[QUOTE=penance]Historically the slide started during world war 2. When most full time police had been called up and sent to shoot germans. This left a bunch of people who were considered unfit etc to go to war, they became corrupt police who didnt really care what was going on. That was the start of early UK gang culture, and youth gang culture.[/QUOTE] Well, no, not really. There were plenty of gangs around in the 20s/30s (see 'Brighton Rock' by Graham Greene, where the leader of one gang is 17 years old); no doubt many of these were drawn from WWI deserters etc. There's a fascinating series of letters between George Lyttelton (father of Humph) and Rupert Hart-Davies (father of Adam) mostly written in the late 50s/early 60s. Rupert H-D writes in one letter than the rot set in with the start of WWI, and Lyttelton replies that in his opinion it started after Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897) and the outbreak of the Boer War. William Donaldson's book 'Brewer's Guide to Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics' is useful background to the criminal history of 19th/20th century Britain.
