AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 100

Yes, to pursue a sober, searching and ruthless root cause analysis
after each particular event incident is essential. However, such an
exercise is very different from applying superficial sociology to
event crime in general – and very different, too, from brandishing
crime statistics in cavalier style.
5. ALCOHOL, DRUGS – AND GANGS
Historically, much prejudice has been mixed into the whirlpool of
British public opinion on alcohol. Once, it was felt that the changed
character of the workplace, in which workers had come to enjoy less
supervision and fewer disciplinary measures from employers than
before, made them ‘more constantly open to the temptations’ of pubs
(Philip Snowden MP, Socialism and the drink question, Independent
Labour Party, 1908, p66). In 2030, might a continued decline of
deference and a continued rise of social media make young people
more constantly open to the temptations of getting drunk or stoned
at clubs and music festivals?
The evidence hardly supports such a sweeping hypothesis. Going
beyond drink at clubs and festivals for a moment, take alcohol and
crime in London at night. There, it’s true that alcohol-related recorded
offences run at about 4.3 per cent of recorded offences at night, against
only 2.5 per cent during the day. Worse: at night, half or more of those
kinds of offences are violent. Yet for general recorded crime in London,
the proportion that is violent at night is the same between 6pm and
6am as it is in the day. In fact, only 43 per cent of recorded violent
crimes in London happen at night, against 57 per cent during the day.
Indeed as Chart 28 shows, in London between 2010/11 and 2017/18,
alcohol-related recorded offences fell by 51 per cent, from just under
30,000 to about 14,400.
That kind of decline shows the need for a sense of perspective
when considering events and alcohol. But right away, it must also
be noted that ‘alcohol-related crime’ is not a legal category. As a
catch-all phrase, it can cover every different kind of case in which
alcohol is alleged to have been involved: it doesn’t have the legal
status of, say, hate crime, but is certainly as amorphous, emotive
and debatable as that category.
For example, some authorities have it that alcohol ‘increases
vulnerability and leaves young people at serious risk of becoming
either a victim or a perpetrator of crime’. But what, exactly, is
vulnerability? Just how many event-goers are really vulnerable,
and just how much does vulnerability increase with alcohol? If the
Licensing Act rightly demands, of event organisers, stewardship of
alcohol use, common sense also tells us that personal character and
experience with alcohol in the past are key factors affecting conduct
with drink. And didn’t the 2012 Olympics remind us that most event-
goers, British or foreign, are pretty decent people most of the time?
In its latest report on adult drinking, the ONS suggests that, on
their most alcoholic day of the week, more young men exceed eight
units of alcohol than do older men, just as more young women go
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