Member News
By Heidi Alexander MP - 8th November 2011
Heidi Alexander MP sets out the case to give the police power to order internet service providers to remove certain material which incites gang violence.
It's not easy speaking out against the worst excesses of the internet. Immediately you are faced with the charge of being illiberal, or of not understanding the nature of communications in the 21st century. But I find those charges rather easier to face than those from parents whose children's lives are being devastated by gangs; gangs that are promoting and glamorising their lifestyle online.
Parents in my South East London constituency don't understand why the police are powerless to pull down videos showing gang members waving knives around in broad daylight in a local car park. Neither do I. These videos are tantamount to recruitment adverts for gang membership, they increase the number of young people who are carrying knives “for protection” and they leave ordinary residents fearful on their own streets.
These videos are genuinely frightening. It's because of this that I am bringing forward a Bill to give the police, via the courts the power to order internet service providers to remove certain material which incites gang violence.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these sorts of videos on Youtube and sites such as SpiffTV. Type “Brixton gangs”, "Hackney gangs", "Lewisham gangs" into any online audio-visual search facility and you will find them. Not all of them contain images of knives but the narrative is the same – mess with us and we’ll stab you. These videos have been viewed tens of thousands of times each, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times.
Last week's government report into tackling gang violence scarcely mentioned the role of the internet at all. I find that astonishing when we know that it is increasingly central to the everyday lives of young people. It seems to me that the popularity and accessibility of the internet make it an inevitable way through which young people get caught up in the madness of youth violence, yet this government does not appear to have considered it at all. Add to this, the government’s decision to spend 5 times as much money on electing Police Commissioners as they are on tackling gangs and one can’t help but be left with the strong impression that government rhetoric and reality don’t match up.
At present, Youtube videos can be removed if enough viewers flag a video as inappropriate. This may be a start, but it is not enough. I believe the police should be given the power to get access to these videos blocked via the courts and internet service providers.
As it stands, there is a real danger that government leaves the need for an internet strategy to tackle gang crime (and indeed other forms of crime) in the “too difficult to tackle” box. It's simply not on. Gangs may not be a new phenomenon but the casualization of violence associated with them is. The speed and reach of the internet in propagating and glorifying that violence is something new too. We mustn’t ignore it and we must find a way to address it.
Heidi Alexander has been Labour MP for Lewisham East since 2010
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