It appears there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of last year's riots in the UK. Labour politicians are calling for a walk-back on the UK's anti-smacking legislation. We in NZ should take note. If a peaceful petition where 80 percent of the electorate wanted Parliament to amend anti-smacking legislation so as to recognise the rights and responsibilities of parents had no effect, maybe a few riots should be the order of the day.
Where are those "Occupy" people when you need them? It might be very helpful if they would get serious and raise a decent riot.
This, from the Guardian.
Raising the controversial issue of smacking children is "necessary and right", a senior Labour MP has said, after he was criticised for suggesting working-class parents needed to be able to discipline their children without fear of prosecution.
David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, said the government should not impose how parents disciplined their children and said many families felt confused and disempowered by laws around punishing children. The row erupted after Lammy was accused of partly blaming last year's riots on parents' inability to smack their children in order punish them. He later said the riots could not be blamed on smacking, but that the issue needed to be tackled. "There are groups of people in this country who are confused by the law and we need to listen to those people," he told the Guardian. "There is a divide between professionals and parents who feel quite differently."
Lammy denied that supporting parents' right to physically punish their children in any way condoned violence or abuse against children. "It is up to parents to determine the way they want to help their children navigate boundaries and how they define right and wrong, it is not for the state to define that for them," he said. "The state is not there on the 15th floor of a tower block, where there may be drug dealers and violence and families may be struggling." He added: "This is not about abuse, not about hitting or about violence, and it certainly isn't about domestic violence."
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, weighed into the debate saying that the "benefit of the doubt" should be given to parents. "People do feel anxious about imposing discipline on their children, whether the law will support them," he told BBC Radio 5 live's Pienaar's Politics. "I think there ought to be some confirmation that the benefit of the doubt will always be given to parents in these matters and they should be seen as the natural figures of authority in this respect." This must not result in a "licence for physical abuse or for violence", he added.
Lammy said: "Initially I was sceptical about it, but after a while I really started to listen to what people were saying. There is a confusion about the law – people in my constituency think that smacking has been banned and their experience is of living in fear of social services turning up on their doorstep. Lots of middle-class people don't have that experience, they have never met social services in their lives and can't understand that fear."
Before 2004, parents were able to use "reasonable chastisement", with contentious cases decided by a judge. But the introduction of the Children's Act specified that parents were allowed to smack their offspring without causing the "reddening of the skin" and left decisions to social workers over whether or not parents had overstepped the mark.
In an interview with LBC Radio, the former education minister appeared to suggest that Labour's 2004 decision to tighten up the smacking law was partly to blame for last summer's riots, which erupted in his north London constituency. "Many of my constituents came up to me after the riots and blamed the Labour government, saying: 'You guys stopped us being able to smack our children'," he said. But he told the Guardian that had not been his intention. "It would be quite wrong to suggest that smacking or not smacking was in any way responsible for the riots," he said. "There were many, many issues examined by a range of reports including the Guardian and LSE."
In the BBC interview Lammy admitted to "very occasionally" smacking his three- and five-year-old sons and said working-class parents should be able to physically discipline their children to prevent them from joining gangs and getting involved in knife crime. He said: "The law used to allow 'reasonable chastisement', but current legislation stops actions that lead to a reddening of the skin – which for a lot of my non-white residents isn't really an issue." Parents in Tottenham had to raise their children against the background "with knives, gangs and the dangers of violent crime just outside the window", but "no longer feel sovereign in their own homes" because of the laws, he added.
Lammy said he had received many messages of support from across the country. "People are contacting me saying 'Thank goodness someone is talking about this, it is a real issue and I think you are right.'"
The MP said he had received criticism from professionals "largely liberal in bent" and from people who had suffered abuse and were worried about his comments. "I feel this is a very sensitive issue and it has to be dealt with in a calibrated and careful way. But talking about it is a necessary and right thing whatever the conclusion." . . . .
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