Breed Hooliganism

Fiji’S Slums

Can

Suva, May 4.

SOONER or later, the conditions in Suva’s slum and semi-slum areas were bound to catch up with events. An indication that this is now happening to a limited extent has come in the form of a curious manifestation known as the “Snooker Gang.”

Public knowledge of this group was confined to a few assault cases at the Magistrate’s Court, in which the name of the “Snooker Gang” was mentioned. But in April a clash occurred between soldiers and mem bers of the gang.

This produced an official broad cast in a Fijian radio session in which, with what appears to have been a tactical and psychological blunder, the irresponsible young Fijians who comprise the so-called gang were elevated to the status of something approaching a national disaster that was bringing grave discredit on the entire Fijian race.

Educated Fijians who heard the broadcast, and Europeans who read an English translation in the weekly Guardian, for the most part re garded the emotional tone of the broadcast as a bad mistake. What ever the motives behind the “Snooker Gang”—and there is no evidence before the public that there are motives of any consequence— the only serious aspect of its public activities have been occasional ex hibitions of hooliganism, which police have promptly dealt with.

The “Snooker Gang” started out as a harmless group of young Fijians who met to play billiards or snooker, and who contributed on occasion to their own Christmas fund, or something of the sort, in the same way as other groups of all kinds of people get together.

Then the original group seems to have been augmented by less re sponsible elements, including un employed men. In consequence, some at least of the original mem bers moved out.

Some of the “incidents” —possibly most of them —have originated at dance-halls of the kind that have graduated a long way from the in nocuous Taralala places of pre-war days. Some truculent young men delierately looked for trouble and provoked it by behaviour of a kind common in dockland resorts in large ports overseas.

THIS sort of thing, like aggressive bad manners, is un-Fijian. It suggests either that alian tactics of this kind have been introduced from outside, or that the inspiration comes from low-grade American films and the pulp-magazine rubbish (sex, gangsters and the glorification of the tough) that flood some shops.

The root cause appears to be the drift to the towns, and the condi

tions that exist in the towns — worst of all at Suva.

We may not blame any young Fijian who is attracted from the monotonous routine of village life to the spacious allurments of Suva.

But, as low-wage workers or as “un employed,” many of these youths inevitably become the prey of slum influences.

And much the same thing applies to many who have been town dwellers most of their lives. The appalling overcrowding in tene ments, besides being a health menace, is a major force against home life. Suva provides very little in the way of recreation and enter tainment for low-wage workers of any race, and so the trouble over illicit liquor-drinking and the fairly

general abuse of liquor.

It may be contended that too much has been made of the appear ance of some sort of gang-element among people to whom such a de velopment is completely foreign.

Hooliganism is common enough among all races; but there is little doubt that in Suva—and to a lesser extent in other urban areas of Fiji —this development is being fostered by lamentable social conditions.

Two New Zealanders, Dennis Ryan and Ronald Helmer, have taken a 34-foot sloop across the Pacific in 42 days. They travelled via Hawaii and put in at Neah Bay, on the north-west tip of USA, early last month.