The Tory near-silence since the June 2001 election on crime was broken in a January 8 speech by Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin.
The Tory near-silence since the June 2001 election on crime was broken in a January 8 speech by Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin. In what was seen as an effort to take the Conservatives away from their traditional, tough punishment-based attitude towards crime, Mr Letwin called for a ?neighbourly society?. On January 8 he told Radio 4?s World At One programme that rather than look at the causes of crime, he wanted to look at what causes the opposite of crime. That would involve both taking serious criminals – ?drug dealers and Mr Bigs? – off the streets, thanks to high-level policing, as well as the creation of neighbourliness, so old people could open their doors without fear, and mothers could take their children to playgrounds, thanks to highly-active community policing. He called for the removal of the fear of crime in neighbourhoods, pointing out that crime was much more likely to be suffered by the poor – unemployed people and those on council estates. Mr Letwin, 45, MP for West Dorset since 1997, spoke of taking children off the ?conveyor belt of crime?. He denied that his policy was the same as the Blairite Labour ?tough on crime – tough on the causes of crime? slogan.
While the Conservatives have arguably been quiet on crime and home affairs since their June 7 landslide loss, the same could be said of any other area of policy as the Tories seek to regroup under new leader Iain Duncan Smith. Mr Duncan Smith touched on crime in a September 2001 speech to the Carlton Club Political Dining Committee. There he spoke of the need to combat the link between international crime and terrorism: ?In fact, during the 30 years of terrorism in Northern Ireland we have seen the development of a mafia subculture in which paramilitary organisations, both republican and so-called loyalist, make vast sums of money through racketeering, intimidation, petrol and cigarette smuggling and drugs. They gain a stranglehold over estates and districts and then take over the basic law and order functions of the police with their disgusting beatings, mutilations and shootings. And they allow the drug dealers the freedom to operate so long as those dealers give a cut of their earnings to the paramilitaries in order to be left alone.? See www.conservatives.com.
