Sandy 4 St Albans

Local residents in St Albans and the villages will resonate with today’s strong criticism by the chief inspector of constabulary  of the way that police in England and Wales deal with complaints of anti-social behaviour.

At the time of writing I have not seen his individual “report card” for Hertfordshire because it has not yet been posted on the HMIC website.  But I am constantly told of people’s frustration with the way that a small minority of young people make life miserable for others.

Last night I went with Catherine Barron, our dynamic candidate for Verulam ward, to a meeting at the British Legion in Verulam Road organised by residents of New England Street.  It had been called to discuss constant problems of vandalism, low level abuse and sometimes quite threatening behaviour by young people who congregate at “The Brickie”, the apparently pleasant sunken bowl of green space which lies between Mount Pleasant and Verulam Road.

Children and parents are sometimes put off from using the playspace, the language used by some of the offending young people is apparently appalling, and there is occasional disgusting graffiti.

It’s a story which is repeated across the UK on the basis of this morning’s Report.  Certainly I can vouch for similar problems in my own village.

There is a role here for parents and for schools.  But chiefly we need more police on the ground.  The local beat bobby and PCSO were both present last night – but they have a huge area to cover and they cannot work 24/7.

The Liberal Democrats are the only party to have costed plans for more police back on the beat – sadly the current public expenditure crisis means we have had to scale back our ambitions, but we still want to put a flag in the ground, that the public pays for the right to occupy their homes and streets and play areas without feeling vulnerable and threatened.

I joined CAMRA when I was at university in the 1970s and I remember campaigning for real beer in college bars.  I even printed the first real beer guide for Cambridgeshire.  Little did I know then that CAMRA had been founded in St Albans and that St Albans was to be such a mecca for beer drinkers.

So today I was pleased to make a special visit to St Albans-based CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) in Hatfield Road to sign the  Beer Drinkers’ and Pub Goers’ Charter.  The picture shows me with Emily Ryans and Jenni Hollis of CAMRA.

The CAMRA Charter champions well-run community pubs, the rebalancing of alcohol taxation to support beer and pubs, the reform of the beer tie to deliver a fair deal for consumers, and the role of well-run pubs as part of the solution to alcohol misuse.

Well-run pubs can be a bedrock of community life – they are part of the solution to the problem of alcohol misuse and not part of the problem.  They deserve our support.

Michael Foot was Labour leader when I first stood in St Albans.  In electoral terms he was a disaster, one opinion poll just before polling day even put the Liberal-SDP Alliance ahead of Labour, and in the event they limped in only a couple of points ahead.

His great parliamentary speeches preceded televising of Commons proceedings and although I worked in the House in the late 1970s, I never heard him speak in the Chamber.

But many years later I was a guest at the Fabian Society 100th Anniversary Dinner where then opposition leader Tony Blair and Peter Hain were supporting acts to Foot and Barbara Castle.  Blair and Hain made the staccato, verbless, soundbite speeches demanded by modern media.

Foot and Castle were a revelation to me.  Their oratory swooped and soared, great cadences, building sentence upon sentence.  It was like listening to great poets or medieval storytellers.  It was inspiring.

The only person I have heard come close in current times is Barack Obama – and even now the oratory is being crushed out of him by the weight of office.

We are going to need good narrative to take us through the blood, sweat, toil and tears of the next decade.  Perhaps we could relearn a thing or two from Michael Foot and his generation.