How social apathy destroys civilisation

On 14th February 1929 in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood on Chicago’s North Side, seven members of a rival Gang were shot by members of Al Capone’s organisation. The killing took place in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street, and became known as the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. The massacre was thought to be Capone’s revenge for an attack on him by Bugs Moran’s North Side outfit. Nobody was ever brought to trial for the crime.

On 9 March 1966, London mobster George Cornell and his friend Albie Woods entered the saloon bar of The Blind Beggar pub in the East End, ordered some light ales and then sat upon stools next to the bar. At around 8:30pm, both men were approached by Ronnie Kray; on seeing him, Cornell sneered, “Look who’s here”. Kray walked towards Cornell, took out a 9 mm Luger, and calmly shot him once in the forehead, just above his right eye*. Cornell was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died at around 3:30 a.m. Although Ronnie Kray was identified by several eyewitnesses as he calmly left the public house, no one would agree to testify against him, and the police were forced to release him from custody.

What ties these two events together is not gangsterism, but the public reaction to them. Although the Capone mob and the Kray twins walked free, the populace was outraged in both cases. Eliot Ness and the Untouchables were immediately ordered to focus on gaining tax evasion evidence against Capone, while ‘Nipper’ Read of Scotland Yard was given carte blanche to get the Krays behind bars for good. Within two years of each event, all three men were in jail. Their power had been obliterated forever.

Today we talk airily about crooked bankers, élite paedophiles, corrupting media owners, political Party donors, bent coppers and ISPs “getting away with murder”. We refer to Sovereign governments and their agents stealing private funds “in broad daylight”. These terms are largely metaphorical, but in some cases the meaning is literal. Drug Lords kill people by the hundreds and bribe public officials by the thousand, but the involvement of Lord Green’s HSBC in laundering their criminal gains was punished by a fine. Nobody went to jail. In the US, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp faces potential Federal action against two of its subsidiaries for espionage and harassment carried out against rivals on a scale no smaller than the protection rackets operated by Al Capone’s Chicago mob in the 1920s. Two former British MPs and a prominent Peer remain seemingly immune from arrest in relation to appallingly depraved child abuse histories that would’ve appalled even Capone. There are more witnesses to, and testimony about, their crimes than Nipper Read had against Ronnie Kray’s murder of George Cornell. None of them have even been questioned by police. Stephen Hester’s RBS has effectively pleaded guilty to 1500 counts of blatant fraud against SMEs. Hester left the bank earlier this year a rich man devoid of any fear of prosecution. The bank simply announced it would “set aside” funds to pay the fines.

Even in Italy, they seem to be able to find a crook like Berlusconi guilty and send him to jail. But when the London Mayor and his chum Tim Yeo MP openly bend a report about Taxi emissions in their own favour, not a single collar is felt.

In the light of these entirely justified comparisons, it is disgraceful bordering on idiotic for our legislators to say that it’s all “rumour and innuendo”. And it is equally incredible for everyone from Jeremy Hunt to the Daily Telegraph to pretend that the Rule of Law, and equality before it, are still being practised in the UK.

The simple truth is that in 2013 Britain, thousands of privileged criminals are more protected from the threat of prosecution than any Chicago mobster from the Roaring Twenties. And the public are no longer outraged about anything less than the hacking of a dead teenager’s mobile phone.

The difference between Wall Street in 2013 and Chicago’s North Side in 1929 is that Goldman Sachs can do anything it likes, whereas Al Capone couldn’t. The difference between the City in 2011 and the East End in 1966 is that Bob Diamond could do anything he liked, but the Kray Twins couldn’t.

You can blame a politicised police force, writ-happy lawyers, self-protecting legislators – or simply the rapid decline of Western culture in the light of poor education and cruel media influences.

But the bottom line is that London in 2013 is far less ethical than the East End was in 1966. And Wall Street banking in 2013 is infinitely more amoral than syphilis-riddled Chicago murderers were in 1929. Our civilisations are dying before our eyes.

So the next time you walk on the other side and say “nothing to do with me”, remember that your response has everything to do with destroying the country you love.

And the next time you feel inclined to defend Lloyd Blankfein, Michael Fallon, Ed Balls, Grant Shapps, Mario Draghi and all the rest of the hoodlums running the place these days, try and grasp just how low we have sunk.

Next time, don’t vote for the tribal leaders who allowed all this to happen; instead, send them the sort of message that will make make them very, very afraid.

* Cornell’s ‘crime’ was to refer to Ronnie Kray as “that fat puff”. Years later, a member of the Twins’ gang was asked on television whether Ronnie had taken offence at the homosexual reference. “Not at all,” he told the interviewer, “Ronnie was openly gay. He was just a bit sensitive about his weight”.