Britain is the best country to be black in” Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch confidently informed the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester last Tuesday. Is she right? Perhaps, and then again perhaps not, particularly if you’re a black adolescent living in London. I can certainly think of a number of black teenagers, senselessly slain within the last week, whose families might disagree with her.
Earlier this month, Elianne Andam, a 15-year-old black girl was stabbed to death on her way to school in Croydon. Her crime? Attempting to recover a friend’s possessions from an ex-boyfriend, who took sufficient exception to her interference that he stabbed her repeatedly and fatally in broad daylight. Last Sunday, it was 16-year-old Taye Faik’s turn, who was stabbed to death just before midnight in Edmonton; police are said to be working on “a number of lines of inquiry.” In fact, it’s hard to keep up; as I write, there are reports that a 40-year-old man has been fatally stabbed in Sutton, as well as a 17-year-old male stabbed in the chest (again in Croydon), although his injuries are not said to be life-threatening.
Stick to the facts
While there are many issues which rightly divide the public, the slaughter of innocent children on their way to school does not deserve to be one of them. And yet, any attempt by those in power to tackle the scourge of London knife crime is predictably met by large sections of the Left as another opportunity to play the victim card.
Take Suella Braverman’s insistence earlier this year, that UK constabularies implement Stop and Search, with recourse to Section 60 powers if necessary (searches which do not require the usual grounds of reasonable suspicion). Here was the reaction of human rights advocacy group, Liberty:
We all want to feel safe in our communities, but calling on police to ramp up use of ineffective Stop and Search that is driven by systemic racism is no answer. This will just put more people at risk of harsh and traumatising treatment at the hands of police. Deeply irresponsible.
Really?! I don’t know about you, but I am utterly sick of this. Sick of the slaughter; sick of the mundane social media videos, where two-foot swords are wielded like toys; but mostly, I’m sick of the bullshit. No, Sadiq Khan, summer weather is not the cause of knife crime. No, it’s not poverty and poor education either—as though failing to get your GCSE in gang violence somehow excuses the practise. No, it isn’t social media Cressida Dick—much as you might wish it to be. No, the answer is much more prosaic.
Here is the reality: the black community has a profound problem with knife crime, crime and violence in general. Yes, I said it. Yes, I’m white, and no, I don’t care what you think about that. The statistics are unequivocal: at just 13% of the population, black Londoners make up 61% of knife murderers, 53% of those involved in knife crime, and 45% of knife murder victims.
By all means, let us have the debate as to why this might be the case. I will concur (as will David Lammy) that absent fathers are a problem. I will agree that gang culture is a major issue for young black men. I would also suggest you cast a sceptical eye over a ‘culture’ which glorifies drugs and violence, reprehensible black ‘role models’ the rapid influx of illegal immigrants, almost half of whom gravitate to the capital, alongside genuinely questioning the notion of equality. But what I refuse to ignore are the facts. Knife crime in London is a black issue, and if you believe Trevor Phillips can say that but I cannot, you’re not only mistaken—you are a considerable part of the problem.
How about honesty?
Unfortunately, nothing will be done about knife crime while the unholy alliance of appeasers sits in power. We have Sadiq Khan who appears indifferent to the matter, offering nothing less than social media cut and paste responses now to being “heartbroken” every other day, and claiming “violence against women and girls must end.” Seriously? Fifteen of the sixteen teenagers stabbed to death in London this year were male. How’s that for misogyny?
Then we’ve got the police who prance around while zombie knives are brandished at ‘carnivals,’ for fear of being called ‘racist.’ We endlessly endure the grievance industry, who milk the deaths of black people for money and high-status positions. And perhaps worst of all, the white liberals who clutch their pearls desperately, whimpering vaguely about cuts to ‘youth club’ services.
Here are a few suggestions as to what those in authority could do if they genuinely wanted to combat knife crime in the capital: first of all, widespread use of stop and search is an absolute must. As former Met chief Cressida Dick confirmed, “Somewhere between 23 and 25% of those we stop have something on them they shouldn’t have and that’s the same whether they’re black, white or Asian.” In other words, the policy saves lives; predominantly black lives.
Second, the police are going to have to get off their knees and actually do their job without fear or favour. That means we need a management which stops whining about ‘structural racism’ and actually supports their officers, instead of throwing them under the bus whenever they carry out their duties. Third, there should be a mandatory custodial sentence for anyone caught carrying a knife—no ifs, no buts. And fourth, it might be worth securing the borders at some stage this century.
It remains curious to me that left-wing politicians, so obsessed with inequality where whites are concerned, become strangely myopic when it comes to knife crime. If the bleeding-heart liberals genuinely cared about the black community, they would be fully supportive of such honest debate. Meanwhile, society as a whole needs to call time on the kid gloves. Knife crime is a black issue—whether or not you consider it ‘racist’ to say so. It’s time everyone, especially the grievance professionals, faced up to this fact.
Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.
This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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Thank God someone has at last had the common sense to speak bluntly about this awful problem.
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If knifing people goes with gang membership and gang membership goes with absent fathers, how much can any government do about it? Isn’t it something too deep within British West Indian culture–that is, within people’s everyday lives–for the state to be able to do more than limit it? Won’t it likely go with other things in that life that it would be extraordinary to think the state could change, even if it wanted to? If the fathers aren’t around, won’t–don’t–for instance, the mothers give one another that mutual society, help, and comfort, of all kinds, that the one ought to have of the other and do their best to bring up children in the fear and nurture of the Lord? What can Governments, especially ones with a conservative understanding of what government is, do about a culture that seems to encourage fatherless young men join gangs and stab one another? Cultures are wholes and one aspect or part goes with another.
Of course, it is not just young black men who stab one another. Young white men carry knives and do it too. But I do not think they used to, when I was younger. Is it not something they have taken to–perhaps in that sincere form of flattery called imitation–taking to knife-carrying as they have taken to ‘hip-hop’ and ‘garage’? (Of course, one must be careful suggesting such things. Did not David Starkey get in hot water a few years ago for saying something like that?) Although West Indians are often spoken of as being amongst the ‘marginalised’ in Britain, they do have an influence on the wider culture, even at its centre, in ‘pop’ and politics and football .
One curious influence I think I have noticed is that the words ‘polite’ and ‘rude’ have been widely replaced in English by ‘respect’ and ‘disrespect’. Did not the latter first come to general notice as ‘dissed’, in expressions like “He dissed me,” perhaps from the popularity of Ali G? And “he dissed” or “disrespected me” is not at all the same as “He was rude or impolite to me.” The judgement expressed in the latter brings the matter to an end. It can be thought of, perhaps, as in itself a form of retaliation, requiring nothing else to be done. But it is not at all like that with being ‘disrespected’: disrespect places an obligation on you to do something about it, something more, something back, to retaliate, perhaps to stab, like those young Renaissance Italian men in Romeo and Juliet, who, for honour’s sake, cannot brook having the thumb bitten at them.
And the ‘respect’ called for in these new expressions does not leave the meaning of the word unchanged. ‘Respect’ used to be, I think, something you had to earn. This new ‘respect’ is something you get for nothing. It is something you are owed just as you and because you are you. And if you are not given it, free and gratis, well …