A new generation of socially-conservative black leaders must lead the fightback against London's growing epidemic of knife and gun crime. In an excellent comment piece in today's Standard, Lindsay Johns praises Shaun Bailey, Tory parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith and new deputy mayor Ray Lewis for rejecting the left-wing orthodoxies that have particularly damaged hard-pressed urban communities:
Both Lewis's and Bailey's conservative stance on the underlying causes of knife crime - the glaring lack of positive black male role models, the abrogation of parental responsibility and working-class over-reliance on the "benefits culture" - embodies views that, more than ever, we should heed...
...Working with young people in Peckham has convinced me that the liberal "softly, softly" approach achieves little, save disappointment and disillusionment, and actually engenders the opposite of respect.
