Listen to thisIt’s interesting to see that the Guardia Civil in the Balearics have invited British police to help patrol notorious districts in Ibiza and Magaluf. The proposal is partly about the UK police helping to enforce new laws, specifically regarding the drunken sexual and violent behaviour of British holidaymakers.
It’s to the credit of the localities that they’ve committed to these changes, risking lucrative revenue. Also, that they’ve targeted companies, many UK-based, who specialise in the kind of pub crawls that led to the infamous “mamading” incident in Magaluf last year, when an inebriated 18-year-old female was tricked into fellating 24 strangers for a “holiday” (a drink). However, I’ve long felt that curbing of tourist behaviour is only half the story – what also needs to change is the vindictive attitude of those who make sneering at a particular breed of British holidaymaker an annual national sport. I’m talking about the pungent whiff of snobbery directed towards the young British working class on holiday.
As a card-carrying old bat, mother of two, I’m not pretending that I’ve any interest in wild alcohol-fuelled holidays, or that I look upon scenes of youths lying unconscious in foreign streets with anything other than prissy pearl-clutching anxiety (“Hope someone is looking after them!”). However, what I refuse to feel is judgment.
Just as fit people have what they’d term “muscle memory”, I appear to have “hedonism memory”. I might not use my ghost muscles like I used to, but they still spring into action when, say, I feel I’m being encouraged to sneer at drunk holidaying Brits, not just by reporting in the media, but also by the sort of people who gloat over it.
When this happens, I have an image of middle-class folk salivating with Victorian glee at working-class “yoof” losing it. Convinced that these marauders are different to their own delightful progeny – not realising (naive, clueless fools) that many of their children are behaving similarly, albeit in different settings. Another non-realisation: that these “difficult times to be young” they’re always wailing about, on behalf of their own offspring, are also being experienced by those young people they’re smugly gawping at as they vomit on Mediterranean pavements.
I’ve noticed this time and again. While young people from the middle classes at least receive sympathy for their tougher reality, there is no such compassion or leeway afforded to their working-class counterparts. Why not? They’re under just as much pressure, probably more. Where these holidays are concerned, they’ve probably worked dead-end jobs, saving hard for their good time – if they want to get blotto, who could blame them?
As with the grotesque mamading incident, the true responsibility lies with the host districts and, specifically, those companies who cynically exploit the gullibility of young people, who’ve not yet learned how to handle intoxicants.
While some might raise issues of “free will” and “self-responsibility”, how much do these concepts register when you’re young, green and trashed? Certainly, the majority of these holidaymakers look young enough that it makes sense for companies to behave responsibly on their behalf.
It’s good, then, that this is now happening in places such as Magaluf – that, there at least, large groups of our young people will no longer be actively encouraged to make idiots of themselves and worse.
Even if some behave recklessly, it doesn’t mean that they should be mocked and dehumanised by censorious rubbernecking fellow Britons. They’re just young people making mistakes; same as it ever was. Before changes such as those made in Magaluf, this behaviour was facilitated by host districts and holiday companies who provided the drinking culture because they wanted their money.
So join the annual “sneer-a-thon”, if you must, but remember – those vomiting, scapegoated young tourists aren’t causing the problems alone.
Barbara Ellen
8 March 2015
