Crime, anti-social behaviour, class politics and the reconfiguration of the left

A post by Reuben at the Third Estate kicked off a long discussion (still continuing) on one of my posts, mainly between The New Centrist, standing to my right, and Schalom Libertad, standing to my left. I have one or two more things to add to the debate, but it prompted me to go back to some things I was reading in early 2009, which I'm linking to again, mainly from the sadly now boarded up Left Luggage and from the IWCA.

The IWCA do not see themselves as part of the left. In fact, the issue of crime and anti-social behaviour are precisely one of the topics on which they see the left as irrelevant and best abandoned.

These issues are at the top of my mind for reasons noted here: the surge of violent street crime in my area in 2010. Another reason they are in my mind is the hollowness of the nonsense most politicians are coming out with about this in the election campaign, especially the Tories' with their "Broken Britain" broken record (when surely if it's broken it was the Tories what broke it) and, in my local area, the Lib Dems, whose Lewisham mayoral candidate, Chris Maines, includes in his "six to fix" the fact that violent crime in Lewisham has risen, but has absolutely no serious strategy to deal with it.

Anyway, here are the links: Stressing the social in anti-social behaviour; Taking crime seriously; Thatcher’s children; The radicalism of action, not words; Dealing with the renegades;‘Society is indeed broken’—and we all know who broke it; The soul of man under neo-liberalism; Battle lines have been drawn.

I plan to return to this topic in the next few days, but I've written a little about it at these posts: Policing the G20 protests and Policing the miners' strike.