The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services [NCVYS] has launched a campaign, ‘Not in My Name’. In a circular to its members on Wednesday, August 10, it announced,

We are today launching an e-campaign through twitter and facebook. We are calling for young people to upload messages of support showing that not all young people have been involved in the violence. Please encourage young people who work with your organisation to send in photos holding a sign that reads #notinmyname. We are using this to build positive momentum at a time of significant negativity and unease across our communities. We hope these images will circulate across social media networks and through this make an impact.

Please ask young people to email these photos to mail@ncvys.org.uk along with their first name, age and any positive statements about youth or their work with communities. You can view the gallery here. If young people would like to take the photos with the logo of their organisation on the sign or in the background, we’d positively welcome this. Photos can also be tweeted to @ncvys and please use the hashtag #notinmyname when you are tweeting.

On Facebook the inevitably self-conscious photos are appearing. On Twitter the self-congratulatory back-slapping is in full swing. How could anyone object to this virtual equivalent of turning up for a post-riot clean-up with a bucket and broom, of showing how young people care, of showing that most young people are not like the hooded feral minority? Well, for what it’s worth, I, for one, am not so keen. Of course I’m conscious we are engulfed in a tide of populist outrage that refuses even to think about cause and explanation. But I expect a youth organisation with the rich history of NCVYS to resist being drawn into its simplistic embrace. The ‘Not in My Name’ initiative is divisive and dualist. In its eyes young people are either good or bad. It paints a picture of deserving and undeserving youth. At best it is naive and ill thought through. At worst it is cynical and manipulative. Above all, in this context, it is an abdication from the fundamental principles of youth work.

We do not collaborate with the creation of yet more folk devils – in this case ‘the hooded feral yobs’ – and we do not draw young people themselves into this process of reactionary stereotyping.We refuse generalisations about young people’s motives and behaviour. We know that truly understanding an individual young person demands a sense of their circumstances, sensitive conversation, time, patience and an open mind. It is an approach not that far from what Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard’. And it is an approach that creates the best conditions for a challenging and critical relationship with a young person. Over the years I have related to young people, written off by schools, social services, the police as beyond the pale. Without doubt, on occasions, I failed miserably to build a bridge, but in the majority of cases I discovered a young person much more complex and contradictory than the popular or official version allowed. I have no doubt that the same applies to those now being vilified and categorised. This is not a time to be abandoning our belief in and optimism about all young people. Of course, sometimes we”ll get it wrong, but our starting point must be one of ‘thinking the best, not thinking the worst’.

In an earlier version of these thoughts I started to talk about anti-social behaviour, including my own and that of our politicians, but I will leave this to another day. Thus I will make one last obvious point. The campaign, ‘Not in My Name’ doesn’t make sense on its own terms. Clearly it implies that a group has been claiming to speak ‘in your name’ and that you wish to disassociate yourself from their pronouncements. The reality is that those rioting have made no claim to be speaking for anyone. Indeed they have been criticised and chastised for not having a collective political agenda. The ‘Revolutionary Association of Young Looters’ does not exist and has consequently not pinned its manifesto of demands to the smashed door of Lidl. Although, if it did emerge, it would undoubtedly have ‘end police harassment’ at the top of its list. As far as the looting goes, the rioters have been most influenced by neo-liberal’s ideology of ‘possessive individualism’ and ‘conspicuous consumption’. For the most part, in tune with the times and learning from the political class itself, they have been looking after themselves.

The ‘Not in My Name’ campaign is utterly at odds with the history and traditions of our work. I would ask the young people to think afresh about what they are doing. I would ask NCVYS to recognise its error. We need to be in dialogue with the young people, who were on the streets, not consigning them to the dust-bin of prejudice.

TT

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Since our criticism first appeared we have discovered this excellent blog by Seema Chandwani, Checking Reality, where in a wide-ranging piece, England’s Riots – A Mars Invasion, she takes NCVYS to account

It is disheartening to see organisations such as the NCVYS promoting a campaign encouraging young people to claim these riots were “not in our name”, with organisations such as this that should be promoting the voice of all young people and requesting the fairness of opportunities for all young people, they have disappointingly chosen to excluded a group of young people already excluded by mainstream structures, furthermore they are encouraging a division within young people that will possibly manifest to adulthood where such “them and us” elitist attitudes will be alive for another generation. It is also a shame that such organisations have not used basic youth work tools such as reflection to question how they are able to engage those positive young people to begin with, maybe if so many voluntary and statutory organisations who work with young people did not face such drastic cuts to its services we would have positively engaged more young people and there would have been less on the streets smashing windows. If organisations like NCVYS had to make a statement, it should have made one that had not contradicted many youth work values of non judgemental practices, empowerment, equality, education and participation.

Carrying through her critique,  Seema posted her opposition directly on to the NCVYS Facebook. It has now been deleted without explanation.  And here we are thinking youth work is about open and critical dialogue. The founders of the NCVYS will be turning in their graves!