Teachers’ leader urges thrashing of ‘young devils and louts’

A row of canes should hang in every police station ready for use on “young devils and louts,” a teachers’ trade union leader said in 1952.

Britain should stop wasting money on approved schools. Instead, a row of canes should hang in every police station ready for use on “young devils and louts,” said Mr. A. J. England, president of the Birmingham Association of the National Union of Teachers, last night.

“A shillingsworth of cane comes much cheaper than a pound a day, wasted at an approved school, and its application would do most criminals a world of good,” he told the association’s annual meeting in Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.

“Punishment by police canes would save public money, and it would make the victims of physical violence ‘feel better.’

“And,” added Mr. England, “we might find ourselves with some fine vacant buildings called approved schools which we could then use as secondary or grammar schools.”

We were in a financial crisis and too much public money was being wasted on felons.

“It is an evil state of affairs,” he said, “when the normal well-behaved child receives so little, and the young devil who tortures a little boy by burning him so badly that his leg has to be amputated, and the lout who coshes an old lady, get so much.”

As published in Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 February 1952.

Picture credit: Darrien

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