Shoplifting isn’t just theft, it is a symptom of a wider decline of London street life

Witnessing a group helping itself from a local shop added to feelings of pessimism and dismay about the social condition of the public realm

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My wife is better than I am at spotting them, stuffing packs of cheese, ham and whatever else inside their coats at our local Tesco Express and making off without paying. But this morning, I witnessed a shoplifting crew at work close up.

It was just before nine when I strolled into an aisle and saw a young male crouched down, shovelling snacks into a Sports Direct hold-all. He looked up and looked at me, looking at him.

In that eye contact moment I said something ineffectual like, “what are you doing?” As a sales assistant approached from behind, the kid got up and fled past me to the door.

Another male scarpered with him and it turned out there was a third. Staff members were dismayed, yet resigned: this kind of thing has become routine; they object, but daren’t risk trying to apprehend the thieves, fearing a violent response; they often don’t bother informing the police, because nothing is ever done. The shoplifters, in no great hurry, made off on bikes.

The increase in shoplifting, much of it, as on Lower Clapton Road E5 this morning, of the brazen grab-and-go variety, is a national phenomenon, affecting large chains and small shopkeepers alike. Keir Starmer highlighted the issue during the general election campaign, saying the Conservatives had deprioritised “low value” shoplifting in the context of ongoing police funding cuts. Wednesday’s King’s Speech, setting out the new government’s programme of legislation, is expected to address retail crime, including making assaults on shop workers a specific offence.

I hope good will come of this, and for a number of reasons. The cost to retail businesses is one of them, perhaps especially small independents less able than supermarket chains to absorb the financial losses – we don’t want prices rising still higher and corner shops going out of business.

My heart really goes out to shop workers. Those on the scene at Tesco Express, some of them familiar faces, were despairing and galled. The goods stolen weren’t theirs, their monetary value wasn’t taken from their pockets. But the young woman among them who showed me the shelves that had been emptied and the fridge pilfered for booze was vexed and exasperated. Previous raiders had kicked and shoved her. No one should face such dangers in their place of work.

And then there are the wider implications. The sense that shoplifting has become a quite casual form of criminality, something so much to be expected that it is in danger of becoming accepted too, is alarming and depressing. That includes the subtler forms. In another of my local shops, a popular mini-market, a woman was recently caught on in-house CCTV slipping bottles of wine into the folds of her clothing. Sharing the footage on a neighbourhood app, the proprietor revealed that she was a known and frequent customer.

The prevalence of such offending is, it seems to me, a particular manifestation of a larger malaise afflicting high street life. Other symptoms range from long-empty premises, to pavement clutter, to antisocial cycling to uncollected rubbish, to seeing the same people, day in, day out, begging for spare change, their continuing presence suggesting nothing much is being done to help them.

I don’t feel in any danger when on my local streets, though I know others, often the young, do. But each incident, such as today’s, and every fresh piece of evidence that things aren’t as they should be contributes to a demoralising sense of decline and decay, sapping the spirit and feeding fears about the future.

Shopping at my local Tesco is revealing in lots of ways: the mix of customers, the blend of stock, the items that kept out of reach or security tagged. There is often a little queue of customers who, as others self-serve with bank cards, wait to pay for their few items with cash – inequality and poverty in action.

Legislation may be part of the cure for endemic shoplifting, as might more money for the Met and for London’s boroughs, struggling alike to meet demands on their time and resources. And the phenomenon can also be seen as a related product of a pernicious erosion of social solidarity, of civic care and consideration. This too needs to be restored and revived if capital and country are to be repaired.