An apology to all readers: a couple of weeks ago, in a public-spirited sort of way, I offered advice as to how to go about getting stabbed. Although I hope you will accept that I was well intentioned, the article was clearly deficient and even offensive in two important respects. First, I neglected to explain how one might go about getting stabbed twice — and, since I wrote, the window for that particular opportunity seems to have been closed. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, unveiled an exciting plan to let stabbers loose in hospital accident and emergency wards, where they might joyfully run around stabbing people who are recovering from having already been stabbed by someone else, as part of a rehabilitative process for the stabber. However, quite inexplicably, this policy was dropped only nineteen and a half minutes after it had been announced and the opportunity has now been lost. Apologies.
Second, I stated that if you wished to be stabbed, your best chance would be via a knife wielded by a white person, as black people would more likely shoot you in the head than stab you. I deeply regret this insinuation, which I think was the result of institutionalised racism on my part. As the intervening two weeks have shown, black people will be more than happy to stab you with very great vigour. The implication of my article — that, when it came to stabbing people, blacks were somehow inferior to whites — was quite wrong, and as a consequence I will enrol on a two-month course to expunge from my mind all vestiges, conscious or unconscious, of stabbing-related racism.
It may well be that I will need to apologise again. My article was intended to help people take advantage of what I assumed to be a growing trend, particularly in our capital city — being stabbed. But it now seems that I may have been mistaken even about this fundamental point. According to various reports in our liberal newspapers, almost nobody has been stabbed, ever. It’s all a right-wing fiction whipped up by the likes of Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail. And worse, the mere act of making all this stuff up encourages our young people to carry knives around, out of fear. This had not occurred to me but now, upon reflection, I can see that the likes of Toynbee and Aaronovitch may have a point. You can imagine young people across the country saying to one another: ‘Good lord, have you read this piece by Christopher Howse on the Telegraph op ed pages? Chilling, it is. I think I’d better buy a Stanley knife, or a cat skinner.’
Having peremptorily dropped the A&E stabfest plan, the Prime Minister then suggested that he would like to see all people convicted of knife crime — including being caught in possession of a knife — sent to chokey. I hope Gordon has apprised the country’s magistrates of this aspiration, and indeed his own Justice Secretary, Jack Straw. For ten long years our magistrates have been urged not to send convicted offenders — and especially young offenders — to prison, but to find suitable alternative punishments, such as painting the walls of the local community centre, or sitting at home watching television with a small electrical device on their legs. Jack Straw reiterated the very same aspiration earlier this year. An admission that this policy was stupid and counter-productive would not go amiss, Prime Minister.
Jacqui Smith’s hospital stabathon plan was, when you think about it, fabulously ill-conceived, even by her standards. The premise was that stabbers are somehow unaware of the injuries that they inflict upon their victims and that a quick tour of the emergency wards would reveal to them horrors from which they would immediately recoil and then later repent. But the stabbers are already well aware of the injuries caused by knives: that is why they carry them, precisely to inflict such injuries, should the need or opportunity arise. ‘Oh no, I didn’t think a quick stab with a cat skinner meant that people might need 150 stitches and a kidney transplant: in future I will desist with the knives and return to my trusty crowbar.’ And again, it is a remedy which gives the benefit of the doubt to the offender, assuming he is ignorant and innocent, and offers no redress to the victim. Gordon Brown also lobbed a grenade in the direction of parents, an initiative born of desperation perhaps but nonetheless closer to the truth. The trouble is that the epic indulgence shown to children these days — by parents, teachers, law courts and social workers — will take a generation to put right. And a start can be made only when the likes of Mr Brown accept that we have, collectively, been massively over-indulgent towards our children (and, as a corollary, neglectful). I did not hear much of that in his hurried and panic-stricken address.
I am not too convinced by the resurrection of the ‘Respect Agenda’ either — an old policy of Tony Blair’s which has unexpectedly found favour once more. It is again a misunderstanding; the word ‘respect’ does not mean, among young people, what it means for the rest of us. For them it means the right not to be gainsaid or crossed in any way; in certain sections of the community being ‘disrespected’, or its abbreviation ‘dissed’, is an open invitation to a stabbing. Stabbings occur precisely because youngish people feel that they have been ‘disrespected’ in some way and, emboldened by alcohol, feel the need for redress. The notion of respect is once more a form of pandering to the stunted minds of those who wander the streets with knives tucked down the insides of their trousers; these are people who do not need a crash course in respec’. They know all about it, and how to get it.
But what to do, then? As I mentioned in my previous, deficient article, alcohol is an almost ever-present factor in these horrible stabbings, and less the supermarkets and their cheap crates of lager than the wine bars, which should bear some responsibility. If a stabbing occurs near a wine bar and it can be proved that participants — stabber and stabbee — had been drinking inside, close it down for a month without appeal. If stabbings occur twice outside the same place, close the bar down for good. Send knife offenders to prison and resist the temptation to eulogise their victims who in most cases were not neutral non-participants in the crime. If a child under the age of 18 is found with a knife, bung him in what was once called borstal and fine the parents. And then begin to address the generation-long indulgence towards our young people and the lack of proper supervision.
