Council estate decline spawns new underclass

 

According to the Observer dated Sunday November 30th 2003, a report on the spiraling crisis in Britain's inner cities, where jobless youngsters are locked into a cycle of deprivation and drug abuse, and government initiatives bring little hope...

Here is a short story of a five year old boy who lived on a rough council estate called Clyde court, Leeds.

A five year old boy in a ripped coat and dirty trousers hammered on the door of his council estate flat at 11pm. 'Come on you smack heads' he shouted to his parents inside. 'I know what you're doing'.

By the boy's feet sat a plastic bag with bread and milk. The only shop open at that time is on the opposite side of a busy motorway which took 25 minutes to walk. According to the neighbours, it is a journey that the child regularly makes on his own at different times of the night.

'Unless someone rescues that wee kiddie and gives him a second chance, he's doomed' said a neighbour who has lived on Clyde court housing estate in Leeds for 17 years. She is so afraid of her neighbours that she wished to stay anonymous.

On the estate where deprivation and violence are commonplace, the boy's bleak, hopeless life is the norm and, if he takes his ambitions from those around him, his life chances are near zero.

In a few years he could seek to emulate to a 12 year old local boy recently arrested from the estate for the fifty fifth time. He has already been given up as lost by his mother, his school and the local council.

This 12 year old boy in turn has little to model his life on except the family living around the corner, three of whose four children are heroin addicts including the youngest, who had an abortion at the age of 11.

The only child in this family that are not using heroin is a 16 year old girl who has had a child last year with a local lad. The baby has never seen its father; he was arrested for drug dealing before his son's birth.

Two weeks ago, the local newsagent was robbed by a 14 year old boy high on drugs, weilding a butcher's knife and a plank of wood spiked with nails. The local church has barricaded its windows and surrounded itself with razor wire.

Looming at the heart of the estate is the residents' apex of fear; the 16th floor Clyde court tower block where bloodied tissues lie in pools of urine and tinfoil stained with crack drifts around the stairwell like autumn leaves.

The block is a favourite with the local youths, who have stripped it of every piece of metal down to the lift call buttons. They attatch used syringes with their needles exposed to the underside of the banisters, and throw shopping trolleys from the roof heedless of anyone walking below.

Clyde court is a terrible place to live. Over the past decade, employment growth in Leeds has been three times the regional average but, in the underworld of Clyde court, daily life is still raw with social deprivation.

There are around six million people living in council estates in Britain, many in properties that are run down, isolated and abandoned.

Thanks to Kelly Leonard for this article