San Francisco’s shoplifting epidemic is shocking to behold. But we shouldn’t imagine that the same couldn’t happen here. In fact, we’re well on our way. According to the British Retail Consortium, theft from stores across 10 UK cities is up by 26%. More, “incidents of violence and abuse against retail employees have almost doubled on pre-pandemic levels.”

On Tuesday, Asda Chairman Stuart Rose told LBC that “theft is a big issue. It has become decriminalised. It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore.”

In the absence of an adequate response from the authorities, retailers are beginning to take defensive measures. For instance, home furnishings company Dunelm is now locking up duvets and pillow cases in cabinets; Waitrose is offering free coffees to police officers to increase their visibility; and Tesco plans to equip staff with body cameras. 

The “progressive” response to this phenomenon isn’t quite as deranged as it is in in the US. Nevertheless, British liberals have responded as expected. A piece in the Observer is typical. You’ll never guess, but apparently it’s all the Tories’ fault: “Starving your population and then ‘cracking down’ on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable.”

But as the writer ought to know, the issue here isn’t the desperate young mum hiding a few groceries in the pram. Nor is it the schoolboy pilfering the occasional bag of sweets. Rather, the real problem is blatant, organised and sometimes violent theft of higher value items. Criminals who never previously thought they could get away with it increasingly now do — thus presenting a material threat to retail as we know it. 

But instead of addressing the issue head-on, the writer blames the victim: “Once goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking.” How terribly irresponsible of them! On the other hand, perhaps the open display of goods isn’t just a convenience for customers, but instead the hallmark of a high trust society. 

In fact, modern shops are a minor miracle of civilisation: public spaces, stacked high with products from all over the world, that passing strangers may freely inspect and handle, but which aren’t looted by anyone who feels like it.

Surely, that’s something worth defending. But if you’d prefer to abandon retailers to their fate, then don’t moan when they do what it takes to survive. Some will close, of course, and others will move their operations online. Those who stay open will guard themselves and their stock behind plexiglass and electronic tags. And then there’s the hi-tech solution: the fully automated and completely cashless store, in which customers have to be authenticated to even get in. 

Remember that retail facilities like this already exist. One day, when they become the norm, we’ll remember what shops used to be like. Then, we’ll ask why no one stood up for them.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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Laws, Otto von Bismarck is supposed to have said, are like sausages: it is better not to see them being made. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 is more like a jamón ibérico: high-quality, indispensable, and left hanging to cure for two years. When it was passed in May 2023, the Act was responding to a widespread sense that something in higher education had gone badly wrong. Things are still badly wrong, and only now are some of the Act’s key proscriptions being implemented.

From the next academic year onwards, academic staff and external speakers will be able to report concerns to an independent regulator if their universities fail to protect free speech. Grounds for a complaint could include: if a talk by a controversial guest speaker is canceled; if it isn’t canceled, but gets drowned out anyway by student protesters obnoxiously banging pots and pans outside; or if universities make people swear loyalty to various political causes. If, then, such a complaint is upheld, the Office for Students — and its unimpeachably fair-minded “free speech tsar” Arif Ahmed — will now be empowered to fine universities up to £500,000. For a sector teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, that is not small change.

Why has it taken so long to get here? Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has been lukewarm on the Act from the start. Soon after taking office, she put it on ice and there was a moment when it seemed like the whole thing would be junked for good. She proceeded with the Act, which survived in a somewhat neutered form with the original statutory tort discarded.

The Act has, of course, met with hostility from the University and College Union, which is dominated by people of a certain political bent. That goes some way towards explaining Phillipson’s dilly-dallying. Universities are understandably nervous about the Act — partly because they fear the wrath of their unionized academics and Left-wing students, and partly because they now fear having to pay massive fines.

But fear might be what’s needed to ensure that universities uphold the law and, for that matter, their raison d’être as places for free inquiry and debate. The letter of the law has not been enough. In October 2024, a speech by Suella Braverman at her alma mater, the University of Cambridge, was canceled due to threats from a pro-Palestine group. Several universities, meanwhile, have taken out ill-conceived injunctions against student-led pro-Palestine encampments. Recently, the Durham Union — a relatively Right-wing outfit even by the standards of a relatively Right-wing university — was blocked on political grounds from having a stall at the freshers’ fair. A lot of pain might have been avoided without the two-year delay.

In such cases as these, it will not do to let universities mark their own homework. Many of these institutions have fallen for a kind of HR confidence trick, hoodwinked by the notion that the advice meted out by professional lanyards supersedes the common law of England, or even Acts of Parliament. Universities, like most institutions, are naturally risk-averse; in the past, this has caused them to kowtow to activist students, or allow the boundaries on speech to be drawn by their (no less politically assertive) administrative staff. It is good that there is an oversight body to ensure higher education does what it ought to, and it is good that such a body will finally be armed with its long-promised powers of execution and enforcement. The law on free speech at universities has to have a bite to it.

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Samuel Rubinstein is a writer and historian.

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