For me, May 1982 was the beginning of a journey that would shape the rest of my life. Life at home was tough. Dad’s business was faltering. Mum would be fretting about the safety of my older brothers in a part of London renowned for being tough. she was convinced I could be a singer. She’d tell me I would become the black Aled Jones. My priest, who would hear me sing in the choir each week, was convinced as well.
That day I would audition, successfully as it turned out, to become a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral and a border at the nearby Kings School. I woke up feeling excited about the adventure of a train ride out of London. if Walthamstow market seemed like a great day out, Peterborough was like another planet.
It was not until much later in my teens did I come to appreciate how lucky I was. during the holidays I’d come home to my friends swapping stories about being turned down for jobs, or not allowed to date someone’s daughter, just because of the colour of their skin. their voices would be laced with venom when they talked about being stopped and searched by the police. Whereas I’d be subject to chiding about my mother’s West Indian accent at parent evenings or being called a “coon”, it felt irrelevant to the perfect storm of racism, recession and repression that my friends experienced. many spent spells in prison, most found it difficult to find any sort of steady job, even to this day. the 1980s were tough for most of Britain, but nowhere more so than Tottenham. without music, the ambition of a priest and a doting mother, there’s no saying I would have turned out much different.
Although I was a chorister, I wouldn’t spend much time listening to choral music. by my late teens, it was NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) that provided the soundtrack of my journey to adulthood. I first picked it up one long summer in Tottenham but I came back to Peterborough to find my schoolmates had it on their walkmans too. I can still remember the shrill voices on both sides of the Atlantic fretting over the sexual content and violent lyrics.
Gangsta Gangsta featured the lines “I gotta shotgun, and here’s the plot / taking niggaz out with a flurry of buckshots… life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”. But the lyrics couldn’t describe scenes any further from the lives of my friends in Peterborough. They’d never seen a gun. They’d never even drawn a look of suspicion from a police officer, let alone been stopped and searched. But that didn’t stop them listening (or my teachers caring). Gangsta rap for them their escapism from their “dull”, sheltered middle class lives to the “glamorous” world of the South Central Los Angeles.
NWA split up not long after I had left King’s but this form of aggressive rap music lived on. Today, Giggs is rapping “And I don’t care if I ain’t got a strap on me / if I got a knife, im’a push apart skin… I got no time to put my sperm in a bitch”. Charming. But my opinion hasn’t changed. I still don’t believe that every young boy that listens to Giggs immediately wants to pick up a knife. “Edgy” music has always formed the cornerstone to any teenage rebellion. Most indulge in it precisely because adults like me don’t like them doing so.
But when I hear those lyrics blaring out of the mobile phones of school kids from the back of the 41 bus, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable. the diet of hate, misogyny and violence feels too close to the bone in Tottenham. when you live in a world where guns, knives, gangs and drug-pedalling are a fact of life, the lyrics stop being about fantasy and escapism. Rather, it is propaganda. this music disseminates a message that demands instant gratification. Success and respect must be immediate. You are only respected insofar as you are feared. You are only worth as much as the brands you wear. the music reinforces the idea that life is rigged against you, that you’ll never succeed through hard work so you shouldn’t bother. Trying to overcome it is not only futile, but a “betrayal” of your roots.
These boys are vulnerable. There is nothing to counterbalance the worldview of the music coming through their headphones because Peckham isn’t Peterborough and Tottenham isn’t Tonbridge. they are brought up in a world permeated by hopelessness. few of their contemporaries are in work or go on to University. many end up in prison or on the dole. It is a parochial existence too. many will never leave their estate, let alone their borough. the narrow world they live in not only fuels postcode rivalries between local gangs but also lowers their horizons.
Worse still, many grow up with no positive male role model to speak of. one in four children in Britain are raised by a single parent. In the black Caribbean community, 59% of children are raised by lone mothers. Outside the family home, men in work can also be scarce. the recession has turned entire estates into reservoirs for the unemployed.
Even in 2011, one in four primary schools in England and Wales has no male teachers whatsoever. some young boys will reach their teens without ever coming into meaningful contact with a working male. this is not pop psychology; boys need role models. No one has ever taught them that the inability to delay gratification, the obsession with status symbols and a world view centred on the self are symbols not of manhood but immaturity.
We can’t ban Giggs rapping and the financial gloom and an inert government mean we can’t expect jobs in our inner cities. We can’t replace a good father either. But we can soften the blow. Too often the expectations are for schools to fill these vacuums but they are left with little time and even fewer resources. they can be helped. Boris Johnson can start by recruiting more mentors to inner city schools and not Latin tutors. Armies of city slickers already pitch up outside of schools to paint fences on their “corporate social responsibility” day when they should be inside meeting the pupils. We need to appeal to big-money philanthropists not just to open their chequebooks but their diaries too. our boys need to be confronted with success if they are to challenge the messages blaring through their headphones.
• David Lammy is the MP for Tottenham and the author of out of the Ashes: Britain after the Riots, published by Guardian Books at £9.99. To order a copy at the special price of £6.99, visit the Guardian Bookshop.
The Guardian Teacher Network has a number of resources about the riots of summer 2011. they include:
Thinking about the riots – a lesson plan from teacher Eugene Spiers about how to think critically about what happened and to try and draw some positive outcomes.
Turning something ordinary into something extraordinary – the Broom
A presentation for primary pupils by teacher Des Hegarty. this uses a simple narrative about a broom – with lots of points for discussion and engagement.
The Riots of Summer 2011 – a lesson from Go-Givers exploring many issues raised by the riots with help on how to resist peer pressure, develop empathy and debate the causes of the violence.
Riots v the Blitz – this presentation examines how communities can work together to help those around them.
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Do you have something you want to share with colleagues – a resource of your own and why it works well with your students, or perhaps a brilliant piece of good practice in teaching or whole school activity that you know about it? if so please get in touch. if you would like to blog on the Guardian Teacher Network please email emma.drury@guardian.co.uk and please don’t be shy about commenting on blogs on this page.
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2011/dec/29/david-lammy-role-models-mentors?newsfeed=truetag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2011/dec/29/david-lammy-role-models-mentors?newsfeed=trueThu, 29 Dec 2011 08:35:59 GMT”>Mentors not Latin tutors
With the Chelsea Flower Show just wrapping up in London, flowers have been on my mind — especially the one named after Helen Mirren, which must look great in a bikini. it seems there’s a new trend in travel called “Garden Tourism,” where people plan their vacations around flower shows and famous outdoor destinations. on the one hand, this sounds like the kind of thing my mom would decide was fun and drag us kids to, and we’d intone, “Ohhh, a flower. Oh, another flower. Oh, another flower,” ’til she grabbed us by the scruffs of our necks and threw us back into the car, resolving aloud never to try anything creative ever, ever again. on the other hand, it seems cities are changing the nature of these kinds of attractions so they’re more about eco-tourism, loving nature, and learning more about ecology, which sort of brings into question the wisdom of taking a plane to see one, but … anyway.
With the Chelsea Flower Show just wrapping up in London, flowers have been on my mind — especially the one named after Helen Mirren, which must look great in a bikini. it seems there’s a new trend in travel called “Garden Tourism,” where people plan their vacations around flower shows and famous outdoor destinations. On the one hand, this sounds like the kind of thing my mom would decide was fun and drag us kids to, and we’d intone, “Ohhh, a flower. oh, another flower. oh, another flower,” ’til she grabbed us by the scruffs of our necks and threw us back into the car, resolving aloud never to try anything creative ever, ever again. On the other hand, it seems cities are changing the nature of these kinds of attractions so they’re more about eco-tourism, loving nature, and learning more about ecology, which sort of brings into question the wisdom of taking a plane to see one, but … anyway.
