one suggestion in that field. One recollects that it is not so many years ago that the carrying of an offensive weapon in a public place was made a criminal offence. It is not so many years ago that horror comics were outlawed, and that change in the criminal law has, as the noble Lord said, proved wholly successful. It was about five years ago, at the time of the "mods and rockers" trouble, that I felt it right to propose to Parliament an extension of the criminal law needed to meet those circumstances. We should like 10 be certain that the Government are reviewing the criminal law in the present situation, reviewing it actively to-day in relation to current forms of violence.

I agree that this is not a matter of increasing the maximum penalties. I believe that in most cases the maximum penalties are large enough. I think, however, that some rationalisation of maximum penalties is desirable. I hope I shall not be offending any of my noble friends when I say that, for instance, I have never been able to understand why the maximum penalty for assault against a gamekeper by poachers should be heavier than for other similar assaults.

But neither the law nor the penalties attaching to breaches of the law are of much importance if the offender believes he has a good chance of not being caught. Wherever the police are below their proper strength, the offender has a better chance of not being brought to justice than he ought to have. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, himself said that the first line of defence is the maintenance of the strength and efficiency of the police. Here, in my view, the Government stands condemned for the wicked decision they took a year ago to impose a crass economic restriction on public safety. They forbade chief constables whose forces were below strength to recruit all the young policemen they could, by setting limits to the increase in police strength which the Government would permit. At a time when violence was increasing, the choice of the police for an economy measure was incredible and inexcusable. I know, as do many noble Lords, what a good many chief constables think about the Government weighting the scales against the police in this way.

LORD LINDGREN

My Lords, if the noble Lord will excuse my butting in, is it not a fact that the strength of the police forces throughout the country is now higher than it was five years ago?

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

Yes, certainly it is.

LORD LINDGREN

You were in power then.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

It certainly is. It started rising, thanks to the large increase in police pay which was brought about by my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden. It has gone on increasing since, and certainly I should never have dreamed of imposing, as the present Home Secretary has imposed, a restriction that no police force may increase its strength by more than 2 per cent. in the current 15 months. So those forces which were 22 per cent. below strength have been informed by the Government that they must remain 20 per cent. below strength at the end of the 15 months, which is inexcusable.

I have great faith in the police, and I thought my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery was apt when he said that you can tell the sort of people who compose a nation by looking at the sort of police they have. I have faith in the police, and I still have great faith in our country, as a place where much of the foolishness and culpable irresponsibility of the present time will pass away. There are those who may tell me that in that I am denigrating the present. If anybody says that, I would simply point out to him the crime figures and, above all, the growing number of crimes of violence. I have never ceased to be glad that in 1964 it fell to me to introduce the scheme for compensation for crimes of violence, under which more than £1¼ million a year is now being paid out to victims of crimes of violence. But money can never be a complete recompense for suffering. I want this debate, and all the facts and suggestions that have been and will be voiced in it, to stimulate a livelier awareness everywhere of what needs to be done in a great many fields if violence in society is to be checked and cured. I use the word "cured" deliberately, because the measures taken will not suffice if they are repressive only, and not curative too.

4.33 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM

My Lords, I share the general gratitude which has been expressed to the noble Earl for initiating this debate, which not only underlines the seriousness, the diversification and the importance of the problem of violence but also its controversial complexity. I only hope that my contribution to the debate will not seem too intricate; but I have tried, I hope helpfully, to do some justice to one or two broad features of this problem as I see it.

As we all know "violence" means unreasonable force, the exercise of which inevitably converts persons to things. Though some philosophers may speak, and have spoken, of a person affirming himself, realising himself in the power of a violent act, for myself I see that only as a quite superficial fulfilment: for to be violent, it seems to me, is to disfranchise personality. Violence is an exercise of compulsion without respect for the personalities at whom it is directed. Violence has not the compelling power of reasonable argument in which a person comes to himself as he is led to a new conclusion. Nor has violence the power of love to win us over. Violence is always oppression of personality—that is why it never could be defended as a restriction on free speech. It is a prostitution of the person. If I may make a somewhat lighter reference, violence treats persons like the notice I saw in a lift (which I regret to say was in Church House): "Five persons or 800 lb."

The dangers which violence of this kind brings with it are well known and I need not underline them: irrationality, oppression, disorder, anarchy, nihilism, death. Further, when a group exerts force there always arises a danger of its doing what a single member of that group would be utterly ashamed to do alone. The element of the irrational, brute quality of the force increases with numbers. To give again a rather lighter example, even in quieter, distant days in universities we all knew how different was the undergraduate on the morning of November 6 from his behaviour on Market Hill on the evening of November 5.

Violence, too, often has cruel jealousy and bitter hate as its basis. Its frequency and its dangers in contemporary society hardly need underlining. Though I share the general scepticism about isolated statistics, the sociologist, Pitrim Sorakim, has claimed that even by 1933 the 20th century was more than 25 times as violent as the 19th century, even taking account of the differences of population. By human violence (excluding disease), the 1914–18 war killed 10 million people, of whom 5 per cent. were civilians; the 1939–45 war killed 50 million, of whom about 70 to 75 per cent. were civilians; the localised Korean war killed 9 million, of whom some 84 per cent. were civilians; and the Vietnam war may give an even higher civilian proportion. It is true of course that this is not violence in peace. But, for myself, I do not think that violence in peace and violence in war are essentially separate.

When there are these dangers and these disastrous results, how have people ever begun to defend violence? Recognising all that, I ask: can violence ever be creative? For let us recognise that in our present-day society some of the more sensitive and discerning people who in principle would loathe and detest violence, for reasons that I have stated, have seemed in certain circumstances prepared to defend it. As I shall say presently, the possibility was openly aired at the Lambeth Conference that in certain political and social circumstances violence (and not meaning by that warfare) could be a Christian duty. My Lords, can this ever be so? Can violenee ever be creative?

Picture a people economically and racially repressed and unable to affirm themselves. It is obvious that we would wish to do all we could to enable them to put their case persuasively, and we may hope that those to whom they put the case persuasively would take appropriate creative action by way of response. But suppose that effort fails. Suppose there is no response whatever by those to whom an appeal is made. Suppose those who are economically and racially oppressed feel that they are battering on an unresponsive wall. Men then ask, so pitiably, what can be done about their oppression, about the denial to them of human rights. And perhaps, in only a slightly lower key, what about tie so-called agreements which are, in the last resort, oppressive because they express no basic trust? And what of these so-called agreed policies which are oppressive because they are no more than a disingenuous cover-up?

It is tempting to see in cases such as these an argument for the use of violence; yet we are bound to recognise that even though it be a violent break-through—if you wish to put it in this way, a worm turning with force—it is never itself creative. It may in fact be expressed indiscriminately through, and in, every feature disliked in contemporary society—overcrowding, racial injustice, overpopulation and so on. It has been rightly said that violence needs some objective to begin with; for example, Communists, coloureds, Jews, bourgeoisie. But these are only partly the objects of violent action. They trigger it off and focus it, rather than cause it. They may scion be forgotten in the struggle for power, for elbow room. Further—and here is the greatest of all dangers—violence may well defeat its own end. Those who resort to violence to uphold human rights may find that in the end their action denies the very human rights they were contending for. Here is the terrible Nemesis which violence may bring.

My Lords, what is the moral of all this? It is that violence can do no more, at best, than make conditions possible for attaining an ideal not otherwise likely to occur; and yet to have said that is to make it evident how many and great are the dangers. The only case I can think of where the ideal was preserved untarnished is with the suffragettes, which was, on the whole, a relatively simple, straight issue. It is in more complicated cases that the use of violence will almost inevitably tarnish the ideal; and to practise violence for the sake of an ideal is to start on a long and hazardous journey which could only possibly be defended as a last resort. Yet, in all honesty, I am bound to admit, much as I almost loathe having to come to this conclusion, that in certain circumstances there can be no other way, though we should have to make doubly sure that the violence did not blind us to the ideals for which it originated. And, further, it would be consistent with my argument that if violence is, in fact, exerted, it will be more justifiable against buildings and things than against persons themselves.

All this may seem very theoretical, though I hope that it may have teased out the problem somewhat. But now I come to the practical question: what lessons have we to learn from the dangers of violence in contemporary society? There are undoubtedly factors in our society which seem oppressive and restrictive—"stuffy" to use the term of the noble Lord, Lord Byers—when the old pattern of society seems too narrow to incorporate the hopes and aspirations and possibilities which the future might seem to hold, when technology has by no means been developed to the obvious satisfaction of the many.

May I read a short section from the Lambeth Conference Report to which I referred earlier, reflections of Bishops from all over the world, some of whom have been in close contact with violent as well as non-violent protests? Technology … has been exploited to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Our cities have not yet been redeveloped to eliminate slums; indeed, urbanisation has often created slums and ghettos. Two-thirds of the world's population goes hungry. Many men and women are denied employment. Knowledge and power can be used to oppress, and to satisfy human greed or pride. In political and economic matters, excessive deference has been paid to conventional wisdom and outdated institutions. Man is in danger of losing his human dignity and becoming depersonalised. Often he feels himself limited and voiceless in a world where others make the decisions that affect his daily life. We cannot be blind to the signs of sickness in present-day society—the tensions between men of different races … the spread of violence, so that it seems everywhere to be becoming endemic; the development of police states in many parts of the world; the continuing wars that divide men and nations and bring widespread misery and appalling suffering. These are national and international symptoms of the sickness that underlies the political, economic, and cultural revolutions of our age. Some noble Lords may have heard last Sunday the old story of Cain and Abel, Cain representing and symbolising the beginnings of a technological society where there was the lance and the spear as well as the tilling of the ground; Abel representing the old pastoral society where men thought of themselves as each other's keeper as well as the keeper of the sheep. There was much in that old society which was attractive, and if we may interpret in human terms what is said about the rites and ceremonies in which Cain and Abel joined, we may say that Abel still had a deep satisfaction in life which Cain had lost. As your Lordships may remember, Cain and Abel talked together; they tried to reason out their difficulties. But then came violence and murder. That violence is not excused in the ancient story, and steps were taken to exclude its occurrence in the future, even against the perpetrator of that violence.

But the question that emerges is: was that violence an essentially traumatic experience, a travail, through which that primitive society had to go to find its new pattern? I agree that that is a very problematical reflection, but do let us remember that we are dealing here with some of the deepest depths of society and human personality. Violence is often a criterion of the rapidity of social change and of the inability of a society to adjust fast enough.

What, then, is the conclusion? I share with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, caution about the causes of this violence. But this much seems plain; and I look, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, did, "further back". Our society is certainly not proving satisfying to the needs of man. Our political purpose, our legal structures—and, yes, the Christian Church—do not always seem to afford men institutions in which they can find their life and fulfilment. We have to remember that the very law and order which so many of us treasure here in our own society seem to some, in many parts of the world, to be absolutely oppressive and not at all the expression of an agreed basis for society, an obligation in whose acknowledgement society gains its coherence and in which we fulfil ourselves. We are missing out on a dimension of personality, and if we are to grapple constructively with the dangers of violence in contemporary society we have to make far better provision, it seems to me, than we have done for the needs of the spirit. Man must find, as he rarely does to-day, some satisfying work to give him an integrating purpose to his life: "meaningful things to do", as the noble Lord, Lord Byers, said. We are certainly grateful—I certainly am grateful; and I am sure that noble Lords generally are—for the Government's social projects, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has referred.

I would make only one or two other positive suggestions. Should we not spend more than we do on festivals of the arts, to encourage a greater appreciation of beauty and of music, the insights of literature and poetry, which can provide an adventure of the spirit? Must not we develop much more energetically adult non-vocational education? Can we encourage the playwrights not only to write of the depths to which persons can sink but of the heights to which they can rise? Loyalty and devotion, inspiration and leadership, courtesy (to use a word mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery): to-day all these words, which have almost disappeared from our vocabulary, have to find a new place in our verbal currency. I recognise that there is here no easy answer, and I can do no more than leave your Lordships with a question: what can we do constructively, beyond making the criticism of violence which undoubtedly must be made? Violence will be eradicated only when we have institutions which better develop and satisfy the spirit of man. To say that is to recognise how very much both Church and State have to learn and practise.

4.51 p.m.

LORD SORENSEN

My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in expressing appreciation to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for introducing this Motion. The Motion is, as he admitted, a very wide one, capable of many interpretations. I also wish to express my gratitude to him for initiating this debate if, for no other reason, than that it evoked the very eloquent reflection by the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Durham. I am in large agreement with what he said and with much of what has been said by other noble Lords; but although the right reverend Prelate himself reminded us, after rightly condemning and exposing the sinister nature of violence, that there were exceptions, we are indeed haunted in history and in our present experience by many paradoxes. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate and his episcopal colleagues will not think that I am in any way trying to be cynical when I say that the Church of England itself came into being very largely through violence. I presume that was not a misfortune in our European history, but the reverse.

Although we rightly condemn violence, nevertheless few of us here would do other than agree that violence employed in the last war was successful. Had it not been so, it may well be that our liberties would have disappeared. Whether one be pacifist or non-pacifist, if one takes an objective view of history one cannot deny that either on that occasion or on many other occasions there have been incidents of violence on a wide scale which, on balance, have made men better than they otherwise would have been. We also have to realise that in our schools we offer to our children history books full of exploits of violence, often interpreted in terms of glory and splendid achievement. One thinks of the first Elizabethan Era and the exploits of the sea dogs of Britain—of Frobisher, Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh. Who were these but men of violence? My own memory of the history which I read in my schooldays was that provided the violence was successful, it was good; it was the reverse only when it failed.

Moreover, we have to realise that from other standpoints there have been many signs of violence associated with social revolt which have had excellent results. Not being a Communist or subscribing to the Communist philosophy, I cannot be accused of any sympathy, for instance, with the Communist world of to-day, though I recognise that there are many great achievements to its credit; but the fact remains that it was through violence that the days of the Tsar, and indeed the Church of Russia which supported the Tsar, came to an end. Holy Russia, China and many other States emerged from serfdom, subservience, brutality and oafishness through to a new world. I mention this so that we may be honest with ourselves and recognise that we have to discriminate when we talk about violence.

Some students in our universities are now advocating, I consider quite erroneously, a philosophy of what they call selective violence. It is quite true that what are called the militant students are in a minority, though, in passing, I would say that large numbers of others too easily follow them and I wish that more of the so-called moderate students in our universities would make their voices heard. So often they just allow their own case to go by default. The minority of which I speak now has a deliberate philosophy of selective violence, and there are people, like Marcuse in America and others elsewhere, who have elaborated on this philosophy. The philosophy of violence in a sense underlies a great deal of European history in general and our own British history in particular. Indeed, at times we have called upon this philosophy to defend our great achievements, even though so often it has been at great cost in human life and suffering. An illustration of this fact is that once or twice in our own car park outside I have seen cars, no doubt owned by noble Lords, with little stickers on the back saying "Support Rhodesia". What is that but an indication that the violence which is now operating in Rhodesia, a violence which maintains the dominance of a handful of so-called white people over a vast majority of African people, is an excellent thing and should continued.

If I may return from that digression to the philosophy of selective violence which is advocated by some students, backed up by their quasi philosophers, they claim that from time to time in world history a climax is reached when only by violence can there be a transition from the old to the new, only by violence can the complacency and inertia of the masses be destroyed so that in the nihilism which will then result the spirit of man will burst forth and forge a new form of society. I do not subscribe to this thinking at all. Indeed, if I could warn the students I would say: beware where you are going, for in this philosophy of selective violence you may begin with altruism and idealism, but in the end you will find that those who are prepared to practise violence without limitation are more likely to succeed than you are. Violence was employed, for instance, in Germany, before Hitler rose to power. The Communists employed violence, as did the Nazis; and because the Nazis on the whole were more ruthless, they succeeded. So it is in this country. If the selective violence which is being supported by a minority of the students succeeds, it may well be that neo-Fascism will appear and employ what they have advocated, but implement it with greater violence.

We must recognise that we cannot really divorce this subject from the full context of our social and world life. In our schools not only have we had history interpreted in terms of violence, and successful violence—glorified imperialist violence at times—but also we still employ violence in the schools in certain circumstances. We call it justifiable corporal punishment. I remember in my own schooldays, which were very elementary to begin with, that from time to time there were beatings before the whole school, which filled me with utter revulsion. Almost immediately afterwards we were assembled for a religious period, when we were called upon to sing, with feeling, a hymn, shall we say, to the Rock of our Salvation. The feeling was a physical one on the part of the boys punished, rather than spiritual.

If we are to employ corporal punishment in schools, as we still do, can we not understand the attitude of many boys when they experience it, or indeed view what is taking place? I think that what is in their minds is: "Well, after all, this is imposed on us from above. This is the method they employ. This violence imposed on our body is, it is claimed, for our own good and justified socially. We will therefore employ it ourselves when in process of time we leave school, pass through adolescence and then become adult persons." This cult of violence as a punishment runs through the schools and through the homes and continues onward, sometimes taking extravagant forms; but whether taking extravagant forms or not, implicitly endorsing the principle that in certain circumstances violence must be employed.

We have to ask ourselves: in those circumstances what is to be done? In the first place, I submit that we should do what I have already urged we should do, and recognise that to a large extent our society is founded on violence and that therefore we should try to stress all those elements in society that lead away from violence, lead away from bitter rivalry and competition for what a certain noble Earl once called "the glittering prizes of life". For where there is unrestricted bitter rivalry and competition, in the end the intensity of the emotions reaches a climax which issues in violence itself. I am not suggesting that we should try to remove rivalry and competition in all circumstances. Far from it. What I am suggesting is that of the variety of impulses which we inherit, which are innate in us, which are genetic, we should more and more stress those elements in mankind which lead to human co-operation rather than the reverse. In so doing, we then undermine the very deep and powerful impulses that have been expressed in violence either on a world-wide scale or on an individual scale.

Reference has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, to the necessity for greater respect for authority. But, again, it depends on what the authority is. Surely the greatest authority of all is the authority of example. When I refer to Gandhi, I do so not as sycophantically worshipping him as being without any defects. Far from it. Talking with him in bygone days, I myself pointed out what I thought were defects in his philosophy. But at least one has to realise that in India he stood for a principle of non-violence which, although it is extremely difficult to interpret and possibly it cannot be interpreted in some circumstances, within his limitations and within his social context laid stress upon an approach to life and human problems that is very much absent in our own Christian world, though, of course, voices are raised from time to time to emphasise that this is a method which is nearer to the Christian precept than the reverse.

But I plead that if we are to tackle this recurrence of violence from time to time, this assumption that violence has merit and value and validity, whether interpreted in terms of gang warfare or world warfare, whether interpreted in terms of discipline in the school or in the home, or whether the impulses of some psychopath, then we have to begin with the home and the school. May I plead, therefore, that in our schools we should employ the period now devoted to religious instruction to emphasising far more than we have done all those elements which can lead to a non-violent approach to life, which will help the child when he is still impressionable to appreciate that jealousy and revenge and those other impulses of human nature are not things in which he should glory, but are things which he should try to sublimate and redirect.

I know it is done sometimes, but I urge that in the drawing up of curricula for the education authorities of this country much more attention should be paid to the ethical and moral side than to the theological and methodist side. I am not necessarily discounting those; they have their place; but I plead that our schools should deliberately deal with those problems when the child is still open to receive and understand them, when emotions are still untainted and unpoisoned. If that could be done deliberately, and if teachers and masters in schools could themselves accept training so that they could transmit this in appropriate ways—which is rarely the case to-day—that might have a cumulative beneficial effect.

The difficulty is that often, even when that is done, there is a conflict between what is taught in the school and what is actually accepted in the home. It comes back, therefore, to the parents, and as most teachers are themselves parents it means that basically it is in the home where there has to be a greater recognition of the responsibility of the parents for transmitting not merely food and clothing and accommodation, or even hygiene, but also the values by which alone they and we can live.

A large number of parents to-day have lost the old authority and inspiration, but they put nothing in its place. If we are going to see a passing away from the old type of authority and mental domination, if we are to have wider freedom, more clarity of thought, then indeed there must go with it a new kind of authority—the authority of supreme values, rather than the mechanical authority of a person or an institution which, in the end, may merely make us subservient serfs.

For that reason, again, I express my gratitude to the noble Earl who has introduced this subject and thank those who have already spoken. I trust that others who follow will add something to help end the underlying causes of the violence which is wrapped up in the very nature of our social order. In order to escape from that, we should recognise that the home and the school are the places where we can begin to emphasise an approach to life which will eliminate in some measure the vicious impulses that we have inherited from the past.

5.8 p.m.

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

My Lords, first of all. I should like to thank the noble Earl for giving me the opportunity of speaking. Secondly, I should like to apologise to him and to your Lordships, because I am afraid that I shall not be able to stay to the end of the discussion as I have a very longstanding family engagement which I should neglect at my peril. Perhaps the discussion will last so long that I shall be able to come back again. However, I want to make some very simple points, and my mind runs very much on the same lines as that of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and, perhaps, those of the noble Lords, Lord Sorensen and Lord Byers. My points are so simple, and I think I can make them so quickly, that I hope they will be acceptable to your Lordships and may even remain in your minds.

Violence is, after all, a defect of character, and therefore I think one must go back to the origin of this defect. I am convinced from long personal experiences of various kinds that, more often than not, outbreaks of violence among adolescents have their origin in very early years—first of all, in infancy. I think a famous Jesuit said, "Give me a child for seven years and then you can have him and do what you like with him", or words to that effect, and that is a very true saying. I think a child's character is made in the very early days of its life, certainly up to the age of seven. Perhaps your Lordships will think, as an example, of a young tree without a stake and open to the winds of heaven, over-exposed to sudden rainstorms, possibly with a branch broken, possibly a leader, possibly bent. It will take that tree a very long time to straighten out and grow up as it should. As with that tree, so it is with a child. Once there is a kink, it takes a lot of ironing out, like a crease in a dress, before you get it straight again.

We are discovering only now, it seems to me, that though all women are potentially mothers, not all women are potentially good or wise parents—and nor are fathers. I do not think enough attention has been paid to the instilling of the responsibility of parenthood in the education of either boys or girls in their late teens. Perhaps we should have fewer illegitimate children if this matter was tackled properly. The fact—and it is true—that the sins of the parents are visited on their children has been said before in one of the wisest books ever written, and we do not, I think, have this enough in mind when we talk about violence. We seem to talk about the end effects instead of looking at the beginning. So my first point is: what are we doing, or what are we going to do, about teaching more expert and wise parenthood, especially to mothers—because a child's first years are very largely in the mother's hands.

Secondly, I am a little worried about teacher-training colleges. I do not think that anything like enough importance has been attached to the training of character as well as the inculcation of knowledge and the need for reasonable discipline. There is a strong tendency in these days, it seems to me—and for six years I was at one time vice-chairman of an education committee—to let the child do what it likes and to make things easy, almost like a game. Life is not like that, and I believe that the sooner children learn a little about what life is really like the better. After all, character has to do with self-discipline, ethics and certainly religion. I know that here I may be speaking to a divided House, with humanists and atheists among us, but even they must realise, I should think, that we are living on the capital and interest of 2,000 years of Christian teaching, and that this credit is becoming exhausted almost as quickly as the present Government are exhausting the capital and credit of this country. What happens then? Also, at the training colleges I do not think that the importance of co-operation between parents and teachers can be emphasised too strongly. It should avoid the attitude that either the teacher or the parent knows best. It should really be, of course, a partnership.

Thirdly and lastly, there is the mass media bombardment of the young through television, the Press and advertising. The young are being exploited, and we of the older generation are to blame. Business has cashed in on the high wages of the young, instead of the young being encouraged to save for the future setting up of their homes, as they used to do. I wonder whether they say to themselves: "What is the point of saving, with the deterioration in the value of money, and if every extra bit you earn is taken away from you?" It would be interesting to make an investigation as to how many of the young of marriageable age are now saving for their homes.

The Press and television seem to me to highlight every bank robbery and easy money adventure, and excel in producing pictures of violence and of getting away with violence. I will not say any more about that because quite a lot has already been said, but I sat for some two years on a committee which was examining the effect of the cinema on the child and, in a sense, this is rather the same thing again. My Lords, I think one forgets. When I was a child and I heard of horrible things happening, I dissociated that type of life from my own life and from the people among whom I was living. Now, on television, children watch these leaders of violence over and over again until their faces are so familiar to them that they almost become part of their own society, and it is a shock to children to find that they are so near the violence itself—and that is bad for them.

In my view, we have had enough of permissive sociey without the corollary of discipline and of asking for rights without corresponding duties; and too much encouragement to take and not enough to give. I have several children of my own and twelve grandchildren, and I know a great many of their friends. I think they are splendid people. They are healthier, better educated academically, full of all the best aspirations that the young have always had, and have immense courage, but to my mind there is something fundamentally wrong with our present education, which has failed them. There is something wrong with the means of communication between the younger generation and the older generation, who have known two wars, who know that life is a hard trial and who know that true steel must be tempered if it is to stand the strain. This, somehow, we have failed to pass on.

In case I sound rather "governessy" or perhaps too "square", I should like to confess that I was myself a rebel at Oxford and was very nearly sent down. When I think back on this occasion I see that it was a total want of communication between the older generation and the younger one, but I am glad to say that communication was finally re-established. I think it is therefore up to us to look very carefully at the training of the young child, and I welcome nursery schools in this respect. It is up to us to communicate better with the younger generation than we are doing, and it is up to the Press and T.V. to understand more fully their tremendous responsibilities. I would add this as a final word. It is also up to the younger generation to understand us better—we who have already sampled what life is like—and perhaps can help them a little better to understand the future.

5.18 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, many of your Lordships know that I have been urging attention to this matter since about 1945, and I therefore thought that perhaps your Lordships would excuse me for saying a few words on this occasion. But first I want to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and to all your Lordships, because this debate has fallen on a day on which I have a very long-promised engagement. I want to apologise also to the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, who is to speak after me, if I do not stay to hear what she is going to say. But this a long-standing engagement, and I must keep it. However, I shall read what is said, and I shall read with special interest what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, says, because this is a matter that we have sometimes dealt with together.

I think the thing that most horrifies me is not so much the violence as the character of the violence—its vicious nature. When I was young there was a good deal of violence, but it was mostly thoughtless. To-day, it does not seem to be thoughtless: it seems to be much more purposeful—and, if I may say so, I think that this is the distinction between criminal violence and people being killed on the roads. I believe that the social effect of this vicious violence is much worse, in spite of the much heavier death rate on the roads. Let me give your Lordships some examples of the kind of thing I mean. A friend of mine—and I expect he was a friend of many of your Lordships; he had been President of the B.M.A., and had a very nice house, as well as a house in London, and a very nice social life—found one night that a gang of men had broken into his house. They beat him up and left him insensible. They then set about his wife, who was the only other person living in the house, and beat her so that she was not only silly but maimed and crippled. She afterwards lay on a hospital bed for, I think, four or five years, doing nothing but look at the ceiling, until she died. That, I am told, is not murder; in fact, I am a little in doubt whether it even gets into the crime register in any form at all. But that happened to a friend of mine.

Let me take another, very similar case. Just after the war, the landlord of the "Elephant and Castle", who was performing a duty which the police would have prosecuted him about if he had not done it, was dragged out of his house, beaten up in the street—with people passing all the time, not interfering—and, like my friend's wife, was laid on a hospital bed from which I do not believe (I did not follow this up) he ever rose. From this violence he died. That sort of case would have shocked the whole of Britain when I was a young man. And there are other cases, to which I shall not refer in detail and which have been before the courts, of people using the last resources of science to inflict torture on their victims. There is a viciousness and deliberation about violence to-day.

There is another side of violence which I have taken up more than once in your Lordships' House and which I think is one of the worst forms; and that is the hazing which is inflicted, very often by trade unionists and, anyway, by strikers, on people who have not followed them in their strike, or on people of whom for other reasons they disapprove. I asked a Question about that at the time of the docks strike and I was glad that the noble Lord the Leader of the House, Lord Shackleton, said that the Government reprehended that sort of conduct very strongly. When I ventured to suggest to him that the principal officers of Her Majesty's Government who take their oaths of allegiance were intimately concerned in this matter—because even before political schemes they must look after the safety of Her Majesty's subjects which is committed to them—the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, disclaimed this and said that I was going too far.

I am coming back to that in a moment; but I was told by trade union leaders that there was never any physical violence used on these occasions and also that they very much disapproved of such activities. But the leaders of the unions are the only people who can stop these activities. Certainly physical violence is used—which is why I used the word "hazing" and not the phrase "sent to Coventry". Certainly it has been used in some cases, to my own personal knowledge. Your Lordships may remember that after Mr. Enoch Powell's first splash (I can refer to it personally because he did not make his splash in the House of Commons) a very large deputation of dockers came to Parliament, and at the same time a deputation of students came as a counter-demonstration. During the course of the demonstrations the dockers set about the students and chased them down the street. They were observed from the precincts of this House not only to knock them down but to start kicking them when they got them down. If that is not physical violence I do not know what is. The first two murders that I came into fairly close contact with in my childhood were both murders by kicking.

My Lords, I should like to touch on the matter of the students. First, I would say that I think the Government are perhaps on the wrong foot over this. I mean by that that I do not think you can ever get the orderly students to take action against the ones who are violent. It must be done by authority. The main body will certainly back them up; but if the authority is not able to deal with it, you will not get the fellow students to do it. A little time ago I was talking with a very well educated, very accomplished man on education, and we talked about a great school which 150 years ago had as its headmaster a gentleman called Keate. I remarked to him that in my opinion it was not Keate's system (which has been very much criticised) that was responsible for the great careers of many of the pupils of that school, but the homes from which they came. He said that that was perfectly true. And that is the case with the students to-day.

These students come from homes where striking is the normal activity. Of course we must expect them to strike if they are discontented. I have a great deal of sympathy with them, and I think that discontent accounts for a certain amount of the trouble. But, my Lords, it is also partly due to a psychological change in the country at the present time. When I was young, people complained about their grievances but they were very slow to act; and the authorities were often slow to correct a grievance for fear of raising another and worse grievance—which is a reasonable attitude. To-day, everybody who feels that he has a grievance feels that he ought to act about it at once. It seems to me that that is a defect in modern education which it would not be very difficult to remedy.

I should like to go further back on the educational road, to schools. A little time ago there was a rather horrible report of an approved school which had a sort of Fagin establishment. They taught crime; they held the whole of the locality up to ransom. The report was a very bad one and I believe that it was true. I did not take it up in your Lordships' House but I did have discussions with the Government on the subject. I said that I thought that the people who ran the school were quite unfitted to deal with difficult boys and that either the school should be closed or the staff should be radically changed. I do not wish to misrepresent the answer that I received, but it was something like this: "These are our star pupils; they are frightfully clever. We do not want to interfere with that promising education by too drastic a change." That where I differ from most educationists of to-day. Because I say: what is the use of giving very high scientific attainments to people who have obviously criminal tendencies, clever people—

LORD STONHAM

Perhaps the noble Lord would allow me to intervene. Not only did the noble Lord differ but the Government differed. He is speaking of Kidlington Approved School. As I am sure he is, or should be, aware, precisely what he advocated about this school has in fact taken place. There have been changes in control and in the teaching staff, and changes in the régime.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord very much indeed for that intervention. I will explain to him how I came to make the mistake. One often takes up a matter in your Lordships' House, and if one produces a really telling case often the matter is remedied. But the Civil Service are remarkably careful to conceal from one that anything one has said in this House has had any effect at all. I had hot the smallest idea of the outcome of the consultations I had with the noble Lord when we worked so harmoniously together. I am grateful to him.

My Lords, I will give him another instance. It is about post-war credits. I took up some bad cases in this House and they could not be denied. They were really bad cases. But the Government repaid the post-war credits, and the only way I heard about it was that I received many grateful letters from people who got the money. The Civil Service were very careful that I should never know. The noble Lord and I have been victims of the system.

That is all I have to say. I have not used many abstract words, but I still say that it is the Government's job to consider all these matters. I do not say that they must do anything frightfully drastic; but it is their responsibility to see that this thing goes right, and I hope that they will accept it.

5.30 p.m.

BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

My Lords, I understand that this very interesting debate can range over the whole spectrum of violence, and I propose to focus attention on a display of violence which is brought so frequently into the homes of the people. We hear that there are two schools of thought about television. I do not belong to that school of thought which lightly dismisses the effect of television on the family. It has always seemed to me that if the commercial interests are prepared to spend colossal sums on presenting their wares, they have clearly learned the effectiveness of the visual impact in conditioning behaviour.

Scenes of sexual promiscuity and violence provide daily lessons for our teenagers. Indeed, my Lords, it seems that already we have a "university of the air" in these two subjects. When I turn on my television it seems to me quite unusual not to see a man aiming a blow at another with a chair, a rifle butt or a fist. It seems to me that I must have just come in at that time; it is difficult to believe that this kind of behaviour goes on for some hours. Of course, there are some who try to dismiss this as make believe and therefore of no serious import, but I would remind your Lordships that the individuals appearing in the advertisements are also acting a part, but they appear to leave a very strong impression on the viewers.

My Lords, I wish to focus attention on those engaged in exhibitions of violence which cannot be dismissed as fantasy. Prize fights are organised as a business in the guise of a sport in which, unhappily, the television authorities are prepared to participate. I would remind your Lordships that the chairman, the vice-chairman and the governors of the television authorities are appointed by the Crown. As I have said, the advertising interests have proved that their methods are highly successful. Similarly, the promoters of prize fights are aware that the regular display of two well-muscled individuals punching each other must appeal to a not over-intelligent youth who is longing to prove his prowess. The person who lounges in front of a television, the compulsive viewer, is not highly intelligent. The unintelligent youth gazes at these two whose names are given and, of course, in his heart he very often identifies himself with them. Therefore television is invaluable to the business of enticing youngsters into the ring.

It has been mentioned before in this debate that there have been recent reports of violence in the United States of America, and apparently the incidence of violence is increasing there. It may be not unrelated to the fact that, compared with our viewing periods, American adolescent youth has a double or treble exposure to the school of violence. I am told that in America television is switched on by people almost as soon as they wake in the morning. While I have sympathy for the ignorant youth whose head is pummeled, I am even more concerned with the effect of the fights on the audience.

Before television ruled the lives of the people only a tiny minority were exposed to this spectacle. Now it is brought to a captive audience in the family living-room with the co-operation of the State which, simultaneously, at great expense to the Revenue, strives to reform youths guilty of crimes of violence. It seems to me that the more fortunate of these boys are protected by their schoolmasters and doctors. Prince Charles's school, does not teach boxing. Charterhouse discourages it and now Eton, fortunately for Eton, has a headmaster who is not favourably disposed towards it. Many grammar schools and secondary schools do not include boxing in their curriculum; and, my Lords, the effect of all this is reflected in the recent decision of Oxford University Boxing Club to disband. This was announced on January 27, and the fixture against Cambridge which was started in 1897 for the first time will not take place this year. The secretary of the club announced that it was a unanimous decision of the club to disband, as so many schools had given up boxing that few undergraduates were prepared to box.

I want to press this point, my Lords. I do not know of any other field in our health services where this class division exists. To-day the boy in the more prosperous home has his brain protected by those who are aware of the danger of repeated blows to the head. The boy in poorer circumstances, conditioned by television and who spends his time in a boys' club, is lured to become a prizefighter by promises of money which dazzle him and his family. Some may escape injury. We all know the names of those who have escaped, but, unfortunately, so many people forget the names of those fighters who were headline news only a few years ago; because generally after about sixty fights they show unmistakable signs of deterioration which is irreversible.

Last week I had the pleasure of making a contribution to a conference held at the Royal Society of Medicine, and I feel that in this context it was historic. It was arranged by the Royal Medico-Psychological Association with Professor Linford Rees, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in the chair. The subject under discussion was: "The Organic Psycho Syndrome (or punch-drunk syndrome) due to Boxing". At Manchester University a great deal of research is now being carried out. This, I can assure your Lordships, is something which many of us welcome. It is so new and the results are so startling. It is carried out in Manchester by a large number of doctors. Last week Dr. J. Johnson expressed the opinion that amnestic and dementing states can develop as a result of boxing, and he supported this opinion with psychometric test results.

Other notable work in this field is being done at the same university by Drs. Isherwood, Mawdsley and Ferguson. In carrying out X-ray studies of the brains of 16 former boxers they found that only three were normal while the other 13 had a variety of features. In the abnormal findings the X-ray changes definitely noted were in the septum pellucidum membrane, or tissue wall, that connects the two chambers of the brain. Of the 13 cases, nine showed perforation in the tissue. These eminent doctors said: There seems no doubt that the changes observed in the septum pellucidum of the boxers are a significant feature, and the role of trauma in their production must be considered proven. The report went on to suggest that there was a correlation between the degree and distribution of atrophy of the brain demonstrated by X-ray and the severity and type of neurological affection seen in clinical examinations.

Your Lordships will recall that in 1962 I introduced a Bill to ban boxing, which I lost on the Second Reading by seven votes. On that occasion the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham (as he then was), asked me not to press the matter to a Division because the late Lord Brain had given an undertaking that he would ask the Royal College of Physicians to convene a committee to study the whole question. The committee has been set up and is conducting an investigation; and all the evidence that I have given your Lordships to-day (although I have to admit in a very abbreviated form) will of course be considered by that committee. Meanwhile, there are many neurologists, psychiatrists and pathologists who have evinced a practical interest in the damage caused to the brain of a boxer and have made reports which prove conclusively the effect of repeated blows to the head. Of all sports boxing occupies a special place, since its aim is that of producing injuries, more particularly to the brain. It is the only sport, or so-called sport, in which wounds inflicted and blood drawn gives colour, zest and a sadistic thrill to the whole performance. It is a business in which the fighter himself may not realise that he has been damaged and that his mental processes are gradually deteriorating or, if he does, he may not admit it for fear of being barred from further fights. I think that it should be obvious to the Government that the evidence which has already been produced is sufficient to merit the withdrawal from the television screens of exhibitions which glamorise violence.

5.41 p.m.

LORD HUNT

My Lords, I start my intervention in your Lordships' debate with an apology, which I make with great regret. I have a long-standing later engagement, and having been persuaded to participate in this debate at very short notice, I could not alter it. Like other noble Lords, I wish to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for doing the considerable service of enabling us to discuss this important and highly topical subject in your Lordships' House. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, and no doubt others who will, because the noble Earl has drawn his Motion so widely, I am going to narrow my purpose. I am sure that the noble Baroness who has just spoken would not wish me to include boxing in the survey I am going to make.

BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

My Lords, I do not mind at all.

LORD HUNT

Noble Lords, including Lord Byers, Lord Brooke and Lord Stonham, at some stage in their speeches spoke of putting this question in perspective. I wish particularly to speak of young people, given that young people are so much concerned and responsible for the violence about which we are talking. We all recognise the wealth of excellence among young people and the splendid community service that many are doing. I have been impressed by the recent opinion poll organised by the Daily Mail, which showed what a significant number of young people would like to do some kind of service to the community or to individuals. This does not surprise me one little bit. But it does add substance to the impressions and beliefs of a great many of us. On the face of it, these facts and indications have little directly to do with the subject of this debate. The numbers and activities of that minority who are engaged in these socially useful activities, and the even greater numbers we now have reason to believe would like to join in some kind of community work—and we can add also the great many others who are pursuing leisure activities which are socially harmless and who are getting on with their education—are in violent contrast with the activities of that other minority which is in revolt against society or makes a pastime of violence. The two are poles apart.

Turning to the minority with whom we are concerned to-day, I have identified, like other noble Lords, three areas in which violence takes place. First, there are the youth gangs, including those who are violent at football matches; secondly, there are the criminal activities in which violence is used, and, thirdly, there are the political or quasi-political activities in which violence is also used. I have deliberately avoided speaking specifically of students in this connection because, as 'the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, so rightly reminded us, this is not exclusively an arena in which students exercise violence. Violence has occurred in other political or quasi-political spheres, and I fear that it may happen in future. I looked at these three areas and asked myself what there was in common between them. I am convinced that between the hobby or pastime of gang violence, and criminal activity there is a direct link. Some of those concerned go from a hobby to professional crime. I find it more difficult to link those two groups with the political activities, with violence attached, which at the moment are mainly indulged in by students unless it is that they are all symptomatic, at different social and intellectual levels, of the malaise in our society as a whole, a by-product of the social problems thrown up by material progress and the pace of change. Are these various expressions of violence simply the tip of an iceberg? I use this analogy in a strictly schematic sense. It conveys in no sense the temperature at which violence is perpetrated. I think that this symptomatic point is relevant in that violence, as I have already said and as noble Lords have widely recognised, is largely a youthful phenomenon. From that I draw both a sense of relief and a feeling of worry and anxiety—relief because, as such, it is transitional for most young people and the question is, partly, what more can be done not merely to deter but to help this violent minority through this particular phase?

I think that all this can be seen as transitional in the wider context of this period of history. We are now a generation in time anyway from a war which unified the nation and involved everybody, in varying degrees and ways, particularly that age group at this transitional stage in life, and imposed disciplines which were cheerfully accepted by nearly everybody, however vaguely, as right. Now, in a kind of "peace in our time", we have not yet found social acceptable alternatives to the youthful aggressions of the anti-social minority. There is something else—and this is where I have my deeper worries—the frustration to idealism, the lessening of national pride and purpose, which has not yet been replaced by any wider notion of community which is acceptable to more than a very few people. This is not simply a transitional problem confined to youth; it includes adults. There is a mood of questioning, of doubting, among many people of most ages. I believe that this accounts in part for the paucity of inspired and convinced adult leadership which is acceptable to young people.

All that, my Lords, is background. I do not know of any general panacea for the problems we have all been discussing. I am certain that there is no "instant" remedy. Some would say, "National Service". Well, we have missed that bus. It might have been done, if we could have retained National Service and changed it to suit our purpose while it was still there. But I do not think that it would be socially acceptable to have it Duck now. I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, had to say about an extra statutory year at school. I could not disagree with him. It is desirable and necessary that we should introduce this new measure only when we have a proper ratio of teachers to students; but I look forward to this as a significant step forward.

I say this provided that a substantial part of that extra year is taken up in tilling the gap between adolescence and adult status by programmes designed specifically for that purpose, with wide options for the use of leisure; a requirement—and I believe it should be a requirement—to be trained for one or other form of community service; the opportunity to take part, to a limited extent, in some chosen form of community service, looking at the social problems on which young people are going to vote when they are 18—looking also at problems concerned with marriage and parenthood which I was so glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet, mention just now.

And, above all, provided that the extra year is taken up for establishing wider adult contacts, not only within the school, but outside the school—indeed, all those meaningful things that the right reverend Prelate mentioned in his speech for making all young people realise that they have a place and a part, a difficult part, to play in the community.

In this respect, I believe that the activities of the socially-minded young people of to-day have a relevance to the future. But it is quite obvious that for the effects of all this we must wait until well into the 'seventies. And I am not so starry-eyed as to suppose that this extra year at school is a general panacea either.

Just for the present, I believe that we have to concentrate more on the immediate cures or palliatives of the actual symptoms of the malaise, rather than on general preventives of a more fundamental nature.

I propose to say something about two of the categories of violence which have been identified in this debate. I want to say something, quite briefly, about the youth gangs and about crimes of violence. I was tempted to say something about students in violent revolt, but as other speakers have said quite a lot on this subject, and it was discussed, to some extent, in your Lordships' House in June of last year, I will refrain from doing so. With regard to youth gangs, I shall not touch on the football violence, but simply on the gangs as they are now emerging. I see these gangs as the successors to the "mods" and "rockers" of a few years ago. Fortunately, at present they are not attended by the focus of publicity, television and Press, to anything like the extent that the "mods" and "rockers" enjoyed, and which abetted them so much. When the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, was Home Secretary I remember that he invited me to sit on a committee to advise him on problems of juvenile delinquency, and I and another member of that committee, the entertainer and singer, Frankie Vaughan, got together with the "mods" and "rockers" to try to understand what made them tick. One thing that shone out crystal clear in our conversations with them was that they got a "kick" out of the Press publicity which they enjoyed at Margate, Brighton and Ostend. There was no doubt about that whatever.

These gangs, I believe, are far more serious as a phenomenon than the "mods" and "rockers". We have instances of them in our urban areas, not only in Glasgow but here in London and in other cities. They are so similar to the gangs about which we have her rd so much in the American cities. They thrive on "kicks" and on a form of warfare: and all this is growing. I have here a Report called, Year One, of a community relations development project on the South Bank, based on King George's House, and sponsored by the Y.M.C.A. It covers the areas of Lambeth, Brixton and Camberwell. In this Report—and no doubt there are many others—one gets vivid glimpses of the "latchkey" kids, the 14 to 17 year olds, adrift from family life, their homes in multi-storey flats, with nowhere to go and nothing to do; or it would probably be truer to say nowhere where they want to go, and nothing better that they are willing to do. They are interested only in destroying things, and they have ready to hand the milk bottles at the street doors. They are interested only in fights with their rival gangs, in trespassing into the territories of those gangs in order to "fix" somebody; many of them—and remember this is a community relations project—actively racist. This is a reversion to tribalism. The Report makes grim reading.

The key points which come out from this Report, as I feel, are a lack of adequate home life; a lack of any neighbourhood loyalties—and for this, I am sure, the vertical housing policy must be regarded as having some responsibility; an ignorance of, a lack of, or a rejection of all alternative ideas and opportunities; and, most important of all, a lack of older people they can trust and look up to—and this includes the parents. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I agree that one cannot blame entirely, or even perhaps mainly, the parents for the relationships in the climate in which we and they live.

One main purpose of this Y.M.C.A. project was to meet this lack of need of adults. I will not go into detail, but it was, and is, simply the appointment of detached workers in considerable numbers, working in this area, with a roving mission to frequent the cafés, to move around on the streets, to cultivate the acquaintance of and relate with these youngsters, again through trust and confidence, and to have access to major resources which can lead elsewhere than to all this street fighting. Café brawls and hooliganism. I think the important point here is that the most successful of these contacts are always on the one-to-one basis. I remember a year or two ago, when I was in the Mayflower Centre at East Ham, at a time when a gang broke in, the Reverend David Shepherd and I were successful in separating the individuals of the gang and talking to them individually, and I, being new to such a situation at that time, was quite amazed to find how reasonable, friendly and normal these individuals were when they were away from the protective influence of the gang. I think this is a fairly important point.

Of course, the social youth worker is not a new idea. The National Association of Youth Clubs made an experiment with four of them a few years ago, and published a well-known Penguin called The Unattached. There is the Manchester Youth Trust, which is doing an invaluable job in the North Midlands, training these very people. And in the South, in Brighton, I am in touch with the Archways Ventures, where some of the staff and students of Sussex University are trying to help the misfits, the social lost souls who drift down to the coast. It is very slow; it is very demanding; it is very expensive in adults: but I am sure that these detached workers, properly trained and inspired, play an essential role in combating gang violence. The important thing is that it must be at neighbourhood levels. I believe, also, that this is the experience in the United States.

The only other point I would make about this subject (and I am narrowing my focus on purpose) is the importance of training and the importance of the workers accepting certain standards—and here I listened again with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he spoke about standards. May I give a personal reminiscence of a few years ago, which is quite brief and which I know the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will remember. We were both interested in a new attempt to get in touch with what were then called "the unattached", and a body, called, I think, Youth Ventures Limited, was established on a commercial café basis in several towns. The director of that enterprise wrote reports, and I remember particularly one report in which he said that there was one strange thing about the groups in these cafés—I think it was in Leicester—and it was that if you took away violence from a group, you destroyed the group. To me, though that was true, that was the evidence of very poor leadership.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, if my noble friend will allow me, may I say that that was thought to be true at the time, which was 1959. It was the first group. But he will be glad to know that that particular club is flourishing more than ever, in new purpose-built premises, and has been going for ten years, with a membership of about 400.

LORD HUNT

My Lords, I am very glad indeed to hear it.

I am going, lastly, to turn to crimes of violence; and here I do so with circumspection, declaring my position as Chairman of the Parole Board. I will say very little and limit myself to a particular point only. All through my limited experience of prison treatment, whether it is "inside" or, as now, outside on parole, runs this same theme that I have been developing with your Lordships: the need to establish personal human relationships between the offender and those who, on the landing, in the workshop, in the recreation period, and later of course in the community, are responsible for his supervision. It all comes down to this kind of caring, leadership, or companionship from somebody who can also command respect. I, too, was very encouraged by the figures which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, gave just now in this connection, which of course I myself am familiar with. I am keeping my fingers crossed. The recalls that he mentioned do not specifically show how many of this small total were serving sentences for crimes in which violence was involved, but I happen to know that the number is a very small part of this very small figure. We shall not know for some time yet the longer-term benefits of paroles on crimes of violence, or on any other type of crime, but already the value of a trained social worker—in this case a probation officer—who has something else to offer in ideas, in leadership, in opportunities, in practical help and in his own inherent quality as a person, is evident. There is also the psychological value of bestowing a measure of trust in the man in trouble, of restoring his self-respect.

My Lords, in concluding I should like to say just this. I have concentrated quite purposely on a very narrow front, and this focus has been concerned with remedial measures rather than punitive or deterrent methods in regard to violence. I hope it will not be felt that on this account I am in favour of a soft line towards those who offend against the law. I am not. I am lease of all leniently minded towards those who use violence as an aid to robbery or any other kind of crime. I have simply sought to present and to support the view that, along with the enforcement of the law, we must try as adults to understand, to communicate with, to counsel and to redeem those who are prone to violent methods.

6.3 p.m.

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, I will not take up much of your Lordships' time in what I want to say. I simply want to record some observations on this matter. I, too, of course, am duly grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for making the opportunity. I begin with a simple question. Why are we participating in this debate at all? Why does it seem so relevant? I think everybody here would agree that it does. The Motion is elegantly put: it refers to "the dangers of violence in contemporary society." It defies anyone to disagree with it. It implies that contemporary society is threatened by violence; indeed, that any society is at risk when confronted by violence within itself. Who would disagree? Certainly not I. But it is our collective awareness of violence as a new, strange thing among us which I find so intriguing.

At this point I would say that I am among those who distinguish between politically motivated violence and plain "bloody-minded" hooliganism. Violent revolution for political ends has an honourable history of sorts; mob rampage has not. This distinction is a personal matter. I feel sure that sociologists and psychologists could find plenty of common ground between the Embassy demonstrator and the train-wrecking football supporter. Both, possibly, have common roots in the tensions and frustrations of our society. And inevitably there are people, great numbers of them, who will tag along in a crowd for no better reason than the pleasure of a good yell and an afternoon's excitement. The policeman confronted with events is hardly in a position to sort out political ethics. And violence for any or no reason has such a depressingly same look—the litter, the breakage, the bandaged heads and busy Press cameramen. Perhaps all violence is a symptom of disturbed behaviour, or of aggression in a lemming society, or of group hysteria. I do not know. I certainly do not condone violence in whatever context it appears. But neither will I automatically write off violent activity politically inspired as being without significance.

Having made this distinction, I should like to trace a short sequence of reactions which violence seems to me to generate within society. It is as follows: first, disbelieving; secondly, bewildered; thirdly, dismayed; fourth, outraged; fifth, revengeful. Some societies are overtaken by violent upheaval without progressing past the disbelieving stage; we could call it the, "Let them eat cake" attitude. Some societies race through the sequence straight to the revengeful, and put down the humblest dissent in fearful pogroms. I believe that we are somewhere between "disbelieving" and "bewildered" in the order. We are bewildered like a benevolent uncle who cannot understand the misbehaviour of a child who has been promised all that it could wish for—as soon as it has grown up. We have not left behind the sheer disbelief that all these embarrassing events in universities and outside Embassies are happening at all. But they are. And, like any other determinist problem, violence exists because it exists.

To get back to the sequence I projected, I said that in disbelief, bewilderment, dismay, outrage and revenge, we were between disbelief and bewilderment. Shall we go the rest of the way? Who can say. A Sunday paper at the turn of the year demonstrated very persuasively to me that 1968 was the year when the old orders hit back. Country after country reacted (using my scale) in outrage to stiffen the forces of law. For another aspect of violence is that it produces violence. Far from cleansing, it corrupts.

Having said all this, I would ask: can we see any answers? I do not believe that, using the familiar terms of reference, we can. The spirit of violent revolution is not quenched by White Papers and well-mannered General Elections; not even by events in this House this afternoon. In our culture we can offer an answer of a kind through our ability to smother things with particularly British cosiness. We seem reluctant as a nation to be swept up by new, modish ideologies. Goodness knows!, it takes long enough for ideas to be assimilated into the national character. Of course, this too is changing. People are necessarily exposed to events on an international scale by the mass media. Many noble Lords have noted this point. We can see Japanese students under siege for their beliefs, beliefs which have counterparts much closer to home. It is not too difficult to picture oneself in the distressing logic of violence. Suppose you—any of you—are one of a fluent, energetic group absolutely convinced that society tolerates gross imperfections, yet the means are not there for you to reach a wide audience for your views. What course of action should you adopt? Will the papers publish your utterly reasonable letter? Will the bureaucracy even notice your petition? Will anyone older even listen?

So when you can see other societies being forced to listen, or at least to react to violent action, you are halfway to the acceptance of violence as a valid form of political dialogue. When the great reforming ideas of history seem full of meaning to-day, when the concept of any authority is in doubt, when Hegel and Marx are fresh, exciting novelties—no, it does not take too much imagination to realise how seductive it can be. As Lady Bracknell put it: Fortunately, in England at any rate education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. For our own part, I can only be unoriginal and repeat that the best defence against violence is to try to understand it. Marshall McLuhan says neatly: There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. Of course violence is alien and distasteful. Unlike a word, a violent act cannot be retracted. Also unlike a word, it cannot be ignored. My Lords, I spoke a moment ago of a "defence" against violence. Perhaps what we should be looking at hardest is the society we propose to defend. It will be a measure of the maturity and flexibility of that society to see how we recognise violence; and by recognising it, remove it.

6.11 p.m.

LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS

My Lords, it has been said several times in the course of this debate that we are living in a time when violence has become in some ways almost a habit, but I sometimes wonder whether it is not in part simply that violence has become, like many other things, more classless than it used to be. I well remember when I was a young reporter in Liverpool, some 45 years ago, the clashes that used to take place there quite regularly between the Orangemen and the Catholics. They would make anything that is going on now in Northern Ireland look like an amateur showdown. I remember when I was quite young going out as a junior reporter and seeing what I suppose would be called a "punch-up" down in the docks, which involved 20, 30 or 40 people. Being very young and inexperienced I rushed back, believing that I had a great story. I was asked, "Was anybody killed?". I said, "No". Then I was asked, "Was anybody taken to hospital?". I said, "No.", and the rejoinder was, "That isn't news; that's only part of the life of Liverpool".

It is only because violence, in its student manifestations, has also become part of the middle-class way of life that we begin to get so perturbed about it and to take so much more notice of it, and because we have ourselves, as a nation and perhaps as a world, become in essentials a basically less violent society than we used to be. I think we disapprove of violence and condemn violence much more than we used to do, and are concerned—as your Lordships are—to see how it can be ended, to a degree that used not to be the case when it was accepted as just one of those things that occupied the lower classes.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has said, we live in a violent century. It is a violent century in which more people have been killed in war than in any other century; and, particularly now, television brings the impact of the violence of war home to an extent that never before existed. It has been truly said that Vietnam is the only war in history to have been fought in American sitting-rooms. It is because it is fought in American sitting-rooms that it creates, on the one side, an acceptance of violence as part of the modern way of life, but on the other side an acceptance of popular responsibility, a growth of popular determination to seek, as in Vietnam, an end to such a war. This is a feeling which would not have existed to anything like the same extent if the war had not been fought in their sitting-rooms. I think that is the other side of the penny.

I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who said that there was a certain rejection of authority. I believe that to be true; but it is also true that we have to ask ourselves why authority is rejected and whether, in some instances, authority does net seek to impose itself in such ways that it seems perfectly right and proper, particularly to many young people, to reject it. I will give your Lordships one quite minor instance. I do not bow to any Member of your Lordships' House in my respect and admiration for the police force, particularly for its behaviour in violent demonstrations, but I know that in my own part of the country, in Surrey, there are groups of young people who dress themselves up in what I suppose is the uniform of their age, with long and, as it seems to me, rather dirty-looking hair and "with it" clothes. They have what they call "jallopies" which I think, on the whole, because most of them are mechanically minded, they keep in excellent condition; but every time they go out driving they are stopped by the police because they look like they do. I know of one who has been stopped no fewer than twenty times in the last four months. I have been told so by his parents and by him. They feel that if he wore a bowler hat and a nice, trim suit, and drove a smart little Austin Mini, the police would wave him by without any trouble at all. But because these young people look as they do they are stopped by the police and are given the impression that the police are regretful when they find that there is nothing wrong that they can take up, and that they are only waiting for the next opportunity. It is that attitude that one has, with some difficulty, to break down.

The problem of violence, and particularly of student violence, goes much deeper. I happen to have been present at the place and the time which I suppose may be regarded by many as the birthplace of student revolt, in Berkeley, California, when the first student riots began. I was a visiting Professor there at the time and I got to know a lot of the students very well. I was at first surprised, but later not so surprised, to find that although there was a mischief-making minority which was only too ready to seize on what it could, in the main those who were demonstrating and rioting were among the most idealistic of all the students on that campus.

A couple of years ago, and several years after the beginnings of the outbreak in Berkeley, I was at another American university, the University of Wisconsin. The Middle West, which has its feet on the ground, on the whole had been free from outbreaks of student violence. Suddenly, just after I arrived—though I assure your Lordships it was only coincidental—violence began. There were various sharp clashes between the students and the university authorities and the police. Eventually members of the faculty very sensibly asked if the students would like to send some of their representatives for a completely open discussion with them about what was wrong.

I went along to the discussion. There was a very large gathering of the members of the faculty and a number of student representatives, who were not very good, in that it was clear that their reasons were not always completely lucidly worked out. But what most of all came through that discussion was a sense, on the part of the students, of disillusion and frustration, not simply with the university but with the whole of American civilisation as they now began to see it, although it was disillusion that embraced the university, because they felt that it was playing a wrongful part in that civilisation.

To a large extent, and partly no doubt because of the Vietnam war, and partly also no doubt because of the feeling of growing division and confrontation with the Negroes in America, the feeling of a society that was beginning to show gaps all over, they felt that the ideals which had been held out to them by their parents, of a two or possibly three car garage in a nice beautiful ranch-type house in a good suburb, did not interest them. This was not what they wanted at all. They wanted something which would seem to them more meaningful, and especially (and I hope I shall not myself invoke violence by saying so in a technological age) they did not very much want a technological society. They felt that they had hoped to come to a university to have new vistas of life opened to them, a new sense of values and opportunities, and that all that was happening was that the university was concerned to make them good little junior executives in a technological corporation. And they did not want that; they wanted something which would be more challenging and more inspiring.

I myself could not help feeling that perhaps in part American universities, and also British universities, despite the need which we all appreciate for technological advance, were going too far away from the old conception of creating educated people versed in the liberal arts and thinking and living in terms of a civilised life in a civilised community. And again, as with those students in Berkeley, I could not help feeling that although of course there were always groups anxious to take hold of this sort of feeling and divert it to other political or, perhaps, economic purposes, yet at the basis of it was something that one ought not to fear or reject but to applaud and embrace.

In conclusion, may I remind your Lordships that in this debate no one, I think, has touched upon what is in some ways one of the most striking occasions of recent history; and that is the demonstration by the people of Czechoslovakia, and particularly the young people of Czechoslovakia of the immense significance and importance of non-violence. My wife and I have a very old friend who is a woman professor in Prague, and as it happened, very fortunately, she came over here for an international conference just after the Soviet invasion of Prague. We were able to invite her to stay with us, and she was able to tell us about the situation.

She said something that made a deep impact on me. She said, "Before all this happened we were often having meetings at the university to discuss what we feared to be the outbreak of violence and revolt amongst our students, and we felt that perhaps they had caught a disease which apparently seemed to be international." "Then", she said, "we were faced with a real act of violence, the arrival of the Soviet tanks, and instead of reacting with violence our young people and our students acted and reacted with an amazing self-discipline, an amazing resistance of morality and intellect, not of violence". She said, "I remember particularly at the very end, when our leaders had returned from Moscow and so much seemed lost, that that evening on the radio an appeal went out that in order to save what could be saved the streets of Prague should be cleaned up and the provocative slogans taken down. That evening I saw torches blazing in Wenceslas Square and the streets of Prague, and I wondered if the young people were refusing to take this and had decided, as seemed might well be possible, on violence. And I saw that by the light of their torches they were cleaning the streets and rubbing down and away the slogans, not because they wished to do so, not because there could be any pleasure in doing so, but because in this bitter moment of temporary, but we believe only temporary, defeat, they felt themselves a part of their society and at one with their leaders in an attempt to hold fast as much as possible." And she added: "As I looked at that I felt myself weeping a little, and I said to myself 'Little violent students, how much I admire you'".

My Lords, if we can create a society in which all people, and particularly the young, can feel that they are truly a part, that it is governed by values greater than just material values, that it gives a true outlet and a challenge to their idealism, then we may hope to defeat violence more completely than by any punitive measures.

6.30 p.m.

LORD ROWALLAN

My Lords, I, too, like those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, am most grateful to the noble Earl for having given us this opportunity of speaking, in my own case from personal experience, on this subject of violence and juvenile delinquency and of the young criminal, as one might call him. I am also grateful to Lord Byers for having given me a lead in going rather outside the narrower sphere of violence and its dangers.

In 1941 I was asked to take command of a young soldiers' battalion. I had not the slightest idea of what it was going to be like. I had never seen one. They were entirely new. I found that they were used for emptying borstals and approved schools, and this was done by telling the young boys that if they joined up they could get away. So they all joined with the greatest alacrity, deciding not to make the best of it but to make the worst of it. They were an extraordinary crew. We had everything, from one man who was later hanged for murder to two people who were given 14 and 12 years' respectively as the leader and the deputy leader of one of the gangs in the East End of London at the end of the war. We had one young fellow who was an expert safe-breaker. So expert was he that I was asked by the Chief Constable of Banff if I would allow him to lecture his detective staff on the secrets of safes. He was only 18, but. I understand that he did this with the utmost aplomb. He had been caught only because, unfortunately, his father, who was a safebreaker before him, had never told him that he should wear gloves when he was breaking safes.

Then we went through each little gang of petty thieves. At the beginning of this venture these petty thieves and the more ambitious thieves managed to get rid of several hundred pounds' worth of Government property each month, apart altogether from the depredations perpetrated on local shops and other fruitful-looking prospects. It was difficult to know what to do. It was obvious that officers like myself, and non-commissioned officers who had been "dug out", were quite incapable of dealing with this active young gang. It was also evident to me that the first thing to do was what I had tried to do in every single thing that I had undertaken: to teach them and to restore their self-respect. I am glad to hear that truth being stressed by many speakers to-day, because that is the basis of the solution to the whole problem.

We were given the most soul-destroying tasks that young fellows could ever be asked to do. One week we were asked to dig holes for defence, and the next week we were told to fill them in bemuse a new defence commander had arrived. Having filled in the trenches we dug in the first place, we were asked to dig another lot, in the certainty that in the following week we should be filling in those too and digging new ones. I was given the opportunity of getting new officers and non-commissioned officers. Some of these young fellows were capable of tackling a non-commissioned officer's job. In order to try to get the officers to know more about their men and to break through the protective crust which these young fellows had erected around themselves, I got permission for the men to go off the air stations for 24 hours every week. That was a great step forward; it helped the officers to break through the crust, to get to know their men and to gain their respect. That was the first step.

The next thing was to see what could be done in regard to getting rid of the examples of original sin, which were quite evident among some of the older and more experienced sinners. Fortunately, I came across a co-operative psychiatrist who was willing to take my word for it if we came up against someone who was completely and absolutely irredeemable. He marked them down for the unarmed Pioneer Corps and I put them on the train. Nobody was able to meet them at the other end, because they were not there. But at any rate we did not have the mortifying experience of seeing those fellows come back from gaol and leading away and enrolling in their own private gang the people who had started to make good. It is extremely important, when you have these incorrigibles, that you should get rid of them. I do not mind how, but get rid of them you must if you are going to get a free field for the young fellows who are sinners by mistake rather than by determination.

Things went on pretty well. The petty thieving and petty crime began to decrease. Finally came the great moment when, from these young fellows, I was asked to provide, every month, a demonstration platoon at the training centre for the Commando. I made it a rule, to begin with, that nobody with any entry on their conduct sheet during the past three months was eligible. That was automatic selection to begin with. But gradually, after that, and in their keenness to do a man's job and show that they could do a man's job, crime disappeared and when the time came to break up the battalion and send them to the corps, I had the satisfaction of receiving a letter from the Scots Guards saying that they would be willing to accept anybody whom I chose to send, without further question, so long as he had reached the physical standards of the regiment to which he was going. We had achieved the three or four things that were essential. First of all, we broke up the little private gangs. Then we broke through the crust of lack of confidence. Next, we restored their self-respect and showed them that they could, and would, do a worthwhile job and that they could be trusted to do it.

Now let us go back a little into history. About a year ago now, one of my woodlands was set on fire by a young fellow aged 14, who had collected together a gang of eight aged between 9 and 12 years. That young fellow, from the age of seven, had had a constant battle with the police. He knew that in the present circumstances they could do nothing; that they were utterly helpless. He developed a contempt for the police and a contempt for the law, and he was leading those 9 and 12-year-olds along the same way that he had gone. So far had this 14-year-old gone, that when one of the policemen told him to get into the car in order to take him to Kilmarnock, the other policeman said: "No, don't touch him when you are alone: take somebody else with you ". The boy had already learned to deal with the police and frame them. We must find some means whereby those 7 and 8-year-olds can be made to realise that although the age of responsibility may not come until several years later, they must learn to behave themselves otherwise it will be the worse for them.

I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, spoke about the importance of a full establishment for the police. With your Lordships' indulgence I will read a short portion of an article which appeared in The Times the other day. It said: They agree they are charging fewer people"— this was the police— involved in disorderly crowds but say that this is because they are under strength and that by the time they get to the scene of a gang fight the mobs have melted away and there are never any witnesses. This week housebreakings in the area are running at about six a night. The police accept that five of these will be genuine robberies, the sixth part of a recognised ploy by tenants to induce the social security office to replace money allegedly stolen. One policeman said: 'It is little wonder that youngsters grow up into "Neds" in families who will not work. There are many decent people here, but with as few as one or two constables covering an area the size of the City of Perth we have no chance of protecting them or their property. 'There is no point in talking about Frankie Vaughan to an innocent man who has had a knife shoved under his ribs by a youngster he has never done anything to or even seen before. 'Nobody hopes more than us that Mr. Vaughan's plan will go well and that the youth centre will be a success—but when you see the vandalism here! The boys on the list of the Scottish Criminal Records Office will take over, and the decent youngsters will be driven out.'

6.43 p.m.

LORD SOPER

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Cork, must, I am sure, by this time feel amply justified in his bold essay and must feel gratified at the extent and the amplitude of the debate which has been occasioned by his opening remarks and his subject matter. I am grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for reminding us of the dangers of using the deductive method in such a discussion as this, beginning with a proposition and then endeavouring to fit the evidence into that proposition. I am sure that this is such a complex and widely stretched subject that anything less than a full use of the inductive process would be foolish, and I do not pretend that with an accumulation of evidence such as I should like to try to bring there would be necessarily a coercive result. But at least let us try.

I am not satisfied that there is a prima facie case, or an inductive case, for the proposition that man is to-day a more violent animal than he has been. I think this is the first general proposition which has to be tested and looked at. I have often felt how pleased I should be if our Russian friends would stop reading Dickens and start reading Trollope for a change. I think they would find just as much good ammunition, but they will persist in the idea that nothing has changed in England since the time of Dickens; and of course it is a sheer fallacy. Those who would like to refresh their mind on this particular fallacy may well remember the chapter in Sketches by Boz, "Making a Night of It", or various parts of The Old Curiosity Shop, and indeed of Oliver Twist, to say nothing of Barnaby Rudge, to persuade them that a very great deal of violence in our day is less than the kind of violence that prevailed in the days of Dickens. And by the same token I wish that some of those who think to-day there is an accumulation of a particular characteristic of violence never before known would use this particular method of comparing what can be dredged out of the various books of Charles Dickens and compare the evidence there with the sort of thing that is happening to-day.

In the second place, it is quite evident that we know so much more to-day about what is going on than did those who lived in comparative isolation in the 19th century or the beginning of this century; and this, it seems to me, is probably the principal matter with which the B.B.C. has to take account. It is not so much its pornography, which is occasional and, I think, to be execrated; it is not so much its deliberate infusion of violence into so many of its programmes, as the widespread coverage of violence which is a necessary part of its news service, a news service which was impossible until the present generation, and has nevertheless brought to minds and to the ideas of people who previously would have been innocent of it a whole range of violence, which has always been there but has hitherto gone unnoticed.

Then, of course—though it has not been mentioned to-day—surely it is a fact that the increasing efficiency of the police force has brought to book many of those who in previous days went unchallenged. I remember that when I first began as a social worker in the Old Kent Road to see a policeman in Rivet Street was a very occasional experience. Indeed, a great deal of the violence that belonged to that area then went unnoticed and undeterred precisely because the police were not sufficient in numbers and the law was not sufficiently mandatory to bring many of these scoundrels to book.

Therefore there is no prima facie evidence that we are dealing with a new phenomenon. But there is evidence that the character of violence is itself changing, and I would, if I may, deploy that evidence. We see personal and gang violence, the domestic violence to-day, against a hitherto unprecedented backcloth of world violence. I think that this is the intellectual gap, or the perception gap, between the students and those of more advanced age. We have come perhaps to be conditioned by, and to tolerate, a situation of mass violence which if it were presented to us for the first time would shock us out of our senses. As it has come with this immediacy to many young people they see their own violence within the framework of a world in arms, and the arguments to which they are invited to listen, of nuclear war and prospects, such as we debated in your Lordships' House last week, of biological and chemical warfare. These things create a sense that violence is a necessary and inevitable part of the society in which they live, a sense which was not present, I believe, to many of their forefathers.

Then again, we deplore—I do—the breakdown of religion, of the Christian faith. But it is not perhaps the Christian faith which is so much in question now as the taboos and the prohibitions which went with it. Once upon a time, people at least knew the name of the church they stayed away from. This is the first secular age in which people are almost entirely remote, not only from the doctrines and metaphysics of the Christian Church—more particularly this applies to youth—hut from its moral obligations. Is it not true that violence has now passed out of the realm of the moral consideration and has become an amoral consideration; and has not this created a new difficulty in the approach to that violence?

I am not surprised, in a sense, that this decay of a sense of obligation to avoid that which is basically evil should have taken place. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will allow me slightly to disagree with him—not that I disagree with the first part of what he said. Had this been a camp meeting, I would be complete with "Hallelujahs!" because it seemed to me that for the first couple of pages of his speech he completely denounced violence as being a wicked thing, with no good in it, and I said "Amen." Unfortunately, the right reverend Prelate went on to say that perhaps in some circumstances it was still necessary. Whether or not your Lordships agree with that, you must agree what a disabling effect that must have on the outsider who looks to the Christian Church for a sense of absolute and finds, as my noble friend had to find at the end of his speech, a number of questions. If we, as Christians, are not able to point the absolutes in the moral field, it is not surprising that for so many of our contemporaries the whole attitude to violence has passed clean out of it.

What, then, is to be done in a situation where this violence has acquired perhaps new aspects but is not, I think, an extension of original sin or a double dose of total depravity, but is necessarily a part of a world which itself is intrinsically violent? In passing, may I add one dimension again to the quality, or the disquality, of the violence of the gang. Nobody, up to now, has mentioned the place which alcohol and drugs take with that minority who are the stimulants of gang warfare. As I happen to know, and as many of your Lordships will know, this is with regard to alcohol no new phenomenon; but it is with LSD. At the risk of being petulant, I would beg your Lordships, if you have not seen anybody under the influence of LSD, to listen with great care to the observations of those who have. I am one of them, and I consider that violence is one of the most astonishing, and at the same time one of the most disastrous, appearances produced by LSD. It would not surprise me, though evidence would be hard to come by, to learn that in most of the violence that is sheer hooliganism there is an element of drug-taking, however small that element may be—though I personally think it to be pretty large.

What is to be done? I hope that there will be no demand for a return to the violent kind of punishment which is assumed to be an answer to the violent kind of crime. Already there has been in your Lordships' House evidence of the repudiation of the idea that it will be good for us to return to capital punishment. I hope that we shall not return to corporal punishment. I have been a prison chaplain and I have seen corporal punishment. I have seen the dreadful effects which it produces, particularly the effects on those with homosexual tendencies and those who are sadistic or masochistic. Quite apart from that as a special reason, to answer violence by violence is, in the end, to multiply the violence, not to get rid of it.

I also hope, as has already been said so often in this debate, that the police force will be strengthened and, if I may say so without impudence, better educated. I have sat down, walked around, and stood up, at C.N.D. rallies on a number of occasions and have engaged in a number of altercations with the police. I hope that they will not think it pompous of me if I say that in many cases, when they are prepared to argue in a good-natured fashion with the demonstrators, they find themselves very quickly out of their depth, for many of the demonstrators are well-equipped, at least with the arguments which they think are pertinent. Many of these young policemen, bless their hearts, are thoroughly good and decent people and would enjoy a good conversation. I do not know how this better education can be achieved (it might form part of the curriculum), but a better-educated policeman, who is at one and the same time as gentle and restrained as many of them are, would be a far more effective member of the community and would do better what I, having been in Grosvenor Square, know is already being done very well.

But surely the real problem must go a lot deeper. I am sure that people (except those extraordinary people who are perverted; and they are a very small minority) do not resort to violence because they believe it is a good thing. They resort to violence, as has already been noted in this debate, because they cannot see any effective alternative to it. I was most moved, as we all were, to hear my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams talking of the Czech reaction, the non-violent reaction, to the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I compared it in my mind with the heroic but violent reaction of the people of Hungary in 1956. This is evidence that should support those who believe, with Martin Luther King and Gandhi—and as I wish, with the Christian Church—that non-violence is a technique as well as the repudiation of violence.

One thing which, to me, is perhaps more interesting and dynamically important than anything else about the Czech resistance is that, because they decided not to embark on violence, they had the time, the energy and the enthusiasm to perfect a television service which made known to the rest of the world within a few minutes the grim effects and facts of that invasion. Johnson said that a sentence of death "wonderfully concentrates" the mind. So does a gun in your pocket. So does the acceptance of violence. If you are prepared to maintain violence, even as a last resort, you will by that very process be inhibited from giving your full attention to any contrary or any other kind of defence.

Perhaps the most constructive thing that could emerge out of this debate would be a claim for, and some provision for, education in the alternative to violence. As one who has tried to listen to students, tried to understand their language and their problems, I find it almost impossible to say anything to these students who have tried and struggled and failed, and who feel they are completely without any hope of getting what they justly believe to be right. Whether or not what they claim is right, when they find their point of desperation then violence become; the only thing that can possibly work. It is a cynicism but it is necessarily one of which we should take account. To give them the opportunity, the option; to give them at least the vision of a way which is non-violent—that which is not clearly the rejection of violence but is the constructive alternative to it—demands that they should have a sense of community. It is an atavistic society in which most of them live. This demands that they should live in a community in which they should participate. This demands all the splendid ideas which have already been echoed in the House this afternoon.

But, as a beginning, if people to-day could be persuaded that what Gandhi did in India, with due differences and other manifestations, was not an isolable and egregious event, but in fact contained within it the substance of an alternative to the scourge of violence; if in the present situation there can be seen the opportunities whereby those who want to pursue this non-violent path can do so in voluntary service (and how quickly they respond to Voluntary Service Overseas; how eagerly they march in C.N.D.; how quickly they respond to Oxfam!) and if there were a wholesale attempt on a voluntary basis to provide the microcosm of the non-violent society, in which service and care and friendliness were dominant, then I believe that those who now turn to violence as a pis aller, those who feel that nothing but violence can offer hope, would eagerly grasp that new sense of opportunity and new sense of vision.

I cannot but end by saying how much I hope that the Christian Church will give them this new sense; how much I deplore the fact that those who wish, as many of them do, to move out of the city of destruction, as yet have little idea of the City of Light to which they would fain go. We must give them, through the Christian Church, or through voluntary help, a sense of community in the whole of this land in which we live and which we love. This is part of the constructive outcome of this debate, and makes me the more grateful to the noble Earl for initiating it.

6.59 p.m.

THE EARL OF GOWRIE

My Lords, your Lordships will not envy my having to get to my feet after the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Soper. Nevertheless, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery not only for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate, but also for his very kind remarks about me. In spite of this, I feel a certain unease in taking part, so I shall be brief. The unease springs from a sense of things not being made clear, in spite of many interesting, eloquent and moving speeches this afternoon. We have been talking about violence, and violence is, intellectually speaking, very much in the air at the moment. Even in the fortnight since I learned that your Lordships were to debate this Motion, books and articles have appeared about revolution, about forceful political protest, about student demonstrations and college takeovers, and many of these have been reviewed and discussed in the highbrow and middlebrow Press. For the moment there seems to be a lull in our attitudes, in our preoccupation with sex. Violence is "in", as my noble friend Lord Birdwood suggested. Even your Lordships—and I imply no disrespect—are jumping on this bandwagon.

What I am unclear about is this. Where is all the violence going on? Force, Marx told us, is the midwife of every old society pregnant with the new. But in England, at any rate, is she not a somewhat outdated old body, doing her rounds in a few places, admittedly, but on the whole yielding to newer obstetrical techniques—techniques which may be a bit impersonal but which are certainly a lot more painless? Such an unlikely duo as Mr. Enoch Powell and Mr. Tariq Ali seem both agreed that rivers of blood are flowing, or are going to be flowing somewhere, and both seem afraid of missing the boat.

Perhaps my life is too sheltered, but contemporary society in England seems to me a good bit less violent than it was when I was a teenager in the 'fifties. The school I attended beat one fairly frequently—a practice which I understand it is starting to abandon. Capital punishment was still on the Statute Book, and it is very largely thanks to your Lordships that it was abandoned—though not, in my view, before time. I myself witnessed two gang fights, one in London, one in the Provinces, in which flick knives were used to dreadful effect. I remember the horrors of Notting Hill and the bicycle chains. There was a great deal more censorship of books and plays and films then, and those of us who make our living in or about the arts usually agree that censorship is in itself a form of violence, a violent offensive against the integrity of an individual work, or of the individual's right to work from nature.

What I suggest to your Lordships is this. A great deal of the violence which we are talking about is, like Marx's phrase, a metaphor. This is not to belittle or underrate it. On the contrary, my view is that it is a vital metaphor, that our intellectual preoccupation with the forces of violent action is necessary at the present time. Everyone knows, and many of your Lordships have pointed out, that the twentieth century has been the witness of exceptional global upheavals. To adapt Donne's sermon, as my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery did, "no country is an island" any longer, and our own exceptionally stable island could not and should not, in my view, escape participation in other's more agonising upheavals. And how unbearably smug, even by traditional English standards, it would be if we failed to reflect those upheavals in our own doings. If playing on words is not fiddling while Rome burns, let me close with an attempt to clarify two words in the context of our debate. They are "reflection" and "deflection". What does our current preoccupation with violence reflect? And can we deflect it, turn it to the useful ends of Jefferson's, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Whether we like it or not, Britain is no longer an island. It is a divided part—look, my Lords, at Ulster—of a divided continent. And Europe's divisions are made made more poignant by her situation between two monolithic super-Powers, Russia and America. Russia and America, as we know, and as the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, has pointed out—and I, too, have talked in American universities so I was very fascinated by his speech—have their own acute divisions and dissensions, but they are "countries" in a way that Europe is not. The ways in which these two countries are run, and the intellectual assumptions which underlie their policies, are European in origin expressed in the old argument between licence and liberty—whether you find your freedom collectively or individually; whether you find freedom in perfect freedom or freedom in perfect service.

It is a confusing argument because it is such a broad one, and when human beings get confused individually and collectively they tend to become violent. Added to this confusion is the agony of the "Third World", of starvation, overpopulation and commercial exploitation. How violent these safe-sounding abstract nouns can be in reality. Our students and our young teachers have an unprecedented global awareness. They not only sense, they pin down the confusion and so they want to change it. As many have said, this is only natural. But there comes a point, when you want to change things, where you are forced to decide whether to do the job bit by bit, to channel events to your liking, to deflect what you object to. Or you may decide that things are too far gone and that what needs altering is the structure. I understand that in physics structural alteration tends to be violent, explosive. In politics it is usually called revolution.

The English way has been to do the job bit by bit, and this sounds the most reasonable and attractive way. But your Lordships will know how many bitter postponements there have been in our history; how many moderate solutions have been held up through prejudice and ill-will, even down to issues like reform of your Lordships' House, or questions of your Lordships' salaries. Your Lordships do not need me to tell you that times of general violence have been fertile breeding grounds for particular reforms. Our Welfare State got going during the late war. Your Lordships can consult the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, about all that.

What I am suggesting is that we must not only deplore violence; we must be aware of it as a conceptual alternative to doing the job bit by bit. We must study it, as my noble friend Lord Bird-wood suggested, and we must allot money for the study. One can take courses in revolution more cheaply than having a revolution. Only if you are aware of things conceptually can you hope to affect them when they leave the realm of concept. And in America, in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, in China itself, in the France of last summer, even down to the London School of Economics, we see how quickly things tend to leave the conceptual realm.

Finally, there is of course violence and violence, and I felt very strong sympathy for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. It would be wrong of us here to fume over the revolutionary longings of some of our students, and their rather sad mini-Guevarist activities, while we take for granted other forms of violence and, indeed, accept them altogether. I mean, for example, the colossal slovenliness of our culture, our contempt for the environment which we rape—and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for mentioning vandalism in that context—the industrial pollution and what we call the uglification of existence. The useful point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, about motor cars goes without saying. These problems are not metaphors; they are far more real than that. But we have it in our power—we even have a certain amount of power in this Chamber—to do something about such problems as industrial waste or the motor car by totally peaceful means. It was, I think, William Blake who taught us about the violence of just desires, but he, too, was a revolutionary.

7.9 p.m.

LORD ARCHIBALD

My Lords, like every Member of your Lordships' House, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for having introduced this subject for debate to-day. We have had many extremely serious, moving and in some cases profound speeches, and it may be that, in contrast to those, what I have to say will seem rather trivial and superficial, but I think that, implied in the putting down of this subject for debate, there is the point that violence has increased and is greater than it has been in the past. I think that implication is something which should be repudiated. My noble friend Lord Stonham has said that we have a less violent society than in the past, and I think that is true. I am inclined to think that there have been a number of references to violence at the present time which have not been properly contrasted with the same kind of violence in the past. There has been a reference to gang-warfare. I remember that in Glasgow forty years ago gang-warfare was much more intense and much more violent than it is to-day.

Then there was a reference—I do not know exactly what it has to do with violence—to the increase in the figures of juvenile delinquency. I wonder whether juvenile delinquency has in fact increased, or whether it is merely that the statistics have enormously increased. When I was a small boy in Glasgow and we had policemen six feet two inches tall and 15 stone in weight, they could not normally catch the delinquents; and if on a rare occasion they did, they would give them a cuff on the ear or a boot on the bottom or, in very rare cases, take them to their fathers and tell them, "If he was my son, I would give him a good hiding". But they did not take them in and make them statistics. Today, the police catch more of the offenders and dare not lay a hand on them, so they take them to the police station, they are booked, and up go the statistics of juvenile delinquency. I am not at all sure that juvenile delinquency has increased. Lord Stonham referred to the fact that there is a greater public readiness to report acts of violence. There, again, the statistics are increased, but we do not really know whether the acts of violence have increased.

In the Guardian yesterday there was a reference to this debate in your Lordships' House which said: Television and cinema, too, by showing violence as a regular ingredient in the lives of many of the heroes who appear on the screen, must play a part in inuring viewers to it. Yet we still know little about the specific impact of television on viewers. The Lords to-morrow might usefully bring new pressure on the B.B.C. and I.T.A. to spend far more of their budgets on research into this. It could be a valuable outcome to to-morrow's debate". I am bound to say that this afternoon and this evening less blame has been put on the cinema and television for the increase, or supposed increase, in violence than I had expected, but there have been a number of references to the very harmful effect of the film and television in this respect. In the case of my noble friend Lady Summerskill, I was not quite sure whether it was boxing or the showing of boxing on T.V. that was the villain, but I gathered that they were both villains; and there were further references to the evil effects of both the film and television. Of course, that is not at all unexpected, because if there is an increase in violence society looks for a scapegoat. It cannot be society itself which is at fault—that would be unacceptable. Nor can it be the Church; nor education; nor parents. There must be some evil influence at work. We must find a scapegoat. In my young days the scapegoat was the "penny dreadful", then it became the cinema and now, to some extent, it is television. I would ask your Lordships to look rather carefully at this theory, because I do not think there is any evidence for it. There is just a lot of prejudice.

May I give your Lordships an illustration? Some fifty years ago I was the manager of a cinema in one of the poorest slum areas in Glasgow. When I tell your Lordships that the admission prices were 3d. and 5d., you will realise just how poor an area it was. Many of the films that were shown—in fact, most of them—were films which showed luxurious living—high standards of housing, furnishing, eating and drinking; luxury of every kind. I was then young and naïve enough to believe that these poor slum dwellers, seeing these scenes of luxury on the films, would be raised to revolt, to believe that they should share that kind of life. How naïve I was! What happened was that, for 3d., for two hours they lived vicariously. They enjoyed living in luxury. Make no mistake, my Lords: I am not joking about it. There was not any doubt; I talked with them. It was not merely the fact that the 3d. admission was cheaper than warming their poor slum houses. It was that for a couple of hours they had lived in luxury and had enjoyed it.

My noble friend has just interjected to say that in certain circumstances the film or television does their violence for them. I think that is a most important point to remember in all our discussions about violence: that scenes of violence, whether on the cinema or on television, may well act as a release of the aggressive instinct rather than as a provocation to acts of violence. I have discussed this over the years with psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and so on, and I quote from a paper given recently by a psychiatrist friend of mine: The problem of violence is closely related to that of aggression and is one which has aroused a great deal of talk and controversy. Just as the 'penny dreadfuls' and the films were once blamed for the increase in juvenile delinquency and for the ill-doings of children and adolescents in general, this blame has now shifted on to television… From such investigations as are available at the present time on the effects of television on children, there is no evidence to suggest that television makes well-adjusted children into violent or aggressive children, although … it is probable that the aggressive, or the frustrated children can be stimulated into committing acts of violence". There, the fault is not the medium. The fault lies in the fact that the child has already become a problem child.

The paper goes on: In this situation violence could also be liberated by comics, films, or radio programmes. It is also probable that the child who is aggressive is able to participate vicariously in screen violence with consequent relief of his aggression. I think that is something that we must really bear very closely in mind.

I would conclude by saying only that I think this has been a most valuable debate, but I very much wish that in some way we could establish—and I know this will appeal to my noble friend Lord Stonham—whether there has in fact been an increase in violence, and, if so, whether it is due to the mass media, or whether, as the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, suggested, it is a reflection of the fact that we are living in a violent world and in a violent society.

7.20 p.m.

EARL FERRERS

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery has done great service to-day by introducing this debate in your Lordships' House; because violence in our contemporary society is something which is, and must be, causing great concern, as witness the number of speakers in the debate to-day. I do not know whether it is more comforting to know that we are not the only country that is troubled by it or more disconcerting to know that violence is not confined to our shores. It takes many forms, as has been amply demonstrated this afternoon. My remarks will refer, in the main, to the more public manifestations of it which we have seen with demonstrations and student risings.

One thing is certain; and that is that if there is violence, it is a reflection on our society, the society in which we live and which is some form or shape we have helped to create. It may be that it is our fault for tolerating it and for not being firmer with it. It may be our fault for creating a society which to some is so obnoxious or so self-protecting that the only means by which the individual feels that he can influence it is by demonstrating against it. It may be that it is our fault for having an educational system which results in so moulding the minds of our people that they conclude that this is, if not an illegitimate means, at least an acceptable one of voicing their opinion. I often think that if one were a man from outer space dropped on this planet, and if one were told that here in England and the Western World one would see a highly civilised society at work; and if one saw sophisticated machines and computers, high wages, home comforts, State care, and, at the same time, strikes, discontents, violence, riots, and student uprisings, one might be tempted to ask: "And what has civilisation offered to them?"

If civilisation means anything, my Lords, it must surely mean the cultivating of our minds to the subjection of the individual will to the concerted will of the majority without the abrogation of the individual's right to express his mind and voice his opinion, and thereby to try to influence thought and society. Surely it must mean relegating to the background the law of the jungle and the law of, "He who hits hardest wins". When something goes wrong—and something has gone wrong, as witness these scenes of violence—one tries to find a cause. It is the young; it is the parents; it is the war; it is the schools—as if there were some single cause which, if one were clever enough to pick up the right lid, would be found staring one in the face. In short, one tries to find the peg on which to hang the hat.

But, of course, it is not as simple as that. If there is some cause, it is far more complex. I believe that it is a combination of factors that has altered the mind and the way in which the mind reacts. We hear much about the chasm that exists between the old and the young generations, and we are told that we must do all we can to close it. But I am not sure that that desire may not in itself be the root cause of much of the trouble. I do not believe that the discrepancy between the young and the old is very much more, or very much less, than it was a hundred years ago, or than it will be in a hundred years' time. There is a gap. So there should be, and so there always will be; for the mind thinks differently and reacts differently at 40 from the way it did at 20, and at 60 from the way it did at 40. Each age has its contribution to make. It is as pointless for the 20-year-old to consider himself on a par with the 40-year-old as it is for the 40-year-old to consider himself on a par with the 20-year-old.

But, my Lords, it is over the past twenty years or so that society, in its endeavour to understand the other age groups within itself, has made the mistake of pretending that the natural demarcation lines of age do not exist. In our endeavour to understand youth, we have given youth more responsibility. This may well he right. But while giving them more responsibility we have lessened the guide-lines, the standards, the disciplines, the restrictions of authority. Here I agree so much with what my noble friend Lord Brooke said in his speech which, if I may say so, I thought was so germane to the problem. We have lessened the standards and the guide-lines. Sometimes we have removed them; sometimes we have blurred their position. We have done this to authority, whether it be the parent, the teacher, the university don or the Church. "Think for yourself! Come to your own conclusions! Make your own guide-lines!" This has been the message that has gone out from a society which has been prepared to lean over backwards to show that it is not repressive.

But the fact is that it is human nature to want a standard and a discipline—if only to have a standard against which to kick, and it is human nature to want to kick against that standard. The further the standard is moved down the road of freedom and permissiveness, the wider becomes its circumference and the less easy it is to kick it; until in the end you flail around like a mad thing trying to make some impression on it, somewhere. I believe that it is this manifestation that we are now seeing.

Part of the cause of this may be television and the Press, which not only report much of the trouble (and in many ways rightly so, because this is the news) but also on occasion encourage it in order that it may be reported, thus inflating both the importance of the trouble and the importance of those who generate it. But television and the Press must also bear a different responsibility; and this in a much more subtle and subversive manner, which I for one deplore. It encourages the feeling that the only way in which authority could or should be respected is to subject the person in question (whether he be a Prime Minister or an Archbishop) to endless questions, and even vilification, in front of millions of viewers on a host and variety of subjects; and according to the way in which he reacts to interrogation, and sometimes denigration, depends how much respect he or the institution which he represents deserves.

For any society to be able to operate for the maximum benefit of all there must be restrictions. But the fact is that we have now become so obsessed with these restrictions, and with the desire to ensure our freedom from them, that we have blurred the line which differentiates freedom from licence. It was said that the Grosvenor Square march of last October was to ensure the right of freedom of speech and that to curtail it would have been to curtail the freedom to express one's views. But I question whether it is right that £250,000 should be spent in overtime for the police. And is it freedom for them to be asked to give up their week-ends to come to London to act as Aunt Sallies in a carefully organised plan of violence? We shall seriously prejudice the chances of our getting enough police if this is what they are to be subjected to. At that same march, students came in deliberately from abroad, from other countries, armed with offensive weapons (including compasses to stick into horses) deliberately to try to create trouble. A further £250,000 had to be spent by private individuals in barricading up their shops and offices in order to prevent damage. Where, my Lords, is the freedom there? Where is the freedom for the millions of people who are unable to go about their normal business or pleasure because of the demonstration, and who are actively frightened by it?

We are told, almost as if in defence, that the trouble was really caused only by 200 or 300 militants. My Lords, if this is so, is it not an appalling confession of failure—if our society is to permit 200 or 300 people to hold the remainder to ransom and make such inroads into the daily life of the average person, all under the guise of freedom? So it is with student riots. While, of course, concern and attention in proper and due measure should be given to students and to their views, it surely must be intolerable if we are to permit the wholesale disruption of the educational curriculum and damage to buildings by a few extremists while the authorities stand by, apparently powerless to do anything constructive and while the majority of the law-abiding students have to see their educational opportunities and time being utterly wasted and desperately frustrated.

My Lords, tolerance we should certainly have, but there must be a point where firmness and a respect for law and order should have priority. I, for one, was relieved and grateful to hear the strong condemnation by the Secretary of State of the behaviour of some of the more militant students at the London School of Economics about two weeks ago. If this is caused by six or so extremists, why should their continuance as students be permitted? Why again, if places at schools of higher education are at such a premium, are the authorities not as vigilant about the type and character and temperament of the students chosen to fill them as they are about their academic attainments, especially when students come from abroad and especially when they have a record of militancy?

Over this I feel that the authorities hold a heavy degree of responsibility. I have no hesitation in saying that grants ought to be removed from students who so conduct themselves that their behaviour adversely affects either the institution at which they are studying or the other students with whom they come into contact. As a country, we are prepared to offer grants to enable students to receive the benefit of further education. If they are prepared to abuse this privilege, and if the result of the grants is not education but civil unrest, clearly the grants are having an effect in these cases for which they were never intended, and they should be removed.

There are some people to-day who are prepared to take too much for granted. There are people who are concerned more to learn the extent of their rights than to consider the area of their responsibilities. There are some people who are concerned more to give voice to their own views than to accept the influence and opinions of others. In short, they are prepared to say, "It is my life. It is my world, and it is going to be run my way." What is it that is taken for granted? Freedom to voice their opinion; the ability to receive an education at the expense of others; the knowledge that the powers that be will lean over backwards to try to see and understand their point of view. My Lords, these things should not be taken for granted. They are hard won prizes and huge privileges. If they are taken for granted, society will condemn those who abuse and misuse these privileges in the same way that it will condemn those who permit them so to be abused and misused.

The answer to this problem is far from simple, almost as far from simple as is the cause which created it. Those who find themselves in authority, whether they be Government, police, teacher or parent, can do only what they consider to be the best and adopt only what they consider is the best course. But when they do try to consider what is the best course, far more consideration should be given to those who wish to live ordinary lives, to those who wish sincerely to study, with all the accepting and challenging of conventional thought which this may bring, and to those who value the benefits of the democratic processes and who are prepared to accept the restrictions commensurate with them, rather than to those who, although few in number, are prepared, for their own ends, to use their position, abuse their position and abuse the rights and privileges which they purport to seek to achieve. I believe, my Lords, that more firmness, both in word and deed, by those whose difficult task it is to take public decisions would be welcomed by society as a whole; and if this debate does in some small way help to encourage or even to guide those who find themselves in positions of authority and responsibility, then we shall have performed a useful service.

7.36 p.m.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, I have decided to resist the temptation to try to answer the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. There are a number of points on which I profoundly disagree but I have decided to resist the temptation to answer him because I want, if I can, to try to put the student position as I see it. A sociologist once said that a man that had male children had potential pre-delinquents. I have two sons who are at different universities and perhaps I have had some opportunity to try to understand what is happening at university level at the present time.

There are many problems, both national and international, about which people are feeling very strongly, and none more than our students. I refer to the evils of apartheid; "Powellism"; the racial problems in South Africa and Rhodesia; the slaughter in Vietnam; the starvation and death in Biafra and the still present social inequalities in our own society. These are matters of real concern to many of our people, particularly students, and I have to admit that it is distressing, even for someone of my age, that there appears to be little that we can do about it. Is there anything that we can do? Are we able to make our voices heard? Or is it all so big and powerful that it is above and beyond us, so that we are all completely powerless to deal with the many problems which are besetting us at the moment?

When we look at what is happening in this and in other countries, I must confess that it bothers and bewilders me. It is not surprising—at least, not to me—that our young people feel impotent and frustrated, and the accumulative effect of frustration is always explosive. The youth of this country certainly feel that they can do something about the problems facing us to-day. The rapid progress being made in the scientific field is becoming meaningless to the vast majority of people. The majority cannot comprehend or begin to understand what is happening. To-day the destiny of man—I would go so far as to say of civilisation, the future of the world—appears to be in the hands of a few people, and any one of them could destroy civilisation at the press of a button. And all we have is a feeling of helplesness. For the youth of this country I believe that to be a frightening thought. No wonder youth revolts, and I think we ought to be thanking Almighty God that youth is doing so. We cannot think of them as fools and sheep. They are neither. They have just lost faith in the Establishment, in its institutions and its political Parties, including the one I represent, and many mistrust what is being done by people in authority.

I believe that young people, particularly our university students, are seeing things much more clearly than most of the present older generation. We are living at a time when we seem to be governed by the "stomach and pocket" view of life, at a time when science has won for us powers fit for gods, yet so often we bring to their use the mentality of schoolboys or savages. What philosophy of life are we able to give our young people, many of whom wander aimlessly along the road of life without knowing where they are travelling or for that matter why they are travelling at all? It has become common practice among members of our generation to accuse our young people of being without creeds, codes, standards or values, but what creeds, codes, standards or values have we passed on to them? Are we ourselves not speaking with divided voices in respect of a number of fundamental issues? Are we really bothered about Vietnam, world poverty, Biafra and the many inequalities here at home? Perhaps it is only the students who are making a valid appraisal of what is happening here and in the world to-day. I would ask your Lordships: who is it who is opposing the resurgence of Nazism in Western Germany to-day? Not the older generation but the young people, who did not live under its evil influence but who recognise it for the evil that it is.

I believe that there are two major factors in the present international situation which have to be taken into account in understanding student revolt or youth unrest, if you like, to-day. I plead for understanding. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, was right when he said that this is something we have to try to understand. The present generation of our students—and this is also true of students in some other countries—is the first this century which has not been involved in war. There has been no war for nearly 24 years. Wars bring about demands for social change, demands which were met substantially after the 1914 and 1939 wars. War has always stimulated our thinking for peace. It is the time when we come to certain conclusions about the kind of conditions which should ultimately exist in our society.

I am not saying that our thinking and planning have ceased but they are no longer apparent or, if they are apparent, then to many people, mainly the student body, they do not appear to be producing results. The students have become impatient, and I for one think with some justification. I would remind your Lordships, as did the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, that the full title of the London School of Economics is the London School of Economics and Political Science, and it is not surprising that the students there are concerned with political matters. The trouble is not, if the noble Earl will allow me to say so, that Dr. Adams is considered by some to be a racist. The real problem is that the students want extensive representation on committees and to play an essential part in the running of the school. I understand from the Press that the Governors are now prepared to meet these requirements. But it is doubtful whether these conditions would have been met but for the militant behaviour of the students.

They are concerned, and I believe rightly so, not only with the inequalities within our society but also with many other social problems, including the gap between the rich and the poor. Many students regard the inequalities in our society as a form of violence against people. Violence does not always have to be physical. The treatment of people can be regarded as violence. I think that the students are quite right when they consider that certain inequalities amount to little less than violence against people. It may not be everyone's concept of violence but it is theirs. It is something which they condemn and feel that society generally does not condemn. They see our society as the protectors of property and not as the protectors of people. They see that a train robber gets 30 years' imprisonment and a murderer is often let out of prison after 9 or 10 years. I am not suggesting for one moment that the murderer should be kept in prison. I am merely saying that the law seems to favour property more than life.

It is perfectly true that at the London School of Economics there is a small group of students who are revolutionaries—I call them revolutionaries because they are—who are completely opposed to our concept of society and they do not believe that social democracy has or will ever change it. Because they are students at a university, the university is for them the starting point in their attempt completely to alter the structure of society. I want to make clear that I do not condone this but I think it is important to try to understand their thinking and feeling. Fortunately, they do not command a great deal of support, though probably they would have more support if the school was not to be reopened in the foreseeable future.

The second group, which is much larger and more moderate, is asking for meaningful consultation, with some power and influence in the decision-making processes in the university. This does not seem to me to be at all unreasonable. From to-day's paper, I see that the Governors of the London School of Economics have decided to meet these requirements, and I think that they would be well advised to make a sincere and sustained effort to meet them.

I believe that today our students are more adventurous and more intelligent than the students of previous generations. In the past, their energies, enthusiasm and idealism have been diverted. Now these three attributes are directed towards the need for social change. I think that this is a good thing. What is the point of educating people without giving them the opportunities for participating? It is true that they want a continuous dialogue to discuss the kind of society in which they want to live and play a part, but I think that this is a good thing. Many people are concerned—and here, let me confess, quite understandably so—at some of the methods which they adopt. I, too, deplore some of the methods that have been employed by some of them. But why are we so afraid of this ferment of ideas? Why are we so afraid of the limited violence—because it is limited—that it has produced? In the normal way, everything in me cries out against violence. But it is my view that we have to face the fact that violence on occasions may be inevitable; that it may be a necessary expression in order to demonstrate the depth of feeling held, as well as the sincerity of conviction. How else in our society does one make an effective protest? Certainly not by demonstrations.

The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, who introduced the debate, quoted, I think I am right in saying, from something that I believe he said came from Maurice Edelman, who said: "Every time Powell is shouted down democracy loses a round." I just cannot accept that. I believe there are occasions when a vicious, evil doctrine is being propounded, when it is necessary to make it abundantly clear to the person who is doing it that it is not acceptable.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt. I think he will recall the occasion which has been referred to by Mr. Edelman which I have in the back of my mind. It was not made clear to Mr. Powell that his opinions were unacceptable. He was not allowed to express his opinions at all.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

I am obliged to the noble Earl for that intervention. I think my reply to it would be that it was simply because people knew in advance of the kind of thing he was going to say. I think there are certain things in life that we have to resist, and make it perfectly plain that we are resisting them.

EARL FERRERS

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord, too?—because I am fascinated by what he is saying. Can he explain how he correlates, on the one hand, the right to have the rising and to demonstrate, and yet, on the other hand, to deny a person the right to speak? These two seem to be totally incompatible.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, I am saying that that kind of situation may be inevitable, because the person in question is well-known for his views, and has been going round the country propounding them. So on this particular occasion these views were anticipated. I think this is inevitable. I think that people who feel strongly—and I think it is a vicious doctrine—must express themselves in the way that they feel. I find myself in complete sympathy with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. It was a joy to me to hear him speak this afternoon from the philosophical point of view, because I wanted to say to your Lordships: Can there not be a doctrine as to the right of violence against injustice?

Many of us have been violent. I fought the Fascists in East London thirty years ago and suffered considerably as a result. But I think it is important that when one is faced with an evil—and I regarded Fascism as being an evil—one cannot accept it. It is all right for my noble friend Lord Soper (I have known him for many years, and this is the first time in something like 35 years that I find myself in disagreement with him) to say that we must not answer violence with violence. What do you do? Do you merely accept the violence? The Fascists were certainly violent long before anybody wanted to be violent to them.

LORD TEVIOT

If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I would say that I entirely agree with him. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, will be here later, because if violence goes with violence, does not punishment go with punishment? How would he answer that?

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

Punishment does go with punishment. But we have an element of deterrent in it—at least, we hope so. I do not think one can allow evils to be maintained without making it quite clear in the strongest possible way that these things are evil.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I hope my noble friend will allow me to interrupt. He thinks that this limited violence on one side is all right. What cause does he think it serves by kicking a police officer in the face with a heavy boot? Is that limited violence? Does he approve of that? And is he suggesting that violence is all right provided you agree with the people who commit it, and all wrong when it is committed by people with whom you do not agree?

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

I am sorry that my noble friend the Minister did not listen to what I said a little while ago, when I made it perfectly plain that I deplored very much some of the methods that had been employed. I am talking about violence in matters of principle, and this is something entirely different. Of course I do not approve of that kind of violence. I would remind your Lordships that Martin Luther King said: Violence is the language of the unheard. And the noble Lord, Lord Byers, if I may be permitted to say so, was, I think, perfectly right when he said that we must listen and try to understand. Young people to-day, I believe, have an abiding taste—

EARL FERRERS

May I interrupt the noble Lord again? I am most interested in what he is saying. He has just said that we should listen and understand, and a minute or two ago he said that it was perfectly all right for a demonstration to be held which prevented people from listening.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, it is because I have been interrupted so many times (I do not object to this for one moment; I rather enjoy it) that noble Lords have lost the thread of what I was saying. I have been talking about students, and what I am saying is that we must listen and try to understand their point of view. I hope that this answers my noble friend.

LORD STONHAM

If my noble friend was referring to me when he said that we must listen and try to understand the point of view, I entirely agree, but for the last ten minutes he has been speaking about not listening to other people because of knowing what they were going to say in advance. This is a kind of inequality. It is not a dialogue at all. My noble friend's argument is just a monologue.

LORD MOWBRAY AND STOLRTON

Hear, hear!

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, I did not say anything of the sort. What I said was that no doubt the person in question was interrupted because a large number of people were familiar with his views and had heard them before. I did not say it was right that they should do so. I am merely pointing out, in answer to a question, why people behave like that.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

This is really too much. The case that we are talking about particularly is one in which Mr. Enoch Powell was invited by some people to go and address them, and he was interrupted by other people who had nothing whatever to do with the meeting. Presumably, the people who asked him to go did not know what he was going to say, and wanted to know, or they would not have asked him. But other people came in and shut him up.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

I am not defending it.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: You were!

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

What I said quite clearly (and I hope your Lordships will look at Hansard to-morrow) was that the reason why he was interrupted was because they anticipated what he was going to say.

LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON

With great respect, the people who interrupted him were the people who were not going to listen to him.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

Then, my Lords, that goes for a number of noble Lords in this House, because I am certainly not permitted to carry on, am I?—

LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON

We are all listening.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

—but I do not mind in the least. It is my view that in America, for example, the violent demonstrations over Vietnam were effective because they certainly produced—at least, I think they produced—a number of good contenders for the Presidency, each one of them dedicated to end the Vietnam war. If I may quote from something which is attributed to the right honourable Jo Grimond, he is reported to have said: However unpalatable it may be, the truth is that again and again useful reforms have been achieved in Britain by force after argument has failed. I sometimes wonder whether, if there had not been force, we should ever have had a Labour Party, of which I am a member.

I think we have to face the fact that youth is disillusioned, and I do not believe it is without cause or justification; and the disillusioned have to find expression. Somebody (I do not recall who it was) once said: You my call them hippies, yippies, dropouts, long-haired layabouts, counter-revolutionaries or just students. The fact is that they have rejected the values of our society, the society in which they live and of which they have some knowledge. Students—I think we must face this fact too—do not have the same excessive respect for the so-called virtues of authority and discipline as was held by the present older generation, for they are aware of what has been done in the name of authority and discipline. Can we honestly say that there is no substance in their thoughts and feelings, and should we not try to understand those thoughts and feelings and make an effort to get to know their wants and needs? Iron gates and lock-outs are not, in my view, likely to solve, really solve, this problem.

8.3 p.m.

THE EARL OF MANSFIELD

My Lords, I am not surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, felt compelled twice to intervene in order to try to check the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, from developing his Fascist ideas any further, because, as I have said in your Lordships' House on a number of occasions, those Fascist ideas were penetrating—

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, if the noble Earl will allow me to intervene, I am not sure whether I heard him correctly but I think he referred to me as a Fascist. If so, I ask him to withdraw that.

THE EARL OF MANSFIELD

My Lords, I did not say the noble Lord was a Fascist. I said he was propounding Fascist ideas, inasmuch as he was apparently—and I think most noble Lords agree with me—supporting the action of those persons who prevented Mr. Enoch Powell from speaking. I think that that was the general impression given. The noble Lord throughout the whole of his remarks has been apparently apologising, and indeed eulogising, the action of the more revolutionary students.

LORD WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, I am sorry, but I must insist in this. Presumably, if I am accused of having Fascist ideas and Fascist views, the implication is that I must be a Fascist; and if this is so I still ask the noble Earl to withdraw it.

THE EARL OF MANSFIELD

My Lords, I do not say that the noble Lord is a member of any Fascist Party or has any Fascist affiliations, but I do say—and I will not withdraw it—that the remarks he has been putting forward are tantamount to Fascist views. That I certainly maintain.

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate, and all your Lordships, I know, are most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for introducing it, but as the time is now lamentably late I intend to devote myself to only one or two subjects. The first is particularly that one which the noble Earl, Lord Cork, mentioned I had on the Order Paper; that was, what was to be done to protect our police and make their lot easier when they had to contend with the demonstrations made by what I might call Lord Wells-Pestell's pets. Many of these officers have been injured, some of them seriously. Your Lordships will have seen that revolting picture which an enterprising Pressman very justifiably took, of one thug holding a policeman's arms behind him while another kicked him in the face. The police are being bombarded with stones, bottles and other weapons against which their helmets afford little protection other than to the top of their heads.

I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that it would be a good thing, in fact, it is essential, if a Committee were to be set up—preferably not a Departmental Committee, in which case the evidence might be suppressed—and presided over by some eminent Judge or Q.C. who would call for evidence, not merely from the Commissioners of Police, but also from chief constables, inspectors and sergeants who had had experience of this trouble, to see what ought to be done in order to protect our long-suffering police from the injuries inflicted upon them. After all, this is a civilian State. We have an unarmed police force without whose existence no one could come and go safely to and from your Lordships' House. Without their existence, none of us could live safely in our own homes. I think that we ought to investigate the possibility and desirability of providing the police with a certain quantity of shields, similar to those which many of your Lordships will have seen in the papers are used by the police in Tokyo against rioters.

Our police, as I have said, are usually unarmed. An example of when they are armed was referred to in small headlines in the papers a few days ago when it was said that two detectives were sent with revolvers to arrest a man who it was thought might be dangerous. As it turned out, he was not. Revolvers are in fact kept in all the principal police stations of the country, but the number of times they are issued to officers is very small indeed. Therefore, as we have an unarmed police force it is surely our duty to do something to prevent them from being injured by the attacks of these thugs. The noble Earl, Lord Cork, said that he deprecated the use of water cannons. That point, again, ought to be considered by this Committee, and they also ought to consider all other forms of necessary protection.

There has been a rather unhealthy tendency throughout this debate on the part of many of your Lordships, from Lord Wells-Pestell backwards, apparently to justify the conduct of many of these students on the grounds that they are objecting to present-day conditions. Well, these demonstrations, as the noble Lord, Lord Byers, rightly said, were not carried out by the vast majority of students, who are completely innocent of any such conduct; and it would be entirely unfair to blame students as a whole for them. But there remains a small core of revolutionaries, whose numbers on occasion are of course greatly increased by young people—hairy, unwashed, and whose studies appear to relate entirely to questions of drugs and fornication—who come out to assist whenever there is a riot.

Some of your Lordships may also remember that there was a case of a reporter who interviewed a man who he thought looked rather incongruous in the crowd outside the American Embassy in the Grosvenor Square riot. The reporter asked the man why he was so deeply interested in Vietnam. The man replied that he did not even know where the adjectival asterisk was, and did not care an adjectival asterisk about it. All he knew was that he had read in the paper that there was likely to be a "punch-up"; he hated the police and he liked "punch-ups", so he had come from the North Midlands to enjoy himself. I think that shows that the vast majority of the people going in for these demonstrations are not really interested at all in the cause they are purporting to represent.

I believe that there has been a lamentable laxity of firmness and purpose in dealing with the hard core of these revolutionary students. When they take over a building, the first thing that should be done is that all electricity, gas, water, and central heating from outside, if there is any, ought to be cut off; and no food ought to be allowed to be brought into the building. That would bring them to their senses in a very short space of time. At the same time, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, that there should be consultation, not merely in the case of the London School of Economics but in the case of all other similar institutions, between the governing body and the students as to any reforms that might be considered desirable.

The difficulty is, who is to represent the students? One has to be careful, or one will find oneself in the same position that a trade union finds itself. Many unions are ruled by a small Communist oligarchy, although in point of fact the number of Communists in the union is probably far under 10 per cent. If you are going to take a vote simply from those in the hall, just as with some of the trade unions, all the revolutionaries will turn out and most of the respectable people will stay away. So it ought to be a vote by ballot, or something of that kind.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was perfectly right when he spoke about a malaise, and his words were echoed to a certain extent by the noble Lord, Lord Soper. There is a general malaise, the reasons for which are rather difficult to discover, but if I may speak for a few moments longer on this point I will tell your Lordships about one of my King Charles's heads which I do not think I have previously mentioned. Along with some of your Lordships I am old enough to remember the revulsion of feeling which swept the country when the Germans started their atrocities in Belgium and France in the autumn of 1914. The whole country was convulsed; it was thought to be a thing that could not possibly happen, and it was generally agreed that all the laws of war were going to be kept in any other war which broke out. Of course they were not; but it is from that time onwards that there appears to have been a general softening of the moral fibre of Europe.

This process is, I think, accelerated by the fact that in two successive wars we have had all our young manhood trained to kill. If a man is told that it is perfectly virtuous to kill some foreigner with whom he has no personal quarrel, it is difficult, if he is a person of rather low intelligence, to make him see that there is a reason why he should not kill a person of his own country with whom he happens to disagree or whose property he wants. I believe that these two wars, and the conditioning to a killing state of mind of so many of the young men, has gone a long way to produce the present situation. It is all very well for these young people to be excited about Vietnam, Nigeria, Rhodesia, South Africa and the rest. If they, or any of their friends, were in power, what could they do? Britain has renounced her responsibilities as a world Power, and in most of these cases there is nothing we can do in order to put things right.

It is quite obvious that all these riotings are purely political, and not economic, because if there was an occasion for riots it would have been in the 'thirties when the really bad depression swept the country. That I know, because at that time, partly when I was a Member of another place and partly after I had come to your Lordships' House, I did a number of tours around the worst areas: the Rhondda, three times; all the worst of the Clyde area, Jarrow, Hebburn and the mining villages of Durham. Perhaps the right reverend Prelate would be interested to know that those Durham mining villages were quite the worst I ever saw—far worse than the Rhondda. Had there been marches and demonstrations at that time, when the conditions of many people there and in other parts of the country were truly deplorable, there would have been a justification for it. But there is no justification now; the demonstrations are obviously purely political.

I would go further, and say that students and others are being used by a small and unscrupulous body of revolutionaries for their own purposes. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, that there must be a control of these students, and that those who persistently offend should be disciplined and, if necesary, lose their grants. And certainly those who come from overseas should be given one warning after which, if they then interfere in our affairs, even if they are not convicted of any offence in the courts, if they advocate armed revolution in this country, they should be deported forthwith, wherever they come from, and it does not matter whether they are black, white, brown or yellow.

Time is getting on and I have only one or two things more to say. I think it is a little unfortunate that save for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, there has been very little reference to violent crime apart from these political demonstrations. As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, was forced to admit, murders in Scotland in the past seven years have gone up by 150 per cent. Murders everywhere—and I shall ask the Government for the figures before long—have been increasing all the time, and it is scant consolation for those who have been coshed to read that the rate of increase of crime has now been slowed down. We do not hear anything about the rate being diminished, but rather that the increase is not as great as it was. Although it will, as usual, shock the majority of your Lordships, I must say that I think that to that extent violence ought to be met by violence and that in certain limited cases (only a few each year) we ought to consider the reintroduction of both capital and corporal punishment.

In conclusion, my Lords, I still stand by what I have preached in your Lordships' House on many occasions. I consider that the honest and good citizen, and the police who seek to protect him, are persons far more worthy of our consideration than are the criminals. There is far too much attention given to the feelings of the poor criminal, and far too little to the feelings of the victim—if he is still alive—and his relations.

8.16 p.m.

THE EARL OF SHANNON

My Lords, I, too, should like to join the long list of noble Lords who have offered their thanks to my noble kinsman for moving this debate this afternoon. The debate has ranged widely and has been most interesting. I thought I was just being beaten to it by the noble Lord who has just spoken, but I wish to change the tenor of the debate slightly, even if it is only for my own little speech. As an entirely practical man and not an academic I am afraid I have little contribution that I can make to such subjects as sociology and all those other problems that have already been so well covered by noble Lords in many highly erudite speeches.

As the subject of the Motion has been widely drawn, I wish to speak, not, as I have said, on the matters already covered but as a security consultant on my own subject, which is concerned with violent robbery. Unfortunately that is something which is definitely on the increase. Here I must declare an interest, and my interest will become apparent later. I wish to narrow the focus still further. My special concern is the security of staff, and I would remind your Lordships that many of them are women, who handle large and, in some cases, very large, sums of money in public places. The temptation for the criminal is, of course, the "loot" in a highly negotiable form, usually used bank notes. To snatch one bag of those, probably containing somewhere in the region of £5,000 or £10,000, is, to an individual to-day, more than he could ever possibly hope to save in a lifetime of toil. Therefore the temptation is great. There are, every day of the week, many thousands of those bags in various places throughout this country.

The emphasis, however, has recently changed. At one time practically every company used to send perhaps its chief accountant or someone in the accounts department in a small motor car up to the bank to collect the weekly wages. Hardly a week went by in which there was not a screaming headline about a wages snatch, and one heard about the poor chief accountant of some company being coshed on the head on the pavement, or having his little car rammed; and £5,000 or £10,000 worth of notes were snatched out of his hand and were gone. But the emphasis has changed. We do not hear so much of that nowadays. It is because the well-known security companies have moved in and they now supply that service. So the threat has moved. It is now much more against those who stand at the counter dealing with large quantities of cash in full view of the public; and this threat, of course, comes from coshes, sprays and guns.

On the subject of guns, to which I have over the last few years devoted some quite considerable study, especially in relation to armed robbery, the one thing that really must be guarded against is what one might call the instant threat. I do not mean the amateur James Bond who comes in with a shoulder holster and has difficulty getting the gun out. I mean the criminal who comes in—I will say to a bank, but it may be anywhere else—and with a smile on his face as he pushes half-a-crown across the counter says "I have left my car parked outside on a meter and I have not got any sixpences. Do you think you could change this?" The girl says, "Yes". She looks in her till for the necessary sixpences, and when she looks up she is looking down the muzzle of a gun.

No security should be expected to stand by itself. Security is always part or an overall plan. The security that should be provided at the counter is the type of security that will meet the instant threat. It will not meet the sort of threat of somebody who can "whip up" a medium machine gun, because he should never be able to get it there; the other security should have seen to that.

It was about three years ago that I tried to pioneer, if possible, the construction of some form of screen that would be serviceable. My company came up with an idea which produced a screen through which you could see, speak and transact your business, but at no time was the cashier at risk. We tried to hawk that around, and your Lordships would be quite surprised at the complete and utter lack of interest in it. It was too early. We tried to show that it was not very expensive and that complete immunity could be achieved for what we cansidered to be a trifling sum. But we did not get very far. In most cases we were told that there was a confidential communication between the organisation and their clients, that to put our screen in the way would quite definitely be a nuisance, and would we please take it away.

As some noble Lords may remember, I made another attempt on television to see whether I could get this idea across; that the situation was getting dangerous, and perhaps we should try to provide some form of security for people in this position. Although it aroused great interest abroad, I am afraid it was pretty uphill going here. One thing, however, I think we were able to show, and that was that if any reasonable form of bullet-resisting glass was used in these screens, if any crook dared to fire at it, whether the bullet went through or not, the ambulance would have to be called, not necessarily for the cashier but for the crook. Because it cannot be too strongly stated that, with any form of bullet-resisting glass if you fire at it point blank you get the whole lot of shrapnel straight back in the face. This, I think, is one of the greatest deterrents which crooks can have. Suddenly, lately, there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest in organisations and departments to provide this form of screen. The matter has now got out of hand, but unfortunately it is all a little late, because there is a wild activity to get this done and, most unfortunately, so much of it seems to be going wrong. In many cases the correct materials are being used but are wrongly fitted.

Here I should like to quote an example of a German bank I visited where they had the most beautiful bullet-resisting glass that I had ever seen. The screens were glass sheets right up to the ceiling; and it was a very tall room. The director proudly showed me his installation and said, "You can shoot anything you like at it and it will not go through". I had to tell him that I would not dream of firing a gun at it, but that I would take a couple of 6-inch tyre levers and put them in the speaking louvres to lever the screen out, and about 2 cwt. of glass would fall on the poor cashier. This shows the case of misapplied money in the erection of a security screen. They did later take it down and put it back in correct mountings.

In many cases wrong materials are used, and wrong materials specified. Quite often these wrong materials are being used because there is such a wild interest nowadays that there is no productive capacity equal to meet what is required. In many cases correct materials are used but of the wrong dimensions: people can jump over the top, or get round the side. And, worst of all (and here noble Lords will probably recognise what I am referring to), are the otherwise adequate security screens which either have a nice hole just opposite the cashier's face, or a slit to speak through, or a nice slit across the bottom to pass money through. The hole or slit at the top are beautifully placed for ammonia or caustic spray, and the slit at the bottom is absolutely perfect for resting a revolver along the top of the counter so that it points straight at the cashier's stomach. What a pity! As I said, productive capacity is being very severely strained at the present minute to meet what is going on due to this wild activity.

I have referred to the existing demand. But what about the future demand? As I told your Lordships, the emphasis has changed from the snatch of the bag in the street. It has now moved largely to the banks. The moment the banks start to armour themselves, as, thank goodness! they are doing, where is it going to go next? There are the rating offices; there are the betting offices.

LORD STONHAM

Hotels.

THE EARL OF SHANNON

As the noble Lord reminds us, there was a story in the papers to-day about a hotel that was robbed. There are also the large supermarkets. I know that many supermarkets make a point of keeping only a small quantity of money in the tills, at any rate in the tills near the door; and the moment the till reaches £20, the supervisor takes out £20. But where is it taken? Probably to a little office with a thin plywood door; and that is all the security there is. Once the squeeze gets on, and the banks are not easy picking and the post offices cease to be easy picking, the process will go on, and it will go on down the line.

My Lords, what is the solution? Here again I am declaring my interest. The real solution is a specialist consultancy. I am not the only person who has specialised in this; there are many others. But somebody must inquire from somebody who has been into this matter and knows something about it. It is no good an organisation telling their resident architect, as they so often do, "Design a security screen". He will make a nice-looking one, but it will probably be utterly ineffective. So he is probably told, "Discuss it with our security officer". The security officer is probably an eminent ex-policeman. He has many good ideas on security. But can he design metal work and glass? No. This is a specialist field in which people should consult. This would do away with some of the footling efforts that are going up at the present moment. They breed a false sense of security, and one of these clays one of them is going to be breached, and then all confidence by the stall in security arrangements will go.

It is not only a matter of protection against guns. I know that guns are the most dramatic—I used guns on television because they brought home the point I was trying to make. It was great fun, I can tell your Lordships, emptying a whole magazine from a Colt .45 into a glass window and not getting a bullet through it: it was most dramatic. But there are many other things. There are these crippling and disabling sprays. One can buy ammonia at any ironmonger's shop. One can buy these pressurised oven cleaners and squirt them into a person's face. They are really crippling. Something must be done. We must give protection.

We must also be far more conscious of security if we are to remove from the criminal the temptation to be violent in chasing the "loot". For instance, we fall down badly in cases where the security companies deliver the money. They rule out the risk of the money coming from the bank to the company for the payment out of wages. Bit what happens to it then? Probably it just put in the bottom drawer of a desk along with the head cashier's sandwiches. As noble Lords will remember, there is a case where a security company arrived to deliver the money, only to find that security was so lax in the place where they were delivering it that the accounts department or the cashier's department to which it had to be delivered had already been taken over by the crooks, who look the money as it arrived.

In conclusion, I am going to remind the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, of something which I am aware he knows; namely, that on the Continent they have had this same trouble and they have clone something about it. At the insistence of the insurance companies, the West German Parliament enacled that those who handle money in public places must be properly protected. It caused a great stir among the glass manufacturers, who tried to provide enough glass within the time available, but it is being done. It is only fair to the staff who are placed in that position. We have that example of its being done by legislation. May I just leave a small seed of thought in the mind of the Minister: that perhaps legislation might not be a bad idea, to make quite certain that something is done about a most pressing need.

8.34 p.m.

LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON

My Lords, as your Lordships can imagine, at this late hour most of what I wanted to say has already been said, so I shall try not to be repetitive and I have strung my notes together again. Obviously, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for introducing this debate and for his most interesting runover of the ground. This is the fourth time in my few years in your Lordships' House that I have spoken on this subject, but I hope that my words will not be too repetitive.

I am glad that no one has told us to-day that it is the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb which has caused the youth of to-day to have less respect for authority and the consequential rebellion against convention. I think the nearest we have come to this was in what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who justified much of what youth did on the ground that they found inequality too glaring an unfairness to be withstood.

While I am on the noble Lord's speech, may I say that I felt that there was a slight slander on our judicial system, when he was allowed to get away with saying that he thought we favoured property before life. We have had several debates on the matter of capital murder and its pros and cons, and on the question whether we should hang people or imprison them, and I think it has been fairly well established that most murders are probably not compulsive, but are partly passionate, and in most cases are unlikely to be repeated once the person has had time to cool off. It was on this understanding that I, for one, voted in favour of the suspension of the death penalty. Those concerned do not plan a murder with others. They might plan it to get rid of a particular thing which is upsetting them.

People may have really planned and thought out with a lot of other people, a conspiracy to acquire a large sum of money. I can think of many people who would be willing to forgo ten years of their life (which is probably the sentence that a murderer would undergo after remission and is what, as I take it, the noble Lord has referred to as a time sentence) if after they came out they were certain of getting, let us say, a quarter of a million pounds. This is the point. This is a planned operation: it is not a compulsive, emotional thing.

I should like now to support my own strong view of which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and also my noble friend Lord Brooke spoke, the importance of education in this field. In all my thinking I have come down completely to agreeing with what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said in his plea for smaller classes. It is in the youth and the children of to-day that we have to find our remedy for to-morrow. Obviously, parents have their part to play; but we parents do not seem to be doing too well. It is only a combination of parents and schoolteachers who can do the job.

I take the Metropolitan Police area because it is easy to look at and the figures are extremely accurate. I have worked out that of the crimes of violence in this area 69 per cent. are committed by young people under the age of 30. In this same area, the figure of crimes by people under 30 for shopbreaking and warehouse breaking amounts to 86½ per cent. Coming to burglaries and housebreaking, the figure in relation to the crimes committed by people under 30 is 89 per cent. This really is most terrifying. It is the youth of this country which is committing these crimes.

In this latter class, the housebreaking class, we often read of senseless violence. I can give an example which took place at Christmas time. A flat opposite mine in London was burgled. The burglars did not find much of value to interest them, and I suppose in retaliation they decided to make a mess of the flat. Senselessly, they kicked in every piece of furniture and they broke the glass in every picture in the flat. They ripped the carpets; they broke everything they could in regard to cutlery, et cetera. Not content with that, they even decided to foul the bed. This is a point of such senselessness that one wonders if the animal mentality was in those particular youths on that evening, or whenever this burglary occurred.

I should like to see more Government encouragement for more organised opportunities of service for youth, in which not only would their weekend energies be occupied but they would find, one hopes, both competition and enjoyment. Many noble Lords, like the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, give up a lot of their spare time to doing youth work in this field. The noble Viscount gives up almost the whole of his time to it. Many noble Lords who have spoken, including the noble Lord, Lord Rowallan, have done sterling service in the Boy Scouts, and my noble friend Lord Elgin, who is not here, in the Boys' Brigade. There are hundreds of your Lordships who do this work. Unfortunately, these efforts are all too small. If only we could get something such as the Duke of Edinburgh's scheme on a larger scale, adopted on a national line by local councils, I should feel that the Duke's remarks the other day were bearing fruit. I think the history of the people who take part in these activities shows they do not fall into the categories of which we are talking because they have things to occupy their minds which are good.

The old cliché that protection is the best form of prevention is still as true as it ever has been. Everybody agrees with that. Therefore I welcomed the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, about probable police increases. If I understood him aright, it is hoped that by the end of March, 1970, the total police force of England and Wales, including the Metropolitan Police, will be around 94,000, which, after allowing for some 4,150 women officers, gives a male force of 89,850. That figure is still some 11,000 short of the authorised strength, as opposed to the 17,600 deficiency now, but over the two and a quarter years from the end of 1967 it is an increase of some 6,600 men. It is a figure to be greatly welcomed.

LORD STONHAM

Would the noble Lord say that again, please?

LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON

My Lords, I said that the figure in March, 1970, would be still some 11,000 short of the authorised strength in the male police force, as opposed to the 17,600 deficiency which we seem to have now, but that nevertheless over these two and a quarter years it would be an increase of 6,600.

However, there is one point which is puzzling me—and I hope the noble Lord will forgive me for inquiring into this, as I mentioned to him that I was puzzled. If he cannot answer now—I shall not expect it—perhaps he can let me know later, but when checking the point with some of his friends I was given the figure of 90,782 as the strength of the total force at the end of 1968. After deducting the 4,150 women, it gave me a figure of 86,632 male police at the end of 1968, as opposed to 83,227 at the end of 1967. That seems to me an apparent increase of some 3,400 men. My arithmetic may be wrong in this, but if my figures are right it is an increase over the past twelve months of some 4 per cent. Although that is most welcome to me, as I think it is to all other noble Lords on this side of the House and, I should hope, on the noble Lord's side also in their hearts, it does seem to make somewhat of a nonsense of the officially allowed increase of 2 per cent. in maximum cases. Maximum cases, of course, are where the police forces are most deficient in their authorised strength. I shall understand if the noble Lord cannot answer that point, because I have rather jumped it on him at this late moment. I have given him my figures so that he can check them.

Further to this point about the police, I hope that the beat patrol system, with its Panda cars, will not be allowed completely to supersede our policemen on the beat. I have raised this point before. It has always been my contention that the "copper" on the beat is a man who is seen and respected. One hopes he will be made again into the friend of local children and not their enemy. When I was a small boy I used to go into Hyde Park every morning. I always spent a quarter of an hour at the fire station in Basil Street, and I knew all the firemen there. In Waltham Street there was a police station and I used to know the policemen there, and the policemen in those days in the late 'twenties were regarded by small children as friends. In the country villages and towns the local "copper" was like the local parson and the local doctor; they were three men whom the whole of the village or the town knew and liked. The smaller the unit the more important they were.

The point I am making is that with modernisation, and trying to make a Panda car and a couple of policemen do far more than they did before, I am rather frightened that our old friend the "copper" on the beat may fade out. This is why I, for one, and I think my noble friends, regard the maintenance of the police in numbers as important, apart from anything else such as the increase of detection, which of course is always welcome. If a lack of policemen is evident, children grow up outside any immediate influence of the police, and later in life do not have the natural regard for the policeman that should be his lot.

So much for the police force for the moment. I should like to refer to a subject which the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, brought up a moment ago. I purposely have not gone into those groups of people—with one of which companies I am connected—who try to help in a private capacity to protect property and cash in transit from the current greed and violence, but the noble Earl has drawn attention to them and said, if I understood him aright, that because they are doing this all danger has now moved away to the people inside the banks. I should like to draw his attention to the fact, of which the noble Lord the Minister is well aware, that there have been several attacks recently not only on the company with which I am concerned—some of our people are still in hospital with shot-gun wounds—but also on other companies in close alliance: competitors, of course, but in close alliance in respect of security. I should not like noble Lords to go away thinking that these people have an easy time, and I should like to pay a tribute to the way the police forces of this country are being helped by these companies, assistance of which they themselves are well aware, and which relieves them for work and duties elsewhere.

Having paid tribute to these forces which assist them, and which I mention only because the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, brought them in, I should like finally to pay tribute to all the police, who have done, and are doing, their best, by their splendid example of restraint when under insult and attack, to dampen down all forms of violence.

8.48 p.m.

LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will sympathise with me in my attempt to introduce some new aspect into this much discussed subject to-day. Perhaps it might be appropriate if I were to return to one of the opening passages that the noble Earl who initiated this debate referred to, in which he quoted from a newspaper article dealing with gangsters and gangsterism in the City of Glasgow. It is a city in which I spend most of my life and in which I am involved in the social, religious and university life of the city, and of course I am very much concerned about the fact that the violence of our city is a lot better known than its many virtues.

I want to quote, just to bring the argument round to the initial contribution, from an article in the Sunday Observer Supplement which describes an incident of three boys who, for no reason at all, were attacked by members of a gang in Cathedral Street in the centre of Glasgow on March 15, 20 yards from a bus queue of about fifty people. They were kicked, beaten and cut with knives. One of the gangsters, interviewed later by the correspondent, said: You feel good inside when you are hitting them and battling them with bottles and slashing them with razors. They deserve it. They would not feel sorry for me if they set about me, so I don't feel sorry for them. If your Lordships were to visit the casualty wards of the leading infirmaries in the City of Glasgow on any Friday night, you would see a succession of cases similar to that which was reported in the Supplement.

I regret to say that in the league table of crimes of violence the City of Glasgow has some distinction. It has about three times as many crimes of violence as compared to the City of Birmingham, a city of similar size. The number of malicious woundings in Glasgow in the year ended March, 1967 (I am talking about malicious woundings, not the minor incidents to which the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, referred in his interesting speech) was 933, as against 96 in Edinburgh, and 547 in the City of Liverpool. This distinguishes Glasgow as a somewhat violent city. It has many compensating virtues, but that is not the subject of to-day's debate.

I ask myself, as someone involved in community relationships in that city, what are the causes. I must admit that there is something in the mores of the Glaswegian that makes him respond more violently to certain events. Anyone who has participated in a General Election in that city will realise that there is a warmth and vitality which is absent from many other communities. Anyone who has stood with 80,000 partisans on New Year's day in Ibrox Park will realise how deeply moved the Glaswegians can become over particular issues; and anyone who has read the history of the Labour movement in Glasgow will appreciate that there have been many instances of violent reaction to certain events.

I believe that in this city there are certain special features. I want to deal, first of all, in the presence of my noble friend Lord Macleod, with the religious tensions in this city. It is a city with a large Roman Catholic population. People may protest and demonstrate about the segregation of children in Alabama and in other parts of the world, but in the City of Glasgow there is an insistence by the Roman Catholic authorities that their children must be segregated from all other members of the community in their religious education at a very early age. It means in fact that the Jews in the community, and the increasing number of Muslims from the Pakistani families, can go to the ordinary schools, but there is an insistence that Roman Catholic children from the age of five years must be educated in other schools. I speak from personal experience when I say that this in itself creates certain tensions in our community. That, spreading from the early age of education right through the social life, the sporting life, and political life of our community is an unhealthy aspect dividing the community, and I am afraid it is a contributory factor to tension and ultimately violence. In these days when the ecumenical idea is being fostered so forcefully and when so much lip service is being paid to the idea of the ecumenical relationship of Churches, it would be a fine gesture if this segregation of children in schools were to be departed from in the city.

The other special features about the city include poverty, squalor and bad housing, all of which are contributory factors leading people to seek escape—and notably in the public house. If one analyses the statistics relating to violent crimes in Glasgow, one sees that 86 per cent. of all crimes of violence are committed by people under the influence of alcohol. I think that there is a strong relationship between the committing of violent acts and the increased consumption of alcohol. But the religious tensions, the poverty and the squalor do not in themselves explain this situation, because Glasgow suffers from the same features as affect other parts of the country and the general increase in violence which has occurred.

A great deal has been said in this debate, quite rightly and sensibly about the revolt of young people, and there is a general acceptance that young people demonstrate in their various ways perhaps, because they have rejected the values which we regard as important. They seek some satisfaction in perversely exciting activities, such as violence and destructiveness, because they are protesting against values and there has been no replacement of new values by which they can live. If we look at the kind of community in which we live, this is understandable. The right reverend Prelate referred to the depersonalisation of our society, and there is no doubt that young people who spend most of their waking hours in a large anonymous factory, engaged in mass production lines, get no creative satisfaction out of such activity. I was interested in some experiments in this matter because I regard it as of importance to social progress and harmony in our community that we should study the effect of the depersonalisation which mass production industry brings to people.

I recently visited a shoe factory, a mass-production unit run by a Quaker family. They decided to do something about this problem, and they invited any employee of the factory who was engaged in a single-unit operation during his working day to go back to the factory in the evening and to produce a pair of shoes, so that he would know what he was engaged upon. The production in which he was engaged during the day would thereby be much more meaningful, since he would not be pressing a button to produce an article. There is no doubt that some of the satisfaction which people enjoyed in the past, when they we-re engaged in smaller industrial units, is lost to-day in the kind of meaningless, depersonalised relationships which exist in our modern factories. I feel that young people must be given new objectives, new purposes; and their lives must be given a meaning. This can be done by giving them opportunities for service; and if this is done I am quite sure that young people will respond.

There is a rather special problem involved in the new housing communities. I used to think that there was a rather simple way of solving these problems. I assumed that if people were taken away from the slums and put into new houses there would be an inevitable reduction in crimes and violence and in social tensions. I regret to say that the experience of the City of Glasgow does not prove this to be true. More than half the population of almost 1 million people are now living in council houses; there has been a tremendous achievement in that respect. But having put people into new housing estates, we have discovered that we have not created communities. I discussed this with local authority people many years ago. The great need was for houses. "Let us have more houses"—that was the plea heard everywhere. So we have created great concrete deserts in Easterhouses, and elsewhere, with no social amenities and none of the cohesive factors which establish community living. We are trying to catch up with this problem, but this is a factor not only in Glasgow. I sometimes think that in developing our housing policies we have been too concerned about the achievement by local authorities of the target number of houses and have not analysed the social consequences of some of our housing developments.

I have been studying the problem of crime and delinquency in New York, of all places, and I have been extremely interested in some of the new housing developments which have been built as co-operative housing projects; that is to say, large communities are created and there is ownership of the houses within co-operatives. Named as a tribute to this country, Rochdale Village, in the heart of New York, is a new housing community of 20,000 people. So successful has Rochdale Village become, as an example of an area in which Negroes and white people, Jewish people and Puerto Ricans are living together in an integrated community, that a new centre called Cooperative City, has now been built in the heart of New York.

Now what is the special feature of this community? The special feature is the fact that people have a sense of ownership in the community. They own and run their own medical services, and their own security force. They have more than 50 separate community activities—symphony orchestras, drama clubs, racial groups, political groups, discussion groups, senior citizens' groups. They own their own shops, laundries and power plant. Indeed, when New York was in darkness, more than a year ago, the only place that was shining brightly was Co-operative City, because it runs its own power plant. But it is shining brightly for a whole lot of reasons apart from that: because people feel involved in the community; because they elect their own council, run their own shops, run their own health service; and because they are involved and participate in all the activities of the community which they feel they own. As a result of this, delinquency in that community has dropped dramatically and it is a totally integrated inter-racial community. I suggest that in planning our community development in this country we might study the fact that council ownership in large cities tends to be remote and bureaucratic, and we might think in terms of a greater decentralisation of power and authority in the running of new community enterprises.

Many of the points which I noted have inevitably been dealt with already, and at this late hour I will not repeat them. But I think we must accept that we are living in a rather violent society, a society which is conducive to violence. This can be seen when we look at the mass media of communication, and the fact that in the Royal Court, a theatre not far from here, there can be seen—according to the Financial Times critic—a gang of lay-abouts amusing themselves by torturing a baby and stoning it to death. We are living in that kind of atmosphere, and that is reflected in films, in television, in the theatre and in other areas. It may be argued that it is the duty of the theatre to reflect society and that this is a violent society; and that is no doubt a justification for this piece. But I think we must be careful that we do not by anything we do reduce the sensitiveness of people to violence, and to the blasphemous nature of some of the violence that is perpetrated in our society.

A previous speaker said a few minutes ago that no one had mentioned Vietnam. I am sorry to say that I believe that by showing on television the atrocities in Vietnam, we reduce the sensitivity of people to violence. We begin to accept that violence is part of life. So I hope that, following to-day's very interesting debate, we might consider as individuals, as people in a community, how best we can elevate the Christian virtues of kindness, caring and compassion, and bring them into our politics and our lives so that we can contribute something to resisting violence.

I know that there are all the more practical measures: we have to increase the police force—and I agree; we have to develop a new relationship between police and public; we need to have more social workers; we must have a deeper study of the causes of violence; we have to be careful about controlling the cultivation of violence in the mass media; and we have to develop better community relationships. But those community relationships should be based on respect for the individual, and should be built up in a spirit of kindness, caring and compassion.

9.8 p.m.

LORD TEVIOT

My Lords, I must first thank my noble friend Lord Cork for initiating this debate. The year 1969 is still young, and I hope that we shall very soon have another debate which comes up to the standard of this one. I must apologise for not being here to listen to the opening speeches, but I must say that I enjoyed the most interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and his story about Glasgow. It is absolutely true. I was there last summer and I was horrified by what I saw. The noble Lord mentioned violence through alcoholism, and I can quite understand that that is a problem there. I, too, was taken around in a car and shown Easter-houses and Blackhills, and I was appalled when I saw Blackhills. The shops had to be boarded up at night and there were scores of people sitting out on the pavement with nothing else to do. There was no community life there, and I think that we need to study their problem very closely.

My reason for speaking here to-night is to deal with violence on British Railways and on public transport. I must first thank British Railways and London Transport for their co-operation in giving me the following figures. The chief worry of British Railways is the appalling increase in the number of cases of malicious damage to railway tracks, signal boxes, and other equipment. The number of persons convicted in 1963 was 415; in 1964, 541; in 1965, 820. Then we went back in 1966 to 622; then, in 1967, we went roaring back again to 836; and, for the first six months of 1968 (it is less than six months, apparently, because of children's holidays) the total was 454.

The opinion of British Railways is that these crimes happen particularly in urban areas; that children are the worst criminals and that the cause is lack of parental control, which is another factor that we are dealing with in this debate and one that is now recognised in our modern society. I am not one of those who say, "Fings ain't wot they used to be". Successive generations always criticise those who follow. I am sure that this will be true of my own generation; but there is no doubt that in our present society there is an increasing lack of parental control. Particularly depressing about these figures of children on railway tracks is that they will be adults in a very short space of time. I think it follows (I hope it does not, but I think it does) that if you do something very beastly when you are young there is a chance I hat you might do something fairly violent when you get older.

My Lords, the situation is most interesting when you look into facts and figures. I also asked British Railways, about "football specials" In the 1967–68 football season, they ran 866 trains, and only 19 of them—I agree 19 too many, but only 19—were actually damaged, representing 2.2 per cent. of the total. The total cost of this damage was only £2,000, but that was just the damage to the trains and did not include costs caused by delay through people pulling the communication cord. One redeeming feature from this analysis is that few football fans are destructive. Those who are destructive are only a minority; and this is one of those cases where I think the problem has been all rather "blown up" by the Press. But I agree 19 cases is too many.

Also, again happily, the railways state that there are very few assaults on their staff. But I am afraid that a very different story appears when you compare attacks on London Transport central bus staffs. In the healthy days of 1960, there were only 167 cases of less serious assaults, but in 1968 the figure was 658—nearly four times as many. The number of cases of serious assault, involving grievous bodily harm, was 30 in 1960 and 81 in 1968. One can appreciate the reluctance of their staff to work late at night.

I also asked about Brighton—I knew quite a lot about transport in Brighton—and I discovered that there has been very little violence there over a great number of years, as in other cities. One does not quite know why violence is mounting in the case of London Transport. One hopes that it has nothing to do with racialist troubles, although one has a nasty feeling that that is the case. I do not quite know what we can do about it. We now have the recently enacted law concerned with raciality. Whether that will have any effect I do not know, but I do not think it will have any effect on violence. However, I do not want to get involved in a long argument here.

I want to go on to just one or two other matters. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, whom I happily saw during one of his short periods outside, said that there are far fewer crimes of violence than there are road accidents. But one point that I should like to make is that the number of road accidents is going down; so surely we must all try to sort something out to reduce the number of these crimes of violence. Members of the public, as a great many noble Lords have said, have to be protected; and the Government—this or any other Government, of any political Party—must do their utmost to see that this figure comes down.

Various suggestions have been put forward. We must think seriously about reverting to capital and corporal punishment. In many ways it would seem to be the answer; but I have not lived long enough to know much about it. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, is shaking his head. Then there was the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, who said that you cannot kill violence with violence. But, on that score, must you have punishment with punishment?—because the people who commit violence inflict punishment on their victims; so presumably one must have violence with violence. Where do we go from here?

I apologise to noble Lords for being informal in my speech, but at this late hour your Lordships' House becomes—-if I may use the expression—very cosy. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, suggested more community centres in our industrial estates. We have talked about students; but I think the violence of the students is different from that of absolute thugs. The students have been overplayed in this debate. I know that they are very much in mind at the moment; but I think it has gone too far.

My last word is about the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. I have not known him for very long but I should like to know him more, to meet him more often. He made a most interesting speech, and although at one point he was very much interrupted I think that shows the quality of his speech, that it was worth interrupting. I know that it was very sincere. If we have not learned anything else, we must all find some solution to the problem of reducing these figures of violence.

9.16 p.m.

LORD STRANGE

My Lords, I would congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, on initiating this debate. I heard a great deal of it and it has been very interesting. I will not say very much, as your Lordships know. There have always been periods of violence in the world's history—even in what we think of as rather quiet times. In the 19th century there was quite a flare up at one time and it was unusual for a big procession not to have a bomb lobbed into it. There was violence when Garibaldi tried to unite Italy—in fact, I think he did unite it. He had a great deal of trouble; but he never united the Italians. We have had violence in the last few years; but to my mind this is different from the kind of violence we have had in the past. It seems to me that in the past it had some sort of purpose, but this present violence has no purpose in it.

There is the matter of the Sorbonne, the violence among the students there. Well, they had quite a lot of grievances; the conditions were very French and tricky and the students had stuck it for a number of years. But the German universities are very up to date. One noble Lord mentioned a paper that was issued by the students of the London School of Economics. I shall not read it; but it is Communism that they want; they want to knock down the gates for Communism. In Czechoslovakia another student is becoming a human torch—against Communism. The thing is not making sense. It is different all over the world.

My Lords, I personally think—although nobody will agree with me—that the cause is unconscious precognition of what is going to happen in the future. I do not think that precognition is a subject that can ever be proved. I know that some quite well known scientists believe that with guessing numbers and boxes and so on, they have proved it, but I do not think it can be proved. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, is not here. When he was a young and enthusiastic man he had a series of dreams. And they were very profitable. Although he did not put much money on them, the horses he dreamt of won some races. He wrote a book about it. Perhaps he has forgotten it now. But I dare say that many Lords have had future dreams and have found that they came true. One cannot explain it, but it is so. These premonitions are most interesting but I do not think they have ever been proved.

Unless one has had a future dream one could never really believe in it. A man could dream, say, that it was going to snow on Derby day. He could, say, register his dream at the post office—and then it could snow on Derby day. But that would prove nothing. It is not proof. There has, in fact, been a Derby run in the snow. There is a cold period at that time of the year.

I should not be talking about future dreams if I had not suffered from having had them. At one time I had such a cycle of them that I became rather interested. They all came true; they were trivial dreams but all came true. I kept a dream book in which I wrote down the dreams and I found a rather extraordinary thing. One of the dreams I had—it was a simple thing—gave me the clue to the whole process of this future dreaming, of seeing what is happening in the future. It was a silly dream. It was a dream of a large, long ship which fired a torpedo which hit another ship with a tall mast on it—or presumably it did—and the other ship sank. Very distinctly I saw the torpedo's wake, and I saw the long battleship. I could not see the other ship distinctly, but when it sank a man climbed out of the water up the mast. I put that down as a nightmare. But when I saw the papers in the morning I saw a picture of a man who had been on a ship which had sunk in shallow water and he had climbed up the mast. There was a photograph of him.

Nearly two months later I went to see a son-in-law of mine and his daughter and we went along from Helensburgh. I say a very long battleship which he told me was going to be broken up, which surprised me. I had never seen such a long ship in my life. Going up Loch Long, he said, "Do you know what those are?" I said, "No, I do not know." He said, "They are torpedo timing rafts; there is one coming now." I looked down. I had never seen a torpedo before, but I saw this torpedo coming up, leaving a line of bubbles behind. Then we had a picnic party on a rocky promontory—I remember something about that too. When I got back I looked up my dream book and I found out the process of how these dreams had worked—that you got a newsy item, like a man on the mast of a ship, and tried to make it logical. And I picked up these events which were going to happen, two months ahead. At the end of that I came to the conclusion that I could never understand future dreams or how it is possible to see the future, but I could understand how they work; it is picking up newsy items.

Now, my Lords, I shall not be long, but it is quite interesting to me. Suddenly my future dreams stopped. A new thing happened. I had a different form of precognition. I felt very miserable for quite a long period, then something happened that was unpleasant, and then I felt happy again. Indeed, I felt excessively happy. Then after that, something nice turned up, and I felt normal again. About this time last year I felt so jolly and so happy that I could not think what was happening. "Really" I thought, "this is wonderful; something marvellous is going to happen." One day, when opening my letters. I saw a Government form. I said, "Oh Sear, I am sure I paid everything before I left." I opened it and saw "£500", and I thought, "Oh!" Then I looked closer and saw, "Dear Bondholder, yon have won £500"; and I realised why I had been so happy.

My Lords, I feel that this unconsciousness that I have had is what the students have had. They have unconsciously felt irritated, depressed, liable to break everything up, like one feels when one is angry. It is for something that is going to happen in the future. That is why I think there will be something. It probably will not be what we think—the bomb, or the obvious thing. It will be something quite different, something upsetting for the world, which is going to happen in the future. I know in my own life, which is on the way out now, that nothing has ever been quite so good as I hoped it would be, and nothing has been as bad as I feared.

9.24 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR

My Lords, may I "chip in" for one moment? We have heard a very useful debate, started by my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery with his usual eloquence and efficiency, and we have heard about the dangers of violence and how they are created. We have also heard the means of overcoming them. The people concerned with violence are a minute fraction of the millions in this country, the ordinary people who carry on. As an advanced octogenarian I have been accustomed to dealing with boys leaving school, with works apprentices. They have all been very helpful and really British. Our people are ordinary people and they move about in the ordinary way with courtesy and helpfulness. In other words, we are a great nation, a nation which has never been defeated in war or in peace, and we all of us have a right to be very proud of the members of it.

9.25 p.m.

VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS

My Lords, I always enjoy listening to speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Strange, and I hope to hear a good many more of them. I am a distant relative of his, but I am afraid that I am not a close enough relative to be able to make quite such a Strange speech. That is why I shall not follow him. I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, introduced this debate because I believe that it has been extremely valuable. I would not think of joining it at this late hour, had it not been that, after listening steadily to the debate, I feel that one or two important points have been missed and I believe that, as a warden of a youth club and a schoolmaster, I might be able to add to the debate.

If a doctor is dealing with a disease of long standing in a patient, one of the first questions he will ask is: When did it begin? I do not think that we have asked this question enough. It seems to me that this disease of violence starts much earlier than many noble Lords have suggested. It is obviously well established by the age of 14, and I believe that it starts much, much earlier. I have watched this in the London borough of Camden, where I live, and I have come to the conclusion that the beginning of it is the separation between children and parents, partly through the mother going out to work, so that for long periods there is no family in the house, and partly because the big blocks of flats have no gardens, nothing attached to the flat, so that when a child goes out of the door he is away from his parents and their control and they have no idea where he is. These are the earliest forms of separation and the beginning of trouble. When I say "he", though I may appear to speak only of boys, I also include, for the benefit of my noble friend Lady Summerskill and others, girls. They also go out into the streets and have very little to do. I believe that here we can do something to help the situation.

The education authorities and the Ministry of Education are already doing quite a lot, though I believe still not enough, for the older children, from 14 upwards; but there is still an enormous gap, which is not adequately filled, between those who are old enough to go out into the streets, out of their parents' sight, and the age of 14. My own little floating youth club on the Regent's Canal takes children from 8 to 14. We get a large number of members from high blocks of flats, children who once they are out in the street are out of their parents' control and who have little to do and not much money with which to go far. At their age they have no great wish to go far, but there is very little to do unless they do go far. This state of affairs has several effects which I think should be brought to the attention of this House. One of them is that unless something is organised for these children to do they fall into the hands of other people who will organise them in ways that we should not wish.

I have had several gangs of older boys join my club at one time or another, and in almost every case they have a "little Jimmy" in tow, and "little Jimmy" is much younger than the other members of the gang. He is not brought along because they like his blue eyes, but for the simple reason that they know perfectly well that if they have a bit of illegal work to do they can send him in to "do the dirty work" before they reap the benefits, and if he is caught, he will not be so severely dealt with as they would be. "Little Jimmy" was proud to be taken along, because he was being treated as one of the big boys. He ran with the big boys, and because of this he considered himself as a big boy. He was treated as a kind of pet. Several times we have had gangs who have joined our club and when they found that it was not a club where they could cause trouble, they left. But very often a week or so later we got "little Jimmy" back. The rest of the gang had gone, but he, realising that it was a good place for "little Jimmies", had returned to us. So we had done what I believe to be an important job: we had separated "little Jimmy" from the older boys who were mismanaging him and were leading him into a life which none of us would wish him to know.

I believe it to be most important that we should organise more for the younger members of the community, those below the age of 14, so that they will fall into surroundings where their life can develop, where they can have reasonable friends and activities which they enjoy, with the help of adults, and not fall into these other hands which will lead them into the troubles of which we have heard to-day. For that reason, among others, I think that it is most important that we should develop a range of activities for the younger child.

It is not only the "little Jimmies" that need rescuing, but the whole of the rest of the children of that age, because they are undoubtedly not receiving the attention they should receive, and they are too much separated from their parents. At that age it is far more important for them to receive some kind of parent or adult support than it is at a later age. The whole process of growing up is what one might call a continuous process of birth. From the moment they physically separate from the mother, they mentally get further and further from their parents as they must right through their lives; and possibly the process never finishes. There is always a moment when one wishes to see one's parents, even if in my own case, as everybody knows, my noble relative sits on the other side of the House. The fact of the matter is that these younger ones need much more parent and adult support than the older ones do, and at present they are not getting it.

I am finding to my surprise, because this was not something I contemplated when I started my floating youth club on the canal, that parents are joining me in considerable numbers. I am now getting cases of boys who have misbehaved—in fact, I have defended them in juvenile courts—who are, with the aid of their parents, buying small, old battered boats, and, with their parents, settling down together to repair those boats; father and son working side by side. That, I believe, is the framework that we should be aiming for—not necessarily, as in my case, on the water; I am sure it can be done in all sorts of other fields. I believe it is our business to draw the parents and the children much more together at this younger age, which is where it needs doing. I believe that the trouble that is occurring is to some extent—I will not say it is the whole trouble; I would not be so silly as to do that—that one stage of this long s3parating process that a child goes through in the course of developing its life away from its parents is taking place too fast. Between the age of 8 or 9, when the child is able to go out into the street and run with the other youngsters, and the age of about 14 there is a very serious gap developing when the child is far too much separated from, not only his parents but all those who might act as his parents—adults who would join him as friends and supporters, as teachers and leaders. This is the gap that really needs filling at this moment.

I believe that if we tightened that up we might be able to avoid quite a lot of the trouble we are having now. I do not say we would avoid it all; I would not be so bold as to say anything of the sort. But, in my experience, of the few years in which I have been working in this field, it has seemed to me from asking myself this question over and over again that that is where the trouble is at the moment. The child has been forced too quickly through a process of separation, and we should slow the separation up at that point by doing something—I would not know exactly what; a cleverer man than myself will say what—towards giving the child more support either from the outside or from his parents at that exact age. If we do so, we may well reap a very good harvest from activity at that precise point.

9.38 p.m.

LORD MACLEOD OF FUINARY

My Lords, I am well aware that it must be almost unbearable for some of your Lordships who have been in on the whole of this debate that, having got through a long list of speakers, there is to be yet another speech from a speaker who is not on the list. But I assure your Lordships that this speech is of the shortest kind. It is a contribution made because of the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, who made a speech on which I feel I must say just one word. It arises from an anecdote, and at the end of this anecdote I shall sit down.

To make my remarks as brief as possible, perhaps I should declare my interest. Continuously for the last twenty years in Iona some of us in a religious community there have each week run a camp for borstal boys, lads from borstal, with 20 boys a year. Overall we have had 400 boys at camp for a week. This experience I have always been able to share myself without intermission, and I want to say just one thing about it. I have always asked these boys one question. This has not been a sort of official court of inquiry, but sitting round the camp fire, so to speak, where perhaps one gets even closer to the truth. Every year I have asked all of them together for their view of capital punishment and corporal punishment. What brought me to my feet tonight was the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, who hoped that both would be reintroduced. It may interest your Lordships to know that over these twenty years with an accumulation of 400 borstal lads, I have ascertained that every one of them is in favour of the return of corporal punishment, and of capital punishment.

One can make what one likes of that situation. My own interpretation, for what it is worth, is simply that they live in a world of violence and they become uncomfortable at once if they find themselves in a situation where violence is not their environment. It is when we threaten violence, and sometimes use violence, or when they know that violence is waiting for them, that they feel at home, because they are in the area from which they came. There was the case of a lad (not in one of these camps) who went to a school where there was too much corporal punishment. So his parents took him away and sent him to a school where there was no corporal punishment and everyone tried to understand each case. After a year the boy wrote home and said he would like to be taken away from that school and sent to his former school. When he was asked why he said: "It is not very nice to have corporal punishment but it is much worse to be understood".

I personally believe that the reason is just as I have said, this sense that violence will not meet violence, and if there is an atmosphere of violence we only intensify the situation. The overall impression I have gained of this debate (and I think I have been here for three-quarters of it) has been the extraordinary way, almost unanimity, with which people have been determined to be constructive and not to return violence for violence. Do let us remember that we live in a violent age. We have said it time and time again. How far do we know it in our minds and not in our beings, that we are part of the violence?

Just one final symbol of it: the Polaris, costing over £60 million; the Polaris, which carries in its belly an accumulated fire power equal to the entire fire power used by both sides throughout the whole of the last war, including the bombs which fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This, in the last ghastly resort, unless we are protesting, we are prepared to throw on a target 2,500 miles away, to kill a million people: to kill a million people in order to assure them of our belief in the ultimate value of the human personality; to kill a million people in order to assure them of our belief in the human rights of every man. This is the symbol of the atmosphere which is all around us and for which we are responsible. And unless we deal with that contemporaneously we shall have no solution to the violence of youth to-day.

9.43 p.m.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, we have debated for seven hours; 24 noble Lords entered their names on the list, so far we have had 27 speeches and there have been no "drop outs". We have had the remarkable experience of the Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, aged. I believe, 86, staying to the end of this long debate for the sole purpose of proclaiming his firm—and justified—faith in our country and its people. I think that that, and this whole, debate, is a great credit to your Lordships' House.

How does one reply to a debate when there have been 27 speakers, when everyone wants to get home? No one wants to hear a speech from me, and yet I have the duty to reply to a number of people and to honour the excellent speeches which so many noble Lords have made. Of course, no one knows the answer to that question I have just asked, and certainly I do not. Therefore what I propose to do is to state what I believe to be the main threads and the main points of agreement in this debate, and then to deal individually with one or two points which have been made by noble Lords. First of all, there is, I am sure, complete agreement among us all that we and the country owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, for initiating the debate and for the manner in which he opened it and, as it were, gave us the whole broad theme: we are indeed grateful to the noble Earl.

Then I think we shall agree that many noble Lords, I think most, have expressed the view, crime statistics apart, that we are less violent to-day than we were years ago. My noble friend Lord Soper said we were less violent than at the time of Dickens. There is no question about it. But what I think is more important is that that violence went virtually unrecorded in those days. Abominable atrocities were committed which people were conditioned to and they accepted. We do not accept them to-day, and therefore virtually all comparisons are irrelevant. My noble friend Lord Archibald spoke about violence in Glasgow forty years ago. I remember one of the most depressing days I had in my life, in 1924 I think it was, on a wet Sunday in February on Glasgow Green. It was the most depressing, ghastly, awful experience that any man could see. These days are very different. The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, mentioned Notting Hill in 1950 and the violence there, and I think he largely agreed with my remarks on this subject, for which I was very grateful. Let us get that picture in our minds first of all.

I think everyone, too, has agreed that the violent students are a very small minority whose importance has been grossly exaggerated by the mass media.

We are agreed, moreover, that the greatest need of all in this field is for the very large majority to stand up and exert their influence, to speak as they believe. We all agree, too, that there is great need for authorities of every kind to try desperately to understand, which means to talk, to discuss; and, indeed, if there were not misunderstanding it would not be so easy for the few to lead the many.

Almost every noble Lord has ex pressed his concern at the increase in crimes of violence, but there has been almost complete agreement—this was the theme of the last speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Macleod of Fuinary—that violence should not be met with violence. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers—and I disagreed with at least one thing he said, and I will come to that in a minute—used a phrase that I was so delighted to hear used: "We must relegate to the background the law of the jungle, that he who hits the hardest wins". That is the crux of the whole matter in a very telling phrase. We are agreed that violence should not be met with violence. I do not think that there would have been such general agreement even twenty years ago in your Lordships' House. So we, too, change.

There has been a recognition that in crime and elsewhere violence is overwhelmingly confined to youth. The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, gave one statistic—he gave a number, but one very striking one—that 89½ per cent. of people convicted of housebreaking offences were under 30. In that I see a seed of hope, because I believe it is evidence, too, that if only 10½ per cent. are over 30 we are reforming them. We are getting them inside and in our borstals and in our prisons, and they are not going on. This is not just a light statement; I believe there is a great deal of truth in it.

Then, too, there has been great admiration expressed for the British police and approval of our methods. Here I come to the point where I disagree wish the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. I am not quoting him exactly, but he said that it was wrong to spend £250,000 on overtime for the police in dealing with the demonstrations. I much regret the expenditure on overtime, but I do not agree with the noble Earl that it was not worth it. It is worth a great deal more than money to retain in this country the glorious standards of liberty, of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I know that on this occasion they were grossly exploited by a minority, the kind of people, whether they came from abroad or were citizens of this country, who could bring ballbearings to trip up horses, who could stick nails in horses. This was despicable, deplorable and detestable conduct by anybody.

That is not the point. The point is that it was the right decision. It demonstrated the difference in this country. It was a decision in which I took part, although I was in hospital. The Home Secretary came to see me about it beforehand and we discussed this most anxiously, because it was one of those kind of things in regard to which you are almost bound to be wrong whichever decision you take. As events proved, the Home Secretary's decision, a courageous one, was the right one. I remember my grandfather talking about a demonstration in about 1870—"bloody Sunday" he called it. He was a young man then. There was a demonstration in Trafalgar Square against the kind of gross injustices that Lord Mansfield was talking about in other parts of the country.

EARL FERRERS

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? I know he wishes to be fair, but he will draw a distinction between the right to demonstrate and to give one's views and, if you like, the right to violence, which is something totally different?

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Earl. I was on the perhaps narrower point on which he thought it was wrong to have allowed the demonstration to take place. I thought it was right, and that that decision was justified by events.

The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, said that it was about time we protected the police against the kind of things to which they were subjected, and he mentioned light shields of the kind used in Tokyo. I cannot emphasise too strongly that this is a matter for decision by the British police. If chief constables say that they want these weapons for their forces, that they want this equipment, of course they will have them. But the chief officers of police, the Police Federation and the lower ranks have all said, "We do not want them; we can handle these things in our own way." I am sure the noble Earl will agree that they are the people in charge, and that they are the people to whom we should have regard.

There has been a great deal said about youth. In the notable speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Soper, and the noble Lord, Lord Rowallan, there has been a stressing of the need for positive social action to improve the environment; the tremendous importance of home and school influences; the part that teachers can play. My noble friend Lord St. Davids said—and I do not disagree with this—that violence starts in the very young child, and often arises when the child is separated from its parents—perhaps for economic reasons. He suggested that we should start a range of activities for the young. My Lords, we have done so. We have a whole range of activities for the young, such as adventure playgrounds. I remember that years ago my factory used to be burgled every day of the week, often by 8 or 9 year old children. So we started an adventure playground over the wall, and we had no problems thereafter. Of course this is right; and, indeed, what is so noticeable about the debate is that there has been almost no criticism of Government policy, except for the condemnation by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, of our curtailment of police recruiting. There has been a general feeling, which was particularly expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, that we should do more of the things we are doing. I do not dissent from that at all; but there must be this general feeling that we are on the right road.

Then there has been the discussion about the idealism and the desire of so many young people to assist, which is all very true and is never sufficiently stressed. We always hear about the minority—the people that cause the disturbance are the people that make the news—and so little about the great majority who are such very fine young people wanting nothing more than to make a real contribution. I think that is a fair summary of the general themes which have come out and have emerged in this debate, and on which there has been general agreement. Perhaps I can now deal as quickly as I can with one or two particular questions that were put to me.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked me about the Report of the Departmental Committee on Criminal Statistics. This Report was presented to Parliament, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, and published in December, 1967. The Report concluded that while the present criminal statistics for England and Wales were among the best in the world (though obviously not good enough for the noble Lord) there was certainly room for improvement; and the Report recommended that more detailed particulars should be reported by the police, with radical changes in their presentation. The practical problems, and indeed the financial and other implications of implementing the Committee's recommendations, are being studied by my Department, and we are constantly trying to make improvements.

My noble friend Lady Summerskill,—who has had to attend another meeting—seized on the opportunity, as we might have expected, to advance her views about the noble art, and she suggested there was already sufficient evidence to merit the withdrawal from T.V. screens of exhibitions which glamorised violence. Well, this is a matter which will doubtless be considered. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, to whose speech I have already referred, said that we had weakened the guide-lines and the standards of responsibility, and he argued that we badly needed such standards. I do not dissent from that at all. I think the difficulty also is in getting people to listen.

The noble Lord, Lord Birdwood—whom I regret not having heard speak before—made a speech that will repay re-reading and studying. He spoke of the disbelief, bewilderment, outrage, revenge, and finally of the violence which produces violence; and he said that violence, far from cleansing, corrupts, and that the best defence against violence is to try to understand it. The noble Lord's speech was so diamond-studded that the only complaint I make is that it was delivered at a rate of knots which precluded the proper appreciation of individual gems. That is why I say it will have to be carefully studied.

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, I must rise to thank the noble Lord for his tribute. In fact, the little sequence I outlined was the reaction of society to violence, consisting of disbelief, bewilderment, dismay, outrage and, finally, revenge. I is not the violence itself: the violence is always there. That is what the host society does when confronted with violence.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I certainly would not dissent from what the noble Lord said. I wholeheartedly agree with him that our job is to listen. The trouble is that some people will not listen. You cannot have a dialogue unless both sides listen. And I am afraid that there are a minority of young people who are anarchists and who do not want to listen; they do not want to co-operate; they do not want things to improve; they do not want to understand; they do not want to know. They merely want a revolution: they want to disrupt.

My noble friend Lord Francis-Williams said that we live in a violent century, a century in which more people have been killed than in any other century. I agree that that is so. But we are alive in this century and we have to deal with things as we find them. My noble friend Lord Francis-Williams touched upon what I regard as the crux of our problem to-day in his very moving passage about the demonstration by the young people of Czechoslovakia and in underlining the tremendous importance of non-violence. He mentioned a friend of his who described it. He said that before it happened the students were often having meetings; that there were unrest, revolutionary talk, and talk about violence. And then they were faced with a real act of violence, the Soviet tanks. The noble Lord's friend said, "Our people reached out with an amazing display of discipline, and the appeal went out that in order to save what could be saved the streets should be cleaned up and the slogan removed." They did not do it because they wished to, but because in the bitter moment of defeat they felt at one with their society and their leaders. I think that this is the important thing: they had something to do.

Then we heard the speech of my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell. He has two sons at university and he was able to tell us, or at least to give us his view, of the problems about which students feel strongly—the slaughter in Vietnam, starvation in Biafra, inequalities in our society, Rhodesia, apartheid in South Africa. We all—at least, I hope all of us—feel strongly about these matters, but I do not think we all agree that they could be helped by some of the methods which have been employed by young people. He asked, "Are we powerless to deal with these things?" Well, in the sense of our being dictators, we certainly are powerless, but we are not incompetent so far as our influence is concerned. He said that our young people are impotent and frustrated; that our youth feel that they can do something about these things.

My mind goes back to a little over forty years ago, when I was a student in 1922 and 1923 at the L.S.E. I was not old enough to be in the First World War, but nearly all my fellow students were chaps who had been in the First World War and had survived. It was not a very pretty world that we lived in. There were not many jobs and there was a lot of unemployment about. There was enormous frustration and there were economic problems. In 1926 we had the miners' strike and the General Strike, and in 1931 we had 3 million unemployed. Those who did not experience it, who were not alive at that time, who were not working at that time, who were not adults at that time, cannot imagine just what it was like. But we did not sit down in the streets. We were not frustrated in that way. We got on with the job in a practical way.

My noble friend said that these students are concerned at the gap to-day between the rich and the poor. Good heavens! my Lords, my noble friends and I—virtually every single one of us—are on these Benches because we were concerned in those days and because we are still concerned. It is our whole lives. This is not new, and it was vastly more acute in those days. My noble friend rightly pleaded for understanding. He said, "Try to understand". But if you are going to understand there must be a dialogue in which the speakers also listen. But there are some students who are not interested in dialogue. They want extensive representation on committees. I know a number of Vice-Chancellors who have discussed their problems with me; and the fact is that any body of students who really want to consult, who really want to co-operate, who really want to play an important part in their university, can do so. But where I take issue with my noble friend is this. We cannot logically advocate unfettered freedom of speech for ourselves and deny people like Enoch Powell the right to speak, however much we disagree with them. It has to be both ways.

The noble Earl, Lord Shannon, spoke in a professional sense about protection against attack, and particularly counter protection, and I wholly agree with what he said. In fact I go even further. I think that in firms of any size at all, even small and middle-sized firms, a director or a member of the firm should be partly or wholly engaged on this question of security and protection, not only to protect the employees—though that is vastly important—but also in connection with the vastly greater losses from theft. As for the noble Earl's point about legislation to protect people who have to take care of cash, that is something we shall have to look at.

The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, asked questions about police strength now, and about increases. Perhaps he has blinded me with science, but I really cannot see where the difference comes in. However, I am going to accept his invitation to write to him and will put the matter right. My noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe spoke of Glasgow and the violence there; and in recent years this has, of course, been most disturbing. But I am glad to be able to say, although we cannot make firm statements about trends, that on figures over short periods it seems that the increase in these offences in Scotland in the early months of last year was followed by some reduction. So it appears that there may be hope there. I can also tell him that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland recognises that the problem cannot be solved only by the deterrent work of courts and police, and that he has a very substantial programme of direct action in this field to provide amenities, mainly through the local authorities. But certainly it is expected that these needs will be met.

The noble Lord, Lord Teviot, whose speech I am afraid I did not hear, spoke about damage to public transport, about which I know he is very much concerned. I was pleased to hear that he made reference to the very small percentage of damage to football trains, although it is very much publicised. As to the noble Lord, Lord Strange, it is impossible, of course, to reply to any speech from the noble Lord. One can only say how delightfully and aptly he was named, and hope that we shall be here to listen to many more of those Strange speeches.

My Lords, I think I have now made at least some reference to every noble Lord who spoke, and I hope that in the time available I have summed up the debate. It only needs me to say, therefore, how very valuable this debate has been, and how carefully it will be studied by the Government. I am sure that it will be of material assistance in helping us to improve a situation which is rightly a matter of concern but which, as I think this debate has shown, is not so serious as many people might have us believe.

10.12 p.m.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, the long debate is over, and there is nothing more for me to say. There is only one quotation which sticks in my mind out of all this long afternoon and evening, and that is one from the second speech, to which we have just listened, from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. He said: Everyone wants to get home; nobody wants a speech from me". I will take that as my cue. But there is one thing I must say, and that is to express a small personal and also a public vote of thanks to the noble Lord himself. I cannot over-acknowledge the most courteous help that I had from him myself before the debate began; and I am quite certain that the House will approve my remarks if I express wonder—and not for the first time has it occurred to anyone—at the permanence, almost, of his presence upon the Government Front Bench and at the Despatch Box, day after day, Bill after Bill, week after week, showing—and this is the point I wish to make, my Lords—the most devoted and genuine concern and attention. I think this makes a great impression on us all.

My Lords, having said that, I make a small complaint. The noble Lord took me up on the matter of my arithmetic at the beginning of the afternoon. He is probably absolutely right. I said myself that I was not very good at it; I never have been. But a Home Office spokesman, who one hopes will remain unidentified, has revealed to me that these figures would have been in Hansard a little earlier, possibly, if there had not been some computer trouble. It is all very well, but I do not see why my arithmetic should not be as good as that of a broken-down computer. However, I will take it no further than that.

My Lords, I think there remain only two things for me to do. One is to beg your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Motion, and the other is to express my most heartfelt thanks to those noble Lords who have supported it by taking part in the debate and also to those who have graced it with their presence.

Motion for Papers, by leave, with-drawn.