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The loss of bobbies on the beat is not the only problem. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
In the early hours of a recent Sunday morning, not far from my home in a cosy south London suburb, a fight broke out between a large group of males. Eyewitnesses say the assailants were armed with knives, and described a “war zone” outside their windows on the Wandsworth Road. What followed was all too familiar: machete-wielding youths running wild between the traffic; choppers whirring overhead; police cordons; forensic tents. In this latest episode of baffling violence, three young men were stabbed: two were hospitalised; the third lay dead in the street.
The incident was not unusual. Last year, 244 people were murdered with knives in Britain, an 8% jump from 2022. That’s shadowed by countless private tragedies. In August, two 12-year-old boys were convicted of killing Shawn Seesahai with a machete at a park in Wolverhampton. The 19 year old was struck with such force that the blade almost passed through his body.
Days earlier, 15-year-old Daejaun Campbell was stabbed to death with a zombie knife in the London suburb of Woolwich. Turning on the news recently, I saw Dr Olumide Wole-Madariola, whose son Malcolm was stabbed to death with a blade outside Clapham South tube station in November 2018. I remember the incident well: I passed the taped-up crime scene a few hours after the tragedy.
Our country, in short, is suffering a plague, an orgy, of knife crime. Yet if the violence feels pointless, a howl of bloodstained nihilism, stabbings in Britain are far from incomprehensible. From shuttered police stations to culture to health, our current emergency has causes. If our political class has the will or ability to do anything about them are different questions altogether.
When locals heard the chaos on Sunday morning — the revving cars, the screaming men — the police would have responded to their 999 calls almost instantly. Lavender Hill Police Station is on the very same Wandsworth Road where the violence kicked off, and thus minutes away from the crime scene.
Somehow, Lavender Hill nick has managed to survive a cull that’s seen the number of police stations in the capital plummet from 160 in 2008 to just 36 today, despite covering a city of nine million people. You don’t need a calculator to figure out that something doesn’t add up here. If the powers-that-be get their way, moreover, the plan is to whittle this down to just 32 stations, or one per London borough. Across England, more than two-thirds of stations have closed in recent years.
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SubscribeExcellent article. It would be interesting to know whether there is statistical evidence for absent fathers being a factor behind both being a perpetrator of knife crime and a victim.
Unfortunately there are many statistics which, even if recorded, are not reported because they are ‘inconvenient truths’. Fears of breaking community cohesion apparently trump tackling criminal acts.
But, rather like Free Speech, unless you are willing to consider all the circumstances you will not be able to propose effective measures.
You would expect that to only go on until you get so many criminal acts that they are what is breaking community cohesion. But I think we have reached that point, long ago.
Although I haven’t seen any proposals for doing something about the fatherless problem.
Stop and Search is always held up by Guardian writers as a blatantly racist policy. But is it? The numbers suggest it is merely an effective, targeted approach to an observable problem.
Look at it another way – The vast majority of violent crime is perpetrated by Men. How is it that the liberal left don’t accuse the UK’s Criminal Justice System of Institutional Sexism?
Are there individual Police officers that are racist? I’m sure there are. But it is a huge leap to go from that fairly statistically inevitable fact, to then insist that the Police are “Institutionally racist”.
You need to ask these people who insist S&S policies are racist and should be banned, “How would you – if put in charge of trying to police knife crime – go about it?”
No race is innately predisposed to be involved in knife crime more than another. However, it is statistically indisputable that some cultures are significantly more likely to be involved in knife crime than others. For the Police to ignore such obvious and observable correlations just to appease the sensitivities of the liberal media would be entirely self-defeating and, frankly, a gross dereliction of duty.
The overlap with the metric of knife injuries for under 25s shows enormous disproportionality in the way if affects young black men as victims and, I am sorry to say, as perpetrators.
The stats make for uncomfortable reading. Nationally – you probably know the figures – you are four times more likely to be a victim of homicide if you are black and eight times more likely to be a perpetrator. That’s clearly a pretty good reason to be also over-represented in stop and search statistics then.
If your job was to tackle knife-crime, wouldn’t that be a pretty good reason to continue with a policy that has been shown over and over to reduce the problem. I appreciate that doesn’t really fit with the dominant – apparently the only permissible – broadcast narrative of a community unfairly victimised by racist coppers. And so the police will be told not to racially profile those they stop and frisk for weapons. Meanwhile young boys get stabbed and attack each other with machetes in broad daylight, but at least we haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings!
I’ve spent a lot of time (too much time!) over the last few years on the Guardian site, on which I often encounter this idea that any racial inequality in society is immediately assumed to be proof of inequity. But that’s worth exploring, rather than merely assuming.
When it comes to educational attainment, to career prospects, to poverty, to crime, to incarceration, to life expectancy, there are countless competing factors that play a part. But just because things “correlate” it does not follow that one “causes” the other. So, why do so many people ALWAYS focus on colour?
For instance: Growing up poor in an urban environment, in a single parent family, with no significant male role model figure is statiscally a far better predictor of contact with the criminal justice system than race. A young white boy growing up in that environment is many times more likely to drift into crime than a young black boy growing up in the suburbs with two working parents in the home. The correlation with ethnicity only exists because there are distinct cultural differences that lead to absent fathers being more prevalent in one community than another.
These figures are from the UK’s Office of National Statistics and are from 2019: In the UK 61% of black Caribbean children live in lone-parent households compared with 20% of white British children. Fathers from Asian backgrounds are the least likely to be non-resident whereas Black Caribbean, mixed race and Black African fathers are the most likely. But rather than tackle absentee fathers, or other cultural factors that might be at play, it appears much simpler just to blame everything on institutional and systemic racism.
I don’t believe that is an honest assessment of reality – or one that is supported by stats. I guess blaming the majority for the outcomes faced by a minority is a simpler, and seemingly more “progressive” way to go, but to my mind it helps no one. Yet such attitudes are held almost as fact by most of the people I encounter BTL on the Guardian.
As usual a clear and rational analysis from Paddy Taylor. The problem is how do you “tackle” absentee fathers. What policies would promote fathers – particularly black fathers – to stick around that would not be attacked as “illiberal” , “racist” or generally “unprogressive”.
A very salient point – and a problem of the Left’s making.
Any tax (or other financial) incentives offered to married/co-habiting couples would be immediately condemned for punishing single mothers and stigmatising certain “communities”.
In the 1930s most boys left for work. Church halls had boxing clubs as did most factories. The fourteen year old boy found himslef under the authority of a foremen and older men who became surrogate fathers and they were encourage to box, play football or rugby in winter and cricket in summer.
Long working days and training for sports meant they were not hanging around streets. Upto early 1960s, adults could intervene to deal with teenagers causing problems without being arrested. If a teenager put their feet up on a seat in public transport they would be told off and if were cheeky they would receive a clip around the ear.
try the ‘clip round the ear’ routine now and the teenager will likely get violent and/also stab you.
‘A young white boy growing up in that environment is many times more likely to drift into crime than a young black boy growing up in the suburbs with two working parents in the home.’
Incarceration rates are highly negatively correlated with family income for all groups.
Using Raj Chetty’s statistics for America, incarceration rates for children of the top 30% of black income families were roughly equal to the incarceration rates for children of the bottom 10% of white income families.
Why wouldn’t you use the top 10% of black families in your comparison? Presumably there would be an even more negative correlation? Or is there something in the 20-30% bracket which distorts the figures? I am not doubting the rates of incarceration just the way you have presented your claims.
“ Fathers from Asian backgrounds are the least likely to be non-resident”
This is where matters become less straightforward, as young men from Asian backgrounds are clearly more likely than young white men to be involved in knife crime. So whilst there may be a correlation with non-resident fathers, there are clearly other factors at work too.
I’m not disputing your assertion – but where did you get the info?
A search on the ONS site reveals: “Unfortunately, we do not hold data on offences involving a knife or sharp instrument by ethnic group.”
The “Mayor of London’s Office for Policing and Crime” only lists figures for “Whites, Non-Whites and No Stated Ethnicity”.
Oddly there seem to be plenty of stats comparing Black and White youth – but I can find no stats for knife crime among young British Asians
I do not agree asians are not common knife carriers.
British is such a basic language.
In English, the use of richer vocabulary including locutions such as “south asian”, “east asian”, “hindu” … may clarify conversations and lead to some deeper insights.
Thank you for a rare dose of objective analysis. Top comments.
And yet … if you’re ‘the likes of Tony Sewell or Shaun Bailey’ you’re nothing more than a compliant black man toeing the Conservative Party line.
Not that I’m sure what the Conservative Party line is but I know what it ought to be: unashamed realism and a determination to save lives. If it’s young black men who are doing the stabbing it’s young black men you stop and search; and if they’re carrying machetes you give them long jail sentences; and if The Guardian screams blue murder about ‘racial profiling’ you turn a deaf ear.
And what should the Labour Party do?
The same. (Some hopes!)
You’re surely not joining in the wholly absurd and nasty criticism of Sewell in the article?
No, emphatically not. I am pointing out what the writer seems to be saying.
(This is getting infuriating …. I posted this earlier. It appeared then disappeared from the page. So I posted it again and then found two versions on the site. Deleted the one that had no upticks, and then find the remaining comment has been ‘disappeared’ after 40 minutes on the site….. )
Stop and Search is always held up by Guardian writers as a blatantly racist policy. But is it? The numbers suggest it is merely an effective, targeted approach to an observable problem.
Look at it another way – The vast majority of violent crime is perpetrated by Men. How is it that the liberal left don’t accuse the UK’s Criminal Justice System of Institutional Sexism?
Are there individual Police officers that are racist? I’m sure there are. But it is a huge leap to go from that fairly statistically inevitable fact, to then insist that the Police are “Institutionally racist”.
You need to ask these people who insist S&S policies are racist and should be banned, “How would you – if put in charge of trying to police knife crime – go about it?”
No race is innately predisposed to be involved in knife crime more than another. However, it is statistically indisputable that some cultures are significantly more likely to be involved in knife crime than others. For the Police to ignore such obvious and observable correlations just to appease the sensitivities of the liberal media would be entirely self-defeating and, frankly, a gross dereliction of duty.
The overlap with the metric of knife injuries for under 25s shows enormous disproportionality in the way if affects young black men as victims and, I am sorry to say, as perpetrators.
The stats make for uncomfortable reading. Nationally – you probably know the figures – you are four times more likely to be a victim of homicide if you are black and eight times more likely to be a perpetrator. That’s clearly a pretty good reason to be also over-represented in stop and search statistics then.
If your job was to tackle knife-crime, wouldn’t that be a pretty good reason to continue with a policy that has been shown over and over to reduce the problem. I appreciate that doesn’t really fit with the dominant – apparently the only permissible – broadcast narrative of a community unfairly victimised by racist coppers. And so the police will be told not to racially profile those they stop and frisk for weapons. Meanwhile young boys get stabbed and attack each other with machetes in broad daylight, but at least we haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings!
I’ve spent a lot of time (too much time!) over the last few years on the Guardian site, on which I often encounter this idea that any racial inequality in society is immediately assumed to be proof of inequity. But that’s worth exploring, rather than merely assuming.
When it comes to educational attainment, to career prospects, to poverty, to crime, to incarceration, to life expectancy, there are countless competing factors that play a part. But just because things “correlate” it does not follow that one “causes” the other. So, why do so many people ALWAYS focus on colour?
For instance: Growing up poor in an urban environment, in a single parent family, with no significant male role model figure is statiscally a far better predictor of contact with the criminal justice system than race. A young white boy growing up in that environment is many times more likely to drift into crime than a young black boy growing up in the suburbs with two working parents in the home. The correlation with ethnicity only exists because there are distinct cultural differences that lead to absent fathers being more prevalent in one community than another.
These figures are from the UK’s Office of National Statistics and are from 2019: In the UK 61% of black Caribbean children live in lone-parent households compared with 20% of white British children. Fathers from Asian backgrounds are the least likely to be non-resident whereas Black Caribbean, mixed race and Black African fathers are the most likely. But rather than tackle absentee fathers it appears much simpler just to blame everything on institutional and systemic racism.
I don’t believe that is an honest assessment of reality – or one that is supported by stats. I guess blaming the majority for the outcomes faced by a minority is a simpler, and seemingly more “progressive” way to go, but to my mind it helps no one. Yet that view is held almost as fact by most of the people I encounter BTL on the Guardian.
‘ A young white boy growing up in that environment is many times more likely to drift into crime than a young black boy growing up in the suburbs with two working parents in the home.’
Incarceration rates are indeed highly negatively correlated with parental income for both white and black males.
But, as always, correlation tells you nothing about effect sizes.
In America, incarceration rates for the children of the top 30% of black earners are roughly the same as for the children of the bottom 10% of white earners.
These stats come from Harvard economist, Raj Chetty.
‘A welter of academic researchers, including my old friend and mentor Professor Lorraine Gamman, are unequivocal about the correlation between poverty and crime — regardless of race.
There’s poverty in South Korea and a big gap between rich and poor but there isn’t crime like there is in London. Koreans reserve tables in cafes by putting their phones on them – try leaving a phone unattended on a table in a cafe in London. A stabbing in Seoul is in the news for days.
Since there is poverty in Korea why aren’t there similar levels of crime?
There has always been poverty in Britain, blaming poverty is a fallacy. It is all about attitudes. Unfortunately, pretty vile attitudes towards our culture, law and order have been widely encouraged for increasingly transparent political purposes by the media and intellectual establishment for quite some time now. We will all bear the consequences.
The only area in Europe poorer than the one in which I was raised was Naples.
There wasn’t much crime in my part of south Wales (we were too busy playing rugby and singing)
Stop and search is not the answer. A Zombie knife is horrendous. Designed to kill and wound very badly.
There can be no reasonable excuse for carrying a weapon intending to kill people. And if you intend to kill people you should not be at liberty.
Justice needs to be swift and firm. Life with a minimum of 20 years for intending to kill people.
Being searched and charged with carrying a weapon and six months later getting a suspended sentence is not working.
“I’m not there to ‘serve’ the public, I’m there to enforce the law and f*****g nick bad guys.”
More law enforcement with this attitude, more police stations (36 in London is a joke), more stop and search and 10yrs min for possession of a knife with a blade >50mm. No excuses.Couldn’t care less what colour you are, whether you’ve got a Father at home and if you’re an immigrant you’re deported. And if the police leave a few bruises on you, big shame…..
Don’t worry Brits. If you just try really really hard you will totally be able to control the flow of those mean nasty knives. I mean it’s not like you are fighting a war against something that has literally existed for thousands of years and is super easy to manufacture. Why next you are going to tell me people are killed with sharpened bits of metal in secure prisons and most people have them in their kitchen.
I came for the comments. Would love to hear people’s thoughts. My young son and d-i-l recently moved to one of the suburbs mentioned in this article, so I’m no longer a disinterested bystander.
Practically speaking, first of all, there needs to be basic law and order on the street. As the writer points out, Old Bill treat most of South London like it’s South Armagh, flying around in armoured cars from their fortress on the Brixton Road.
Most essentially, though, there needs to be a common sense that these are ‘our sons’ and this is ‘our problem’ and indeed ‘our shame’ for any effective action. That sense has taken a battering through the relentless rate of immigration, the loss of common purpose, and an unmistakeable sense among the native population that this is an ethnic minority issue that can be walled up behind the walls of the Jago. But these are British children and the future of our nation.
Common purpose is is still achieveable. We see it in our primary schools but something happens in that jump to secondary school. It’s no good bringing your boys up as lambs when they hit secondary school and find themselves among wolves. For all the sorrowful looks and reactive anguish there is really no true sense that these young people are our greatest potential treasure. Until that is really felt most decent people will just consider this the business of the underclass.
If we are ever to see peace among our young people we need to feel that collective horror that the Victorians felt when they saw youthful criminality. The horror that led to board schools, sunday schools, cadets, scouts, Boys Brigades and a myriad of other grassroots, bottom-up initiatives to bridge that period of potential anarchy between childhood and early manhood. Until that is felt and that common purpose is found it will always be possible and excusable among many to compartmentalise this as a fringe issue.
Quite. It may not usually be be the sons or grandsons of Unherd readers slaughtering or being slaughtered but John Donne had it right: “ No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind”. Or at least that is how we ought to think and perhaps were more inclined to think when Christianity was more widespread.
The accepted wisdom is that crime is caused by Black communities being overpoliced.
‘Undoubtedly, and as my show explained, black men have long been a national bogeyman’
You see that all the time on the BBC and in adverts – Black men are the bogeymen 🙂
‘Just as I did in my documentary, I could cite numerous reasons for our pariah status ‘
If there is anything the media like, it is a good news story about Black women. But if no such story is available, they will run stories about Black men, or give them jobs as TV presenters, actors in Shakespeare, as detectives, doctors , etc etc
‘A welter of academic researchers, including my old friend and mentor Professor Lorraine Gamman, are unequivocal about the correlation between poverty and crime — regardless of race.’
So many fallacies in that statement!
‘A welter of academic researchers, including my old friend and mentor Professor Lorraine Gamman, are unequivocal about the correlation between poverty and crime — regardless of race.’
So many fallacies in that statement!
Look, I grew up in one of the poorest areas of the UK and crime did not seem to be a particular issue. I’m inclined to agree but, you really cannot leave your comment hanging.
Please explain to those of us in the cheap seats what’s wrong with what he said.
Just to be different. There could very well be a correlation between poverty and crime. But which is the cause and which is the effect?
I suspect that crime is the cause of the poverty – not necessarily crime but cheating, avoiding doing things properly. Doing things properly gives you a reason to maintain the status quo by continuing the good work. Mild cheating leads to bad cheating leads to anything goes – perhaps crime is just the next step downwards.
There might be some correlation between poverty and crime. But to go further and assert a correlation between poverty and knife crime is quite a stretch. I don’t hear about knife crimes being comitted for food or profit.
I don’t hear about knife crimes being comitted for food or profit.
I don’t think that’s CWs assertion. He’s saying there could be a correlation between crime and poverty. But he suspects the opposite. I think I agree. The criminal mind takes many forms but whatever it is means it can’t function in a functioning society. How could it? It destroys all growth and development. Whar would come from that but poverty in its many forms. There have been many people living in poverty. They don’t necessarily become criminal. But being criminal for many will end in a life of poverty. I know there’s white collar crime and they don’t live in poverty. Nevertheless CWs idea is worth thinking about.
I wasn’t meaning to disagree with CW, just to expand on the comment (and digress a little).
He actually has a very good point. Rule of law societies and countries are wealthier overall than criminal and kleptocratic ones. Crime is at best a zero sum game – it only redistributes wealth (usually even more unequally), rather than creating any.
Crime is at best a zero sum game – it only redistributes wealth (usually even more unequally)
That’s an interesting and crucial observation,
The causation between poverty and crime obviously runs both ways, at least once both are multigenerational. Clearly a vicious circle not a one-way stream, since:
– Crime is essentially a shortcut to status (whether carrying a knife to be part of a gang or accounting fraud).
– The further away a decent job/quality of life is, the more appealing said shortcuts will be.
– Crap nutrition (due to law-abiding but poor parents not having the money or time or gas credit to cook well), disrupted (by others) schooling, lack of healthy stimulation (parks are less safe in poor areas so kids glued to screens) all reduce the physical and mental potential of a child as it grows up.
– Reduced potential again makes crime more tempting because the (now grown) teenager knows he’s not going to be able to do a challenging job.
Applies to youth of any colour – there have been stabbing epidemics in London many times over the centuries, for similar reasons.
If you think this is over-indulgent guff, try to find a middle class or well-paid working class parent who doesn’t try to feed, exercise and educate their children with the intention of maximising their potential. Albeit there is too much hothousing by some, the alternative of leaving you kid out in the (developmental) frost is taken by very few who have a choice.
Having observed that part of the solution is making sure all kids get the basics of healthy food, regular exercise and a good education, I would add that parents of children who have been killed by random strangers should decide the sentence given to the perpetrator(s). There is a gulf between a knife fight among rivals and stabbing an unknown passing child as part of an initiation.
edited out – duplicate
First of all, there is effect size.
Two things can be perfectly 100% correlated in two different settings and yet the size of the effect can be entirely different.
For example, cigarettes and fentanyl are both highly correlated with early death, but one is more dangerous than the other.
To say crime and poverty are correlated for all races says nothing about crime levels for different races.
At first sight, poverty means lack of wealth, yet I see lack of settled surroundings, especially at home and school, not always caused by insufficient funds, to be a dominant cause of problems in the young. This requires a routine, and self discipline, which is easier if the reasons behind the aims are understood.
Having the emotional space to think, and ponder on the subject under study is how people gain competence, especially in the hard subjects, which varies from person to person.
And often more money only exacerbates the problem.
There really cannot have been an increase in knife crime. Tony Blair’s government solved the problem by making it a crime to carry a knife…obviously the existing law against carrying an offensive weapon had failed…
“If you highlight the disproportionality of knife crime among sections of the black community because you actually give a shit you get called a “sellout”. “
The article meanders around citing statistics and touching on the fact that knife crime is disproportionately a black on black crime that discussion about is bedevilled by a reluctance to acknowledge that fact. However, it doesn’t seem to suggest any clear solutions and certainly doesn’t explicitly support the idea that stop and search targeting those most likely to be carrying despite the inevitable accusation of racism might be a good way of reducing the number of knives being on the streets.
While it might be an inconvenience to my white sons if they were stopped and searched regularly if statistics showed white youth disproportionately responsible for knife crime I and I hope they would eagerly support the policy as something ultimately for their benefit. Why can’t the same attitude prevail regarding stop and search of black youth?
Some of the problem is illustrated by the suggestion that Tony Sewell and Shaun Bailey are simply towing the Conservative line for careerist reasons rather than that they might be coming to rational conclusions on the basis of facts.
Yep, that sentence about Bailey and Sewell said it all. A blinkered article that hedges around the core problem of black men killing other black men with knives. Conclusion – we have a black, male problem.
Horrors!!!!!
I don’t care about the race of the bad guys. For me it is a city problem and London’s in particular. I grew up wandering all over it but I have never taken my grandsons there whereas I did take my sons there. . They are country boys and growing fast. I deem it too dangerous.The violence is everywhere and random and boys from far way in rural areas are just easy targets. That also means I never go there and nobody in my extended family does anymore. That means London has ceased to mean anything to us. It is notionally our capital but it might as well be 5000 miles away in a distant land. That also means I really care little for it’s future as long as it stays inside the M25 and out of my life. There are many oldtimers who think like this. We have collectively said our goodbyes to our capital. Never happened before has it ? It won’t lead this country anywhere good. Nice buildings and galleries shame it has come to this.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson was walking with an NBC reporter years ago when he spotted a group of young blacks ahead on the sidewalk. He said they should cross the street and did. When the NBC guy reported this, Jackson denied it happened. What else could the man do? He was between the devil and the deep blue sea.
‘Knife culture, after all, is part of a lore that stretches back decades: through subcultures and ethnic groups, as well as via gangland brawls and “lone wolf” terrorism. And yet, I’m sad to say, our old friend political correctness dictates …..’ Snore….So knife crime is universal. Nothing to see here…but also ‘political correctness’ stops recognition of [****** truth I will not explicate *****] ……Gordon Bennett. There is more fluff in this piece than the 60 Min interview with KH. Labour are in denial about……well everything. What’s a woman? immigration, Muslim non-integration, multiculturalism, family breakdown, marriage, DEI, ….and oh yes….young black men and knives…… But then in which of these domains has the Conservative Party demonstrated far-sighted realism and clarity? Please God let Kemi lose and join REform
In the words of David Lammy there is no limit to the number of black lives we are prepared to sacrifice to ends the scourge that is stop and search
Seriously, I has a black female colleague who tried to tell me that the police were responsible for the level of knife crime in the black community.
She did not say whether she thought it was the police doing the stabbing
I don’t pretend to offer any solution but I am coincidentally listening to Charlotte Gill on Triggernometry listen absurd and wasteful state spending in the education and arts sectors.
It isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things; like stupid DEI programs in NHS hospitals, their a tiny fraction of overall spending which is dominated by pensions and social security.
However, it speaks of an attitude and a lack of focus on what the state should do. Internal (and external) security are best the responsibility of the state; they must get this right first before anything else.
(Deleted as duplicate comment)
…
This is about children getting caught up in a murderously competitive and territorial trade. And young people in general not being able to envisage satisfactorily: climbing economic, entrepreneurial and other social ladders. We have a wrecked the intellectual fabric with political tribalism and fear and no one has any idea how to step in on behalf of the people caught up in this stupidity. Our culture needs unity and our politics needs division. The leaders of the main political parties, their most loyal apparatchiks most of the mayors of this countries’ cities have no agenda other than their own narrow ideological self interest and loyalties to tribe.
Good comment.
As far as I can see, there is no “epidemic” of knife crime and what there is is largely localised to certain urban areas. Why is the author seemingly trying to threaten us with the spread of knife crime across Britain ?
The pattern in the US is similar. You’re repeatedly told how dangerous US cities are. Yet as a visitor you never actually see anything – you actively have to go looking for trouble to find it and the places you do go to are safe and sanitised.
The article contains all sorts of tenous insinuations which simply don’t stand scrutiny. How does “poverty” cause knife crime (as the article implies) ? If this were universally true, we’d have seen it before in the UK when the country was much poorer and also replicated across other countries.
Interestingly, not once is family breakdown and the frequent absence of fathers mentioned. It would be surpising if this weren’t a significant factor.
If black communities are struggling to confront these problems (the author says so), perhaps it’s a result of too little cultural integration with the rest of the UK.
The stats on Greater London police stations are shocking. I had no idea so many had been closed. All no doubt part of the “professionalisation” of the police – now they’re all getting foundation degrees, they doubtless all wish to work from large, comfortable offices …
Why is the author seemingly trying to threaten us with the spread of knife crime across Britain ?
Are you saying there isn’t?
Isn’t what ?
I’m saying that knife crime is largely localised (just as violent crime in the US is highly localised). Nothing I’ve read here persuades me that there’s any reason it will spread widely across the UK. The underlying reasons appear to be largely cultural and hence the whole thing is constrained within particular cultures (and geographic areas). And where these groups are more dispersed and integrated, you don’t see the knife crime.
Okay, you’re saying an increase is not necessarily spreading, which is a fair point.
Knife crime was once prevalent in Glasgow, until everyone got searched and hefty sentence was handed out for carrying a knife. Funnily enough it was mostly young working class lads from the housing schemes. No one was up in arms about that. Similar issues too, young men, single parent familys, the male role models tended to be the older lads in the gangs. Few prospects of bettering their lives.
There was also a programme of giving the more deprived apprenticeships within the council. Knife crime although hasn’t disappered but is not as bad as it once was.
It has reached Milton Keynes, Northampton and nearly every city I would say. Sadly also in and outside schools.
But it is spreading. I live in leafy Malvern, which prior to covid was predominantly middle class and white.
A week ago there was a fight in the middle of the day between a group of young men, involving a machete. Such a thing was totally unheard of a year ago. So yes, it is spreading across Britain.
It’s not black men, it’s black Carib men, who tend to be highly aggressive but with a massive sense of greivance. An example I witnessed… Two cars met in a narrow street, Somalis in one, a single Carib in the other. Neither were willing to reverse. The Carib chap then went to the boot of his car, and unwrapped a very large machete. The Somalis reversed away.
Note; this guy carried a machete in the boot of his car all the time for just such an occasion. The police were not called.
A story that indirectly supports a more recent article (about feeling pride in being British).
Good article apart from disparagng Sewell and Bailey simply because they have the temerity to not support Labour.
Brave and helpful
This is all nonsense- Politicians and police are too gutless and frightened of ” racism” to tell the truth- Albanian, Turkish and other wholesale drug suppliers make the street gangs fight for ever smaller ” patches” from which they retail on the street from and on.
Black murder rape theft etc are why nearly all of the major US cities are uninhabitable. They commit 40 homicides for every 100,000 people. Compare that to Whites and Asians who commit less than one homicide per 100,000. If my math serves, that is a 3900% increase. This puts blacks outside what is normal, observable human behavior. The stats raise significant questions that no one wants to ask.
Birmingham AL — 140 homicides 2024, pop. 200,000
Birmingham, UK — 35 homicides 2024, pop. 2,000,000
I can create any correlation you would like to see. The pressure on publishing and citations combined with activist “intellectuals” with a preferred narrative has turned academic plagiarism from an “at the margins” activity into a wholesale industry. Scepticism is.your greatest weapon in these modern times. Sadly it’s hard to avoid it’s shadow – cynicism.
Well… I understand it’s tantamount to blasphemy on a site like this, but Kemi Badenoch might be your girl for this. She has no trouble calling out this sort of thing, and generally focusing on ethnic causes.
What on earth do you mean, “blasphemy”? The general tone within Comments would suggest you’re mistaken.
Criminals killing criminals ? Or is there something more socially intentional going on ? Something you might call a conspiracy that doesn’t need meetings and agreements or “first acts” that constitute proof positive. “Fashion accessories” ? Implements of urban destruction? The hijab, the abaya, the burka, the thwab, the jubbah, and the “fashion accessories” and implements of urban destruction. They are seductively exotic !!! They are novel ! And they are familiar ! There is no better weapon than familiarity.
Has anyone checked London mosques and other centers of Islamic populations for tunnels that connect their local mosques ? My guess is that they exist, and not only that … they are stocked with more than knives. It’s not only migrants that are coming in under the cover of darkness or like now, in broad daylight. In fact, the reality that they can motor up to the coast in lovely boats means there is utterly no reason to even be looking for them at night. The welcome mat has been out for a long time. Did I say ?… There is no better weapon than familiarity.
Very tired of the failure to call out the black and muslim community. These are sick cultures filled with criminals. By failing to actually call out these cultures and the criminal males in them, the problem festers and grows.
I’d suggest that (formerly) civilized countries take a long hard look at White Supremacy.
I lived in that area in the 80s. Although it wasn’t crime free this kind of thing, open gang warfare and brazen criminality, was virtually unknown. How times have changed for the worse. I can no longer help but feel this attack on society, which comes in many guises on various fronts, has been deliberately allowed. Khan’s closure of so many police stations across London has facilitated increased crime just as the toxin of identity politics.
Equality laws override the perfectly natural trait of discrimination and discernment in terms of weighing up the benefits and costs of different survival strategy.
In other words, equality laws and the underlying principle of non-discrimination shuts down common sense and the ability to discern threat by overlaying natural discrimination with the threat of prosecution and punishment.
This has consequences for public safety by causing an epigenetic delay as people feel an amplified conflict of interests between preservation of the other and preservation of the self when faced with a threat. In other words, equality laws tends to make us more selfish in our response to threats.
This conflict of interests similarly arises in the public sector under the Public Sector Equality Duty which makes the Public Sector more prone to self-absorption rather than outward looking. The same applies in the Private Sector, especially in unionised workplaces.
Ultimately this self absorption has a negative effect on social, economic and political productivity with the effect of breaking down community bonds through self absorbing balkanisation, self absorbing risk assessments to avoid accusations of discrimination and the self absorbing culture wars which places targets and tokenism above merit and ability.
Equality laws should only be a means to change epigenetic attitudes not an end in itself and so should be used sparingly and temporarily to adjust generational attitudes. If however they become hard wired into the fabric of society with the threat of prosecution and punishment, then this socially constructed threat overrides responding to natural threats leading to much greater harm, loss and damage overall as natural discrimination is overriden by unnatural nondiscrimination.
To demonstrate the absurdity of unnatural nondiscrimination, if taken to its extremes and applied to the private life of the individual, then our relationships and personal preferences would need to demonstrate non-discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics which of course would be rightly considered a threat to personal freedom. In this context, our natural predisposition to discriminate isn’t overridden by socially constructed threats since it is generally considered we know what is best for ourselves.
However, when applied outside the private life of the individual, it is suddenly assumed the community or society as a whole doesn’t know what is best for itself. This responsibility is then instead displaced on to lawyers and the legal system which becomes a means of controlling communities and society as a whole in terms of what lawyers and human rights activists think is best.
This control over natural discrimination is the basis of Progressivism and their woke agenda who in their m/paternalism think they know what is best for our communities and society even if that means turning a blind eye to the threats of grooming, misogyny, Islamism, balkanisation and of course the increasing threat of knife gangs.
Our country, in short, is suffering a plague, an orgy, of knife crime.
Please stop. This is as obtuse an argument as the one made in the US about “gun crime.” There is no gun crime, nor is there knife crime. There are crimes in which guns and knives are used. Since both objects have a long history, but the crime wave is relatively new, maybe it’s time to stop fixating on pieces of metal and take a hard look at people and culture.
Maybe it’s time to ask why criminals do not fear repercussions. Maybe it’s time to ask why anyone frets over the “disproportionate” rate in which one group is jailed, especially when people in that group are more likely to commit crimes. Maybe it’s time to ask when and how life got to be so cheap, and when and how law enforcement decided to cede control of the streets.
Just a normal day in the States…
div > p > a”>https://twitter.com/MrReeKilla/status/1845975097154138614
and read any police dept twitter feed–Philly, Baltimore, Detroit, Washington, Dallas, New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, Montgomery, Houston, Miami, Memphis, Norfolk, Richmond, PG County MD — where ever you have 30-40% black population you will have exceptionally high homicide rate.
Here’s DC feed:
div > p:nth-of-type(5) > a”>https://twitter.com/DCPoliceDept
In the US, leftists refuse to hold terrorists, thugs and crazies responsible for their crimes. They blame the guns that such people use. If their pipe dream of eliminating guns ever came true, then we would have exactly the situation described in this article.
I understand that the UK already bans assault knives, the legal definition being blades that are big and scary. You can always bring in a professional to carve your Christmas goose, right? If Labour goes on to eliminate all knives and Englishmen can no longer butter their toast, what will the thugs resort to then? Time to start banning loose rocks.
“the Met currently employs 33,631 officers” — aren’t many of these sitting at computers, monitoring hate speech etc?
Also, the unrobust nature of criminal proceedings plays into it too right?
How much knife crime was in the areas of heavy industry badly hit by the Depression in the 1930s ?
Extremely tough men who undertook heavy manual labour, played rugby and boxed managed to fight without using knives.
Commandos and paratroopers are issued with the Fairbairn Sykes Fighting Knife yet manage to refrain from using it in streetfights; why?
div > p:nth-of-type(5) > a”>Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife (youtube.com)
div > h3 > a”>@paulwebster7293 div > p:nth-of-type(6) > a”>1 year ago
As a young cadet in 15 coy RGJ West Ham .I had the pleasure of having this man as my SGT MAJ . Great bloke , fantastic instructor , use to live in the field with you on annual camp and run rings around the regular army instructors . Sometimes we use to meet him at Finsbury barracks draw our no 4,s Lee Enfields and Brens and go to Purbright and shoot to our hearts content no shortage of ammo then , it was Great . Thinking about it between 15 and 16 COY we had men who had served at Arnham and Pegasus bridge they were salts of the earth fair ,funny, but you knew they had been forged under a diffrent hammer . Stan use to have a no3 Lee Enfield and use to shoot it left sided having lost his eye …fast and accurate , Taught us unarmed combat and how to fight with the FS knife and a 1000,s uses of a toggle rope ….Could out sprint most of the lads when we played football and loved a hamlet or small type cigar to boot ……Great bloke ,Great times ….covinced me to joining up ,then loved taking the piss about me being a Bootneck …….Happy days .
Perhaps if he had Cadets with the likes of Sergeant Stan Scott training boys, there would be less trouble.
In the 1960s Motown was graceful and elegant , 4 Tops, Dionne Warwick , etc. By the late 1980s Gangsta Rap was celebrating violence. The likes of Sergeant Stan Scott ex 3 Commando were trained to use violence and did so but did not glorify it. Boys and men who would fail Commando selection glorify violence.
Who in the media mocks gangsta rap and drill music? Let these young pass selection into the RMC or Parachute Regiment and then pass into Special Forces.
The reality is that the middle class who like to shape public opinion are terrified of violent criminals and are scared witless .
The problem is that the Liberal Left are deeply, profoundly and knowingly wrong on their attitudes to black crime. They will never admit this.
Anybody else finding typing into the comment box infuriatingly difficUlt, over the last few days on iOS?
I do. I have to say for each comment that I am not a robot. And at random I then have to count bridges or bicycles in that photo chart, sometimes several times. I assumed it was deranged moderators.
I wonder what a ‘vulnerable neighbourhood’ is? One prone to earthquakes?
The key factors seem to be Afro-Caribbean fathers absenting them and so leaving children without a male role model which they then find in these violent gangs. As far as the gangs go, the 2nd key factor comes into play as a byproduct of British mass immigration: the importing of traumatising youngsters from African conflict zones with a preponderance of child soldiers.
Why not follow the policy that Canada has used for handguns? Make them more illegal than they were already.
Even though FBI crime statistics have become unreliable since Obama was elected, it is still possible to discern that blacks (13% of the population) are responsible for 72% or thereabouts of violent crime in the US.
Taleeb Starkes exposes this too in Black Lies Matter
As we in the States are finding out it’s not a good idea to flood your country with immigrants.
I wrote a post based on FBI statistics about the percentage of violent crime committed by a certain race that was disappeared.
“Knife Crime”
FFS call it what it is. Stabbings. Violent Assault. Attempted Murder. Murder.
What a cowardly euphemism.