THE HEROIN PROBLEM IS POVERTY

In the streets around Craigton primary school in Glasgow this week, you
could hear two different reactions to the news that an 11-year-old had been
found with UKP500 worth of heroin in his school bag. One was exaggerated
shock. The other was exaggerated denial of surprise. More often than not,
the two were expressed in the same breath. People said they couldn't
believe it, then shrugged and said they could believe anything of children
these days. It can't have anything to do with poverty, several said. This
isn't such a bad area, and kids are still dealing drugs.

The opinion that children are out of control is so deeply held that the
discovery of heroin was considered less a revelation than extra evidence
for a case already proven. It was just a few miles south of Glasgow, in
Hamilton, that fear of youth crime prompted the country's first curfew
policy earlier this year. Children found out after dark were taken home by
the police, and the experiment was judged such a success that, as of last
month, councils in England and Wales have the right to impose their own
curfew. This is one of Jack Straw's biggest big ideas for cracking down on
youth crime.

When I visited Hamilton in April, I spoke mostly to youngsters, who were
predictably indignant about the curfew. I spoke less to the elderly on the
estates, the people whose deep, paralysing fear of children is greatest.
Fear of crime can be as much a part of the problem as actual crime itself,
and so this week I went back to the Hillhouse estate, to a day-care centre
for the elderly. It offers lunch, bingo, quizzes and company to people who
have literally nowhere else to go. I met only one man who will leave his
flat by himself. The others are imprisoned in their homes, relying on
council care-workers and family to take them out. When they were children,
they used to play out for hours, and their parents didn't have to worry.
Now, they said, the area is so dangerous, no parent should let their child
out of sight. But parents do let their children play out, and this is
something they cannot understand. What are the parents thinking? Where is
the discipline? The kids who play outside their flats are rude and
aggressive, and so they don't dare go out. You can't be too careful, they
all said.

Crack downs and curfews may cut youth crime, but they will not make the
victims of fear of crime feel any safer. Old women at the centre said they
adored their grandchildren, but that they never spoke to other teenagers.
Consequently, every 11-year-old boy they see looks to them like he might
have a schoolbag full of heroin, and so every 11-year-old might as well
have. That old people should lock themselves away from the world because
they do not understand it, and are therefore scared of it, is a bleak
indictment of our law-and-order efforts.

Elderly people on housing estates would benefit less from the odd extra
police car than from measures which are not obvious law-and-order policies
at all. If the council provided more day-care centres and home help, and
ran buses which actually stopped outside their houses, the elderly would
feel less vulnerable. There is nothing for kids to do on the estates, but
there is nothing for the elderly to do either, and empty isolation is a
terrifying thing. If local schools signed up to befriending schemes, so
that teenagers were dropping into pensioners' homes, the mutual alienation
would diminish; proposed citizenship classes for pupils could include such
a scheme. This is surely what the Government could mean by "joined-up
thinking" for "communities".

But 11-year-olds with heroin are not always the invention of the elderly
who sit at home and watch too much of The Bill on TV. A careworker at the
day centre talked to me about the area. He has lived here all his life, and
can scarcely believe how it has changed. Youngsters, he said simply, are
abusive. A lot of teenagers are dealing heroin, and they're breaking into
houses to pay for it. Twenty years ago you'd wander home from the pub,
blethering with folk; now you avoid eye contact unless you want a fight.

Clearly, it isn't good enough to dismiss the perils of run-down estates as
alarmist fantasies of pensioners and draconian home secretaries. But nor is
it good enough to say it has nothing to do with poverty. One woman in her
80s was uncomprehending. "When I was a child I got an apple and an orange
for Christmas, and I was happy. These days, weans want computers. How can
anyone say they're living in poverty?" It must seem incomprehensible to her
- - but poverty is not an absolute.

The care-worker explained that he used to be an engineer. The factory union
was strong, and they fought hard for good wages. Then, in the 80s, workers
were encouraged to buy their houses. "As soon as they had a mortgage," he
said, "you knew they'd never risk going on strike again. And the management
knew it too." Local wages have been driven down and down, he said, and
there are folk working for UKP2.50 an hour or less, on personal contracts
not worth the paper on which they're written.

His friend is about to lose his home. He has lived there for 20 years, but
a few years ago he bought it from the council. He's fallen into arrears,
and the mortgage company is repossessing it on Monday. He owes just UKP600.
"The building society's directors will spend that on a business lunch,
won't they? That's less than a week's wages for them. Just UKP600. And on
Monday they're evicting him. He's got a wife and two weans. No wonder
children do drugs. No wonder people get bitter and angry."

The elderly I spoke to remember poverty, but not the corrosive poverty of
inequality, where children are forced into a homeless unit over the price
of a businessmen's lunch. They weren't encouraged to buy a house they
couldn't afford, and didn't work for bosses who made fortunes and paid
crumbs. The problems facing these estates aren't the product of wilful
fecklessness, but the ugly inevitabilities of inequality.

When a child is found with heroin in his satchel, it is easy to forget
this, because it's almost impossible to comprehend how such a thing could
have happened. But youth crime can't be solved by curfews, or zero
tolerance, or mandatory searches of school-bags. Crackdowns alone won't
make the elderly feel safer, any more than they will help the children
being made homeless on Monday.