I spend a lot of time in my local Waitrose because I find it relaxing, even if I don’t buy much.
It’s a kind of temple to soft British capitalism – that benign, eccentric mix of relatively high-quality food whose chemicals and packaging are kept in check by countless regulations, while the prices, no matter how high, feel like nothing compared to Whole Foods or something like that. American luxury chain.
I love to dabble in the intersection of luxury and convenience. Little did I know I wanted a new crab and scallop mixture in a large bowl, ready to eat; a watercress-infused tzatziki, a large glass cup with a bee motif? No: but now that I know it exists, it just might turn out to be true!
“What will they think of next?” I often mutter internally, as I happily stroll among the pomegranate syrups and rose-harissa pastes.
But increasingly, this is a store whose charm seems to belong to an era when Britons didn’t have to do their shopping under the watchful eyes of ubiquitous cameras and security guards.
A period when we didn’t expect criminals to regularly storm into stores and steal the most expensive things they could get their hands on, like spirits and wine. A period in which the common decency that governed daily life seemed to be disturbed so rarely that most customers could remain unaware of transgressions for years.
An era that is now apparently long gone. Last week, Lucy Brown, director of central operations and security at the John Lewis partnership, said bluntly that rising shoplifting rates are not, as bleeding heart types insist, about the cost of living. “I don’t see that,” she said. “I describe it as absolute greed, not necessity.”
“There are a lot of people, they steal as many hours a week as I work, and that’s a lot. It’s actually their profession.
You get organized gangs. . . They will strip the planks. . . They do that for resale.” Other thieves do it to finance various addictions.
Brown stands out for her candid assessment. Pointing out the clear moral decay of society and the proliferation of bad actors, rather than blaming a harsh and cruel social system, evil Tories in Westminster, or inequality, is deeply unpopular. This is not surprising; granting people moral agency and responsibility for their actions is contrary to the basic worldview of the wokerati. But “greed, not need” seems like exactly the right line to me.
More than once I have been in Waitrose, poring over the latest nut tin, and heard a mighty scuffle, shouting guards and alarms.
Employees at the alcohol department (next to the nut aisle) tell me that today’s gangs don’t even pretend to need the basics. They walk straight to the most expensive drink, take and run in coordinated grabs. They show no fear, no shame, no interest in the consequences (convinced that there will be none).
The staff are not trained in combat or self-defense techniques, so don’t feel inclined to intervene too extensively, which is understandable. It is not safe for them to do this.
It is astonishing that the profession of Waitrose floor worker has now apparently become one of the most dangerous, crime-related jobs on the high street.
How did this happen? It seems clear to me: a combination of general cultural decay and progressive good intentions that are backfiring – visible in the excessive leniency of the legal system and the police – has produced a new generation of dead-eyed young people, people who can only be seen as morally feral. can describe. .
As conceited as it sounds, the fact is that when gang violence spills into Waitrose and M&S, something has gone seriously wrong. This is not because Waitrose shoppers are more deserving of the peace of well-governed law and order than Tesco and Asda shoppers, but because it demonstrates the vast expansion of rank and file and violent crime.
To see where things are going, we can look to the Co-op, which has outposts in communities across Britain. As its own web pages indicate, the company has spent “more than £200 million” on security in recent years.
Several strenuous, upbeat texts describe the installation of ‘intelligent’ CCTV, Smart Water ‘fog systems’ to deceive thieves looking for the exit, reinforced kiosks, a system called MySafety that allows staff to report crime from their own devices and on body worn cameras.
Despite this, the Co-operative said in April that incidents of shoplifting, abuse, violence and anti-social behavior had increased by 44 per cent in 2023 compared to 2022, to around 1,000 per day.
Unless Labor is capable of a transformation of British law and order, which seems extremely unlikely, we will go the way of shops on America’s west coast, with everything from bottled water to toothpaste locked in cupboards, requiring staff to get them out to get. .
It’s a sad and bizarre thought; orange juice and toilet roll chained to the shelves of Waitrose.
It’s also sad that more and more electronic eyes will be needed to keep an eye on shoppers – not because I find it intrusive, but because it reminds us of how completely the social contract seems to have been broken.
This weakening of morality is a broader problem of youth culture. City residents have become accustomed to a sense of distress in the area, with knife crime seemingly spiraling out of control. But it is the complete lack of remorse shown by the killers in the dock that sends shivers down the spine and speaks to the difficulties we will soon face.
Tackling crime is one thing; Convincing Britain’s new wild youth to grow up is something else entirely, and much trickier.