Neill Dunne, Merseyside Socialist Party
Being in my 40s, I can look back and remember the youth clubs I frequented with friends, while meeting new friends.
The basic joy of meeting up at the youth centres playing on computers, playing sports, and in a town like Kirkby – football. There was always football. Discos would be exciting too. Things that we possibly took for granted, assuming they’d be around forever: a safe space to socialise, and improve talents or learn new skills.
In boroughs like my own of Knowsley, these services have suffered a major decline in funding. Successive governments have cut youth services, then appear shocked at the rise of anti-social behaviour.
In Knowsley, in the past 20 years, 16 high schools with sixth forms, have become eight schools (seven of which are academies). This has heaped a massive burden on the budgets with PFI (private finance initiative) debts taking a big chunk of the council’s budgets.
Class sizes are bursting. This has left some kids behind, and if they have a behavioural problem they are ushered out of the borough to a school for ‘unruly kids’.
There was a time when schools handled kids better as they had the time and resources to devote to all kids, now they send them away to prove they can come back!
This decline in education in Knowsley is a reflection on attitudes to the youth of these poor areas, whether North or South, but when you add the many other crises families face today, the grim reality is clear.
Funding for youth services has been slashed since 2010. Austerity disproportionately hit working-class communities. The Tory-Lib Dem coalition had the idea to create a “Northern Powerhouse”, as Chancellor George Osborne once described it. We now know he, and the government, had zero substance or intention of following through with this plan. Cutting funding from essential youth services and cutting jobs was the real plan, with the following generations paying the price of attacks with a lack of a good education and a stable community.
Youth services that once provided stability and structure to kids in the evening or weekends are gone. And in their place, private companies that provide sports coaching or dancing at a substantial cost to families.
The football alone is a prickly subject when raised with the kids in Kirkby. What was once a free pastime, using local fields and cheap premises, has become closed off and herded into sports centres. This can cost around £100 for a single hour’s session! This is in a Knowsley council-built sports/leisure centre.
This normalisation of kids wandering the streets in gangs means, after school, being forced to find fun, entertainment, or a source of income. This problem may still have happened if youth services were still a fully funded institution, but it is very unlikely the anti-social behaviour would be as bad. It is worth pointing out that a safe space to socialise would give young people boundaries, playing games and sports would keep them off the streets. A youth worker would be an ear, a shoulder to cry on, offer advice they may not have had.
Fully funded youth services would provide a sensible distraction to the chaos on the housing estates. Teenagers self-esteem could improve by building confidence, taking part in leisure activities and sports, completing tasks individually or as a group.
Since 2010, schools in England have seen funding cut by £4.2 billion according to ActionNetwork.org. The YMCA adds to this: “Local authority funding for youth services has fallen by 76% in real terms over the past 14 years, amounting to a loss of about £1.3 billion altogether since 2010–11. In 2024–25 alone youth services spending by councils in England and Wales fell by [around] 10%, the largest annual reduction in almost a decade.”
Councils and pro-capitalist politicians have no right to wonder why antisocial behaviour or violent crime is on the rise. It is on the rise because of the decade and a half in which Labour councils have accepted and implemented Tory cuts instead of fighting for the funding and services we need. We need to take the wealth that is hoarded by the super-rich and put it to work improving our communities not the bank balances of a few.
