Gun evil the reborn child of austerity

GUN crime is on the rise again in Manchester.

Just when we thought it safe to walk the streets again, the familiar fear of getting caught in the crossfire has returned.

While attention has been focused on knife crime, there has been a creeping increase in shootings.

As we report today, from Moss Side to Hulme and towns around, the evil of drugs has spawned a fresh wave of gangrelated feuds.

Bullets have become the final reckoning in urban wars where there are no victors.

The city once earned the nickname Gunchester because the use of guns was rife.

It was compared to the mean streets of Baltimore in the TV series The Wire.

Then came the clean-up. Police targeted and took gang leaders out of circulation with the help of extra Government money and the Xcalibre operation.

But for six years in a row the use of guns has risen, with 74 shootings in the last year alone.

The return of “street justice” – tit-for-tat attacks, with bystanders as collateral damage, is now a haunting fear.

More police is not the only answer. Kids with little or no life chances often see nowhere else to turn but to the drug barons.

Cut after cut in the social fabric has brought despair.

And Manchester’s economic renaissance has served to sharpen the differences between rich and poor.

Jobs and opportunities and support services have been lost irretrievably under austerity.

It will take much, much more than the measures expected in this week’s Budget to address the problem and take gunfire off the streets.