MARY WAKEFIELD
Who dares face down the teenage gangsters?
A gang from one of the surrounding
estates arrived in our local park last sum-
mer. It became their base. They appeared
each day as the light was lengthening, most-
ly black boys, some white, no girls and quite
different from a non-gang group of kids.
They smoked dope, dealt drugs, heckled pas-
sers-by and every now and then little flurries
of violence would break out among them.
The park warden found knives in the
bushes, and when he tried to confront them,
he said, they threatened to kill him. At first
they kept to a corner by the wall but, as the
summer wore, on they became bolder and
moved into the middle of the park, on to the
benches by one of the gates. They sprawled
across the path, making it clear who ownedthe joint. The under-fives football club, hold-
ing hands with their dads, walked in a wide
circle to avoid them. Ladies with prams kept
off the path and bumped along the grass.
My husband, jogging along one lovely even-
ing, saw one young gangster chase anoth-
er across the park, and stab him in the leg.
When police arrived, they arrested the vic-
tim because he’d stabbed another boy first.
One of the best books by the science-
fantasy writer China Miéville is The City and
the City, in which two separate communities
co-exist in the same town without ever
acknowledging each other’s existence. Oneset of citizens is taught to tune out the other,
to ‘unsee’ them. Only in various agreed loca-
tions are they allowed to admit they’re aware
of each other. When the gang moved in, the
park became that agreed location for the
unseeing tribes of N1.
Normally, we live in bubbles. Young
hip sters have eyes only for each other, dog
walkers just for dogs. The melancholy bench
drinkers stare into their cans. Come Sep-
tember 2016, the gang had corralled us into
a functioning community. We whispered
under the cherry trees, shared ideas, tried to
decide what on earth to do.
The police would come if there was a
stabbing, but who could we call on to just
keep order — to reclaim our park? Who
could pull rank with the hoodies?
The parkie was frightened of knives; the
football dads were frightened of knives. ‘It’s
just not worth it,’ everyone said sadly. It
seemed surreal that in this affluent part of one
of the world’s most civilised cities, there was
nothing we could do to put the kids in their
place. After a lifelong hatred of surveillance,
I began to fantasise about CCTV. Maybe
drones, I thought, circling constantly over-
head uploading photos. In the end, only
winter and the rain solved the problem.
The gang arrived back in the park a few
weeks ago and they’re already bolder than
this time last year. They drive scooters across
the grass and shout at women. My sudden
panic last Thursday as I swung the baby was
that the boy would come to find me. If it
made him that cross to be told off, he’d be
spitting tacks that I set the police on him.
Being in a playground was no guarantee of
safety. There was a stabbing in a busy play-
ground just round the corner in the summer
of 2015. Last Saturday, in another part of
Islington, someone threw acid in the face of
a two-year-old in a pram.
In the end I called my husband, feeling
pathetic, and requested an escort home. He
arrived with a tennis racket to protect us.
Rackets vs machetes. Just as we were leav-
ing, laughing about my daft anxiety, a boy on
a scooter tore into the park on the far side,
followed by the usual gang on foot. Were
they looking for someone? Just to be safe,
I hid my face behind the head of the tennis
racket and we slunk off.T
he baby, unbothered by diesel fumes,
enjoys an outing down the main road
through London N1. Each passing
bus is marked by a fat and pointing finger:
‘There!’ On the way to our local park last
Thursday, we had just begun to cross the
road, pointing up at the green ‘walk’ man,
when a scooter tore straight through a red
light and cut across in front of the pram.
‘What the hell?!’ I shouted and raised an
angry hand.
To my surprise, instead of speeding off,
the driver jammed on his brakes and skidded
round to face me. He was a boy of about 15
or 16, black, slight, and snarling with fury.
He said: ‘You want to start? You really
wanna start this?’ The baby and I were mid-
road. The sun was bright on new tarmac,
the pedestrian light flashing a countdown:
10, 9, 8...
Only the gang kids behave in this jumpy
way, hyper-sensitive to disrespect. This was
one of them for sure. In winter, like mice, the
gangs go to ground. In springtime, in Isling-
ton, they come out to play, bringing with
them a seasonal wave of knife crime and the
ceaseless peacock-shriek of sirens.
Of course I didn’t want to ‘start’. Gang kids
carry blades, sometimes big ones. Last year
samurai swords were quite the thing, the year
before, machetes. Keep quiet and carry on.
And yet... I’ve recently been helping the
baby learn self-control. Don’t throw a fit,
Cedd, just because your biscuit’s finished.
This furious boy seemed familiar. A tod-
dler. Shouldn’t I stand up to him? Don’t we
have a duty, as adults, not to let children boss
us about? I flung my hand up again, indig-
nant: ‘You went through a red light. You
might have hurt the baby.’
This lack of respect was altogether too
much for the boy. He revved the engine of
his scooter and made as if to charge at us.
‘There!’ said the baby, excited. 3, 2, 1...
I fled, and ended up, as it happened, along-
side a police car with two of the usual
fatty puffs tucked inside. I knocked on the
window: ‘That boy went through a red light!’
Obligingly, they hit the siren and sped off
in pursuit and I sailed on, triumphant, to the
park. There! It was only when the baby was
squashed into its swing-seat, the adrenaline
draining away, that I began to worry.
The parkie was frightened of knives;
the football dads, too. ‘It’s just not
worth it,’ everyone said sadly‘I sentence you to two weeks at Center
Parcs in the middle of August, and may God
have mercy on your soul.’