MicroBalrog
New member
An Englishman's home is his dungeon
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 07/12/2004)
One of the key measures of a society's health is how easily you can
insulate yourself from its underclass. In America, unless one resides in a
very small number of problematic inner-city quarters or wishes to make a
career in the drug trade, one will live a life blessedly untouched by
crime. In Britain, alas, it's the peculiar genius of Home Office policy to
have turned the entire country into one big, rundown, inner-city, no-go
slum estate, extending from prosperous suburbs to leafy villages, even
unto Upper Cheyne Row.
The murderers of John Monckton understood the logic of this policy better
than the lethargic overpaid British constabulary. An Englishman's home is
not his castle, but his dungeon and ever more so - window bars, window
locks, dead bolts, laser security, and no doubt biometricrecognition
garage doors, once the Blunkett national ID card goes into circulation.
All this high-tech protection, urged on the householder by Pc Plod, may
make your home more secure, but it makes you less so. From the burglar's
point of view, the more advanced and impregnable the alarm systems become,
the more it makes sense just to knock on the door and stab whoever
answers.
Mr Monckton's killers thus made an entirely rational choice. He was a
wealthy man, living in a prestigious neighbourhood of £3 million homes,
and he presumably had the best security system to go with it. But time it
right, get him to the front door, and the state-enforced impotence of the
homeowner makes him as vulnerable as any old loser in a decrepit
urine-sodden block on Broadwater Farm.
Various reassuring types, from police spokesmen to the Economist,
described the stabbing of the Moncktons as a "burglary gone wrong". If
only more burglaries could go right, they imply, this sort of thing
wouldn't happen.
But the trouble is that this kind of burglary - the kind most likely to go
"wrong" - is now the norm in Britain. In America, it's called a "hot"
burglary - a burglary that takes place when the homeowners are present -
or a "home invasion", which is a much more accurate term. Just over 10 per
cent of US burglaries are "hot" burglaries, and in my part of the world
it's statistically insignificant: there is virtually zero chance of a New
Hampshire home being broken into while the family are present. But in
England and Wales it's more than 50 per cent and climbing. Which is hardly
surprising given the police's petty, well-publicised pursuit of those
citizens who have the impertinence to resist criminals.
These days, even as he or she is being clobbered, the more thoughtful
British subject is usually keeping an eye (the one that hasn't been poked
out) on potential liability. Four years ago, Shirley Best, proprietor of
the Rolander Fashion emporium, whose clients include Zara Phillips, was
ironing some clothes when the proverbial two youths showed up. They
pressed the hot iron into her flesh, burning her badly, and then stole her
watch. "I was frightened to defend myself," said Miss Best. "I thought if
I did anything I would be arrested." There speaks the modern British crime
victim.
Her Majesty's Constabulary has metaphorically put a huge neon sign on
every suburban cul-de-sac advertising open season on property owners. If
you have a crime policy that makes "hot" burglaries routine, it's a
reasonable bet that more and more citizens will wind up beaten, stabbed or
dead.
I've been writing on this subject in The Telegraph for the best part of a
decade now and, to be honest, I might as well recycle the 1996 or 1997
column and spend the week in the Virgin Islands.
My argument never changes. All that changes is the increasing familiarity
of Britons with violent crime. Mr Monckton was a cousin by marriage of The
Sunday Telegraph's Dominic Lawson, who is leading a campaign to allow
citizens to defend themselves in their own homes.
That this most basic right should be something for which he has to
organise a campaign is disgraceful. In New Hampshire, there are few
burglaries because there's a high rate of gun ownership. Getting your head
blown off for a $70 TV set isn't worth it. Conversely, thanks to the
British police, burning the flesh of a London dressmaker to get her watch
is definitely worth it. In Chelsea the morning after Mr Monckton's murder,
Her Majesty's Keystone Konstabulary with all their state-of-the-art toys
had sealed off the street in an almost comical illustration of their
lavishly funded uselessness.
But let's look at it from their point of view. Suppose, instead of more of
these robberies going wrong, they went right. The homeowner cowered in the
bathroom, while the lads helped themselves to the DVD player and the
wife's jewellery, and then the coppers came round and took a statement and
advised you to get another half-dozen door chains and keep the jewellery
in a vault at the bank.
Is it reasonable to live like that? After some crime column or other last
year, I had a flurry of letters from American readers who'd been working
in Britain and had been astonished at the rate of "garden theft" - that's
to say, stuff the average American would never dream of lugging indoors
back home, but which, during his sojourn across the pond, had been
half-inched from the patio in the course of the night.
The British establishment's current complacent approach accepts that ever
greater and ever more violent crime is a fact of life, rather than a
historical aberration encouraged by the unprecedented constraints placed
on the law-abiding and the boundless licence extended to the criminal
class. That policy leads remorselessly to more deaths, and to lives lived
under small but ever more insidious and corrupting restrictions.
The Tories' big mistake was their failure to understand that "freedom"
isn't just about consumer choices or buying your council flat. It's also
about being free to defend your home - after all, you're there on the
scene and the West Midlands Police 24-Hour Crime Hotline answering machine
isn't.
And an assertive citizenry, confident in its freedoms and its
responsibilities, is a better bet for long-term survival than the passive
charges of the nanny state. If the Government declines to pay any heed to
The Sunday Telegraph campaign, and if the police persist in victimising
the victims of crime, then I hope we'll see widespread jury rebellion and
a refusal to convict.
The right to protect your family does not derive from any home secretary
or chief constable.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
<http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/>
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 07/12/2004)
One of the key measures of a society's health is how easily you can
insulate yourself from its underclass. In America, unless one resides in a
very small number of problematic inner-city quarters or wishes to make a
career in the drug trade, one will live a life blessedly untouched by
crime. In Britain, alas, it's the peculiar genius of Home Office policy to
have turned the entire country into one big, rundown, inner-city, no-go
slum estate, extending from prosperous suburbs to leafy villages, even
unto Upper Cheyne Row.
The murderers of John Monckton understood the logic of this policy better
than the lethargic overpaid British constabulary. An Englishman's home is
not his castle, but his dungeon and ever more so - window bars, window
locks, dead bolts, laser security, and no doubt biometricrecognition
garage doors, once the Blunkett national ID card goes into circulation.
All this high-tech protection, urged on the householder by Pc Plod, may
make your home more secure, but it makes you less so. From the burglar's
point of view, the more advanced and impregnable the alarm systems become,
the more it makes sense just to knock on the door and stab whoever
answers.
Mr Monckton's killers thus made an entirely rational choice. He was a
wealthy man, living in a prestigious neighbourhood of £3 million homes,
and he presumably had the best security system to go with it. But time it
right, get him to the front door, and the state-enforced impotence of the
homeowner makes him as vulnerable as any old loser in a decrepit
urine-sodden block on Broadwater Farm.
Various reassuring types, from police spokesmen to the Economist,
described the stabbing of the Moncktons as a "burglary gone wrong". If
only more burglaries could go right, they imply, this sort of thing
wouldn't happen.
But the trouble is that this kind of burglary - the kind most likely to go
"wrong" - is now the norm in Britain. In America, it's called a "hot"
burglary - a burglary that takes place when the homeowners are present -
or a "home invasion", which is a much more accurate term. Just over 10 per
cent of US burglaries are "hot" burglaries, and in my part of the world
it's statistically insignificant: there is virtually zero chance of a New
Hampshire home being broken into while the family are present. But in
England and Wales it's more than 50 per cent and climbing. Which is hardly
surprising given the police's petty, well-publicised pursuit of those
citizens who have the impertinence to resist criminals.
These days, even as he or she is being clobbered, the more thoughtful
British subject is usually keeping an eye (the one that hasn't been poked
out) on potential liability. Four years ago, Shirley Best, proprietor of
the Rolander Fashion emporium, whose clients include Zara Phillips, was
ironing some clothes when the proverbial two youths showed up. They
pressed the hot iron into her flesh, burning her badly, and then stole her
watch. "I was frightened to defend myself," said Miss Best. "I thought if
I did anything I would be arrested." There speaks the modern British crime
victim.
Her Majesty's Constabulary has metaphorically put a huge neon sign on
every suburban cul-de-sac advertising open season on property owners. If
you have a crime policy that makes "hot" burglaries routine, it's a
reasonable bet that more and more citizens will wind up beaten, stabbed or
dead.
I've been writing on this subject in The Telegraph for the best part of a
decade now and, to be honest, I might as well recycle the 1996 or 1997
column and spend the week in the Virgin Islands.
My argument never changes. All that changes is the increasing familiarity
of Britons with violent crime. Mr Monckton was a cousin by marriage of The
Sunday Telegraph's Dominic Lawson, who is leading a campaign to allow
citizens to defend themselves in their own homes.
That this most basic right should be something for which he has to
organise a campaign is disgraceful. In New Hampshire, there are few
burglaries because there's a high rate of gun ownership. Getting your head
blown off for a $70 TV set isn't worth it. Conversely, thanks to the
British police, burning the flesh of a London dressmaker to get her watch
is definitely worth it. In Chelsea the morning after Mr Monckton's murder,
Her Majesty's Keystone Konstabulary with all their state-of-the-art toys
had sealed off the street in an almost comical illustration of their
lavishly funded uselessness.
But let's look at it from their point of view. Suppose, instead of more of
these robberies going wrong, they went right. The homeowner cowered in the
bathroom, while the lads helped themselves to the DVD player and the
wife's jewellery, and then the coppers came round and took a statement and
advised you to get another half-dozen door chains and keep the jewellery
in a vault at the bank.
Is it reasonable to live like that? After some crime column or other last
year, I had a flurry of letters from American readers who'd been working
in Britain and had been astonished at the rate of "garden theft" - that's
to say, stuff the average American would never dream of lugging indoors
back home, but which, during his sojourn across the pond, had been
half-inched from the patio in the course of the night.
The British establishment's current complacent approach accepts that ever
greater and ever more violent crime is a fact of life, rather than a
historical aberration encouraged by the unprecedented constraints placed
on the law-abiding and the boundless licence extended to the criminal
class. That policy leads remorselessly to more deaths, and to lives lived
under small but ever more insidious and corrupting restrictions.
The Tories' big mistake was their failure to understand that "freedom"
isn't just about consumer choices or buying your council flat. It's also
about being free to defend your home - after all, you're there on the
scene and the West Midlands Police 24-Hour Crime Hotline answering machine
isn't.
And an assertive citizenry, confident in its freedoms and its
responsibilities, is a better bet for long-term survival than the passive
charges of the nanny state. If the Government declines to pay any heed to
The Sunday Telegraph campaign, and if the police persist in victimising
the victims of crime, then I hope we'll see widespread jury rebellion and
a refusal to convict.
The right to protect your family does not derive from any home secretary
or chief constable.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
<http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/>
