Policing the Borribles: conjunctural crisis and moral panic in children’s literature

ABSTRACT

Michael de Larrabeiti’s controversial series of novels for youth (published in 1975, 1981, and 1986) about the Borribles, children who grow feral and live in anarchic communities in London, were influential for the urban fantasy genre. The novels describe a fictional fantasy subculture but nevertheless engage with issues of the rise of a law-and-order society in the U.K. in the 1970s and police harassment of black youth. Drawing from the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the paper argues that the trilogy represents an imaginary political solution, grounded in anticapitalist, antiauthority, and antiracist ethics, to the conjunctural crisis of the 1970s and the rise of Thatcherism. The paper reads the structure of feeling of Borrible culture and argues how its narrative functions through a series of displacements to engage with racist police tactics, anarchist squats, and anticapitalist and antiwork ethics.

KEYWORDS:

• Subculture
• children’s literature
• cultural studies
• The Borribles
• Michael de Larrabeiti

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank John Clarke and Ted Striphas for their encouraging feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 The three novels are generally considered (reviewed and discussed) as children’s books. Today, the books would most likely be classified as YA (Young Adult). I encountered them in the mid-1980s in the main science fiction and fantasy section of a US bookstore. De Larrabeiti notes that when he had completed the manuscript of the first book: ‘I only knew one publisher personally in those days – Judy Taylor – who was in charge of children’s books at the Bodley Head; not that I was sure that The Borribles was a child’s book’ (2006, p. 170). From this we could conclude that the books were not necessarily explicitly intended to be children’s books and they can be read differently if considered inside that genre or outside. The first volume was nominated for the Whitbread award and the American Library Association named it one of the best books of 1978.

2 See the work of Neil Gaiman (especially Neverwhere) and China Miéville (see King Rat) – and Cory Doctorow cites the series as an influence. See also Gordon and Miéville (2003).

3 See Sands-O’Connor (2018); Baker (2015, 2017); Newsinger (1989); Zipes (1978, 2011); and a more brief mention in Le Lievre (2003).

4 A review of the first book in The Economist relates the book to a growing ‘culture of violence’ and ‘clockwork orangery’, but also notes that disturbing violence is ‘nothing new in children’s literature’ (Anon 1976, p. 89).

5 In the 1970s Battersea was beginning to be called ‘South Chelsea’ in reference to ongoing gentrification (Moran 2007, p. 113).

6 The letter is reproduced on Cory Doctorow’s blog on boingboing: https://boingboing.net/2014/01/16/the-borribles-are-back.html and also in de Larrabeiti (2006, pp. 219–220). In this case, it is the Borrible book itself which is being policed, not just the characters within it.

7 All page numbers from the Borrible books are from the single-volume Tor edition of 2003 for consistency.

8 Zipes (1978) references the Dickensian character of Dewdrop and Erbie.

9 The parody is pointed out by various popular sources, from the trilogy’s Wikipedia page (http://e.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borrible_Trilogy) to random blog posts (e.g., jamesdavisnicoli.com/review/way-down-on-old-chestnut-street) and Goodreads reviews.

10 Cf. Hall et al.’s discussion of Enoch Powell’s rhetoric (e.g. 1978, pp. 240–241).

11 Cf. Paul Corrigan’s (1976) description of the culture of street corner kids in Sunderland, characterized by ‘doing nothing’. ‘The major element in doing nothing is talking. Not the arcane discussion of the T.V. talk show, but recounting, exchanging stories which need never be true or real but which are as interesting as possible … talking not to communicate ideas, but to communicate the experience of talking’ (p. 103).

12 Cf. Dick Hebdige’s discussion of the mods, in terms of tactics rather than specific style: ‘the mods were more subtle and subdued in appearance … . The mods invented a style which enabled them to negotiate smoothly between school, work and leisure, and which concealed as much as it stated’ (1979, p. 52). He quotes Dave Laing as stating ‘there was something in the way they moved which adults couldn't make out’ (1979).

13 See, e.g. McRobbie and Garber (1976).

14 Hall et al. speak of a political strategy of ‘the construction of a West Indian enclave community – the birth of a colony society’, a ‘defensive space’ with ‘internal cultural cohesiveness and solidarity’ which offers ‘a new range of survival strategies within the black community’ (1978, p. 351).

15 On the history of the SPG, see Rollo (1980), and for broader context see Hall (1981) and Gilroy (1982, 1992).

16 Compare Sussworth’s rhetoric with the historical figure of James Anderton, the controversial Chief Constable of Greater Manchester in the 1970s and 1980s who harangued against ‘social nonconformists, malingerers, idlers, parasites, spongers, frauds, cheats, and unrepentant criminals’ (quoted in Jenkins 1992, p. 40). He wrote:

Crime, public disorder, violence and vandalism are like bursting boils on the skin of life. They will remain until such time as we rid ourselves of the poison which causes them. We must make sure that good triumphs over evil otherwise the present crime wave will continue to take its relentless toll of helpless and innocent victims. (Quoted in Kettle 1980, p. 49)

The primary targets of Anderton’s moral crusade, however, were pornography, homosexuality, and drinking (see Kettle 1980).

17 On Squatting as lifestyle politics, see Reeve (2005).

18 Sussworth fantasizes, for instance, of capturing the Borribles, starving them for a few days, and then when they are ravenous, feeding them the remains of their horse, Sam (de Larrabeiti 2003, pp. 528–529).

19 There are productive comparisons that could be made of the Borribles with black immigrant youth. In the 1970s, within the context of the ‘substantial size of black youth unemployment’ (Hall et al. 1978, p. 329), there are incidences of refusal to work as a political strategy, though often as a statement against structural racism in the instances of refusing to work for ‘The Man’ (p. 353) rather than necessarily an entirely anticapitalist stance, though they could be read that way (p. 370). Squatting was also a strategy of some black youth because of unemployment and the lack of affordable housing (p. 345). Finally, there was ‘the possibility of modes of survival alternative to the respectable route of hard labour and low wages: above all, that range of informal dealing, semi-legal practices, rackets and small-time crime classically known in all ghetto life as hustling’ (p. 351, emphasis in original). While there are parallels between the Borrible means of making do and hustling, the latter often entailed a certain style and visibility and essentially revolved around money (and often vice) and the Borribles’ lifestyle did not. Ultimately, the black underclass is profoundly affected by the rhythms of capitalism (as well as structural racism) while Borribles are abstracted outside of these rhythms.

20 Alexander Vasudevan writes that ‘the squat was a place of collective world-making’ (emphasis in original; 2017).