Last updated 19:42, Thursday, 19 June 2008

YOUNG people must have rights and must be respected too.

That was the heading on a letter published in our paper last week. It was written by Ashley Tiffen of Cockermouth, and it made sense.

The author said it would be easy to read newspapers and watch TV and believe that every young person was carrying a knife and up to no good.

It is a fact. We’ve become a nation of people who are terrified of our kids. I guess it is understandable, in some ways. We must be concerned that so many of our children are dying from knife attacks.

But we tend to look back on the “good old days” and forget that sometimes they weren’t as good as we imagine.

I know that in the 50’s there were teddy boys; the “hoodies” of their day.

They used to hang around bus stations and other places and they never really did any harm, but people would walk across the road to avoid them.

I remember being quite frightened of teddy boys as a very young child because I was told that they put razor blades on playground slides!

Later we had the punks and body piercing, and you would be inclined to cross town to avoid a skinhead.

The fact is that some kids today are crazy or disruptive or violent. And so were some of the skinheads and punks and teddy boys.

But the vast majority were kids just trying to make a statement - trying to stamp their own identity.

Most of them, piercings and all, would go home at nights and eat meals with the families, kiss mum goodnight and love their nan.

Ashley Tiffen’s letter was referring to the Cockermouth dispersal order which is designed to stop anti-social behaviour on the town’s Main Street. The writer said that young people had rights and should not be just pushed off the street.

I don’t know how Cockermouth police operate their dispersal order, so I can’t comment.

But I have seen the one in Maryport in action and I have seen the public reaction to it.

Police, from the beginning, said they would move anyone who was causing a problem off Senhouse Street, Maryport’s main shopping centre.

A PCSO attended a Maryport town council meeting the other night and was challenged about that dispersal order.

There were some valid concerns expressed including a worry that moving public nuisances from one area would just send the problems to somewhere else in town.

But the one thing I noticed was how many councillors thought the scheme was failing. The reason was that they had all seen young people on Senhouse Street on their way to the council meeting that evening.

I also went up Senhouse Street that night. I did see a group of kids standing talking outside a shop.

They were not being loud, they weren’t even pushing or shoving.

Further up the road there were two girls walking into a doorway and looking as though they were going to settle down for a chat. A other few kids and adults were walking along the street.

But not one of these young people was doing anything that could be construed as being anti-social. The police had no grounds to move them.

I have had lots of informal chats with the community PCs in Maryport and I am always gratified by how many of them really care about what happens to our young folk.

I have been told many times, by them and their bosses, that the dispersal order is a tool to stop anti-social behaviour but will never be used to move people on who are behaving in a non-threatening, law abiding way.

I am sure that in Cockermouth, too, the police to have a genuine heart for the kids.

Often, though, the police find themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

They are criticised for doing nothing when there is really nothing to do.

We need to celebrate our kids. We need to value them and that may help them to value themselves.

We have to stop thinking that anyone under 25 is an enemy and that all young people are out to get us.

They are, after all, the future of our country.