Fight for decent services and a socialist future
Helen Pattisson, Socialist Party London Regional Secretary
“Teenager fighting for life after double stabbing”, “knife crime is out of control” these are just some recent headlines. In London alone, 21 teenagers were killed in 2022. In Bristol in February 2024, three boys were killed with knives in three weeks. It’s no wonder that a recent survey found that 46% of 13 to 18-year-olds are worried about knife crime in their local area. The knife crime ‘epidemic’ we face is not just having a horrible impact on the families and friends of victims, but across society.
One piece of research, conducted by interviewing young people, highlighted how knife crime can become a vicious cycle if young people believe others are carrying knives, and then beginning to do the same in the hopes of protecting themselves. It can lead to people of all ages being scared to leave the house and unsafe in their local area.
The outgoing Tory government has put an extra £4 million into tackling knife crime. In relation to the scale of the problem, this is small change. Look at the details and you will see that it will go on just four high-tech police vans, and the rest into researching technology to detect if people are carrying knives.
Sadly, this will not make the huge numbers of people understandably fearful of knife crime safer.
There is a large body of research linking rising knife crime to the huge cuts to youth services, including research by an all-party parliamentary committee in 2019. Knife crime has been on the rise since 2012, according to the government’s own statistics. It dipped at the beginning of the pandemic but has since increased year on year. 244 people were killed in attacks involving a knife or sharp implement in 2022-23. Each of those deaths represents a family and local community rocked by the impact.
But the situation today isn’t just a product of 14 years of attacks on youth services. The impact of austerity and the crisis of capitalism goes much deeper. The Tories are clearly not interested in addressing the deeper social problems underlying the reasons more young people are carrying knives.
With a Starmer government on the cards, will his new Labour government have a programme which can turn the issue of knife crime around?
Starmer has brought back Blair’s slogan of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Under the heading of “take back our streets”, it is mainly a programme of being “tough on crime”. They too blame the last 14 years of Tory government for the current situation, but link this only to issues around cuts to police including a call for “visible neighbourhood policing”. Specifically on knife crime, they highlight “rapid intervention and tough consequences”.
Tougher consequences have already been introduced, but incidents of knife crime continue to rise. The proportion of custodial sentence vs cautions for possession of a knife have risen since before the Tories took office in 2010, according to the government’s own analysis. There has also been a steady increase in the length of custodial sentences for people convicted for knife crime. The share of sentences over one year has also increased. It has meant overcrowded prisons and deteriorating conditions. But none of this has curbed the problem of knife crime.
The Casey report has also brought to the fore that the London Metropolitan police is institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, and the number of people with confidence in the police is falling. If “tougher on crime” policies just mean that sections of the working class are ‘over-policed’ then it won’t result in safer neighbourhoods.
That’s why the Socialist Party calls for democratic working-class control of policing – with all aspects of decision making decided by bodies of elected representatives locally, the majority of those elected from the trade union movement. This would allow local communities to be involved in discussing the services they really need to ensure safety while also ending the fear of police harassment and overpolicing.
Labour’s plan?
The Labour Party manifesto also calls for “youth futures hubs”. But this isn’t listed or costed in its ‘fiscal plan’, meaning presumably they are expected to be paid out of existing council budgets which have also been decimated. Almost £1 billion was cut from local authority youth budgets from 2010 to 2019, according to the YMCA. Areas with the biggest cuts to these services have seen some of the sharpest increases in knife crime. Rebuilding these important services is not listed in Labour’s fiscal plan either. Instead, Labour lists putting youth workers in A&E, custody centres, and pupil referral units at a cost of £20 million – a fraction of what has been lost.
It’s clear that over a decade of economic crisis and austerity, young people’s futures have been ripped away. Communities have been thrown into increasing poverty and a generation is growing up worse off than their parents.
To really tackle knife crime it will take reversing all these trends, ensuring kids grow up with access to education, support and a decent future. This isn’t the future that Keir Starmer’s Labour is offering. When Rachel Reeves talks of “fiscal responsibility” she means that Starmer’s government will act in the interests of British capitalism, not in the interests of local communities struggling under the weight of austerity and all its impacts.
Fighting to end knife crime means fighting for socialist change, and a system based on providing a decent future for all rather than the profits of a few. Part of that is fighting to help the working class establish its own political voice – a new mass workers’ party – a demand Socialist Party members are putting central in our general election campaigns, preparing for struggles of workers and young people under a Starmer-led government.
