‘Actions speak louder than words’ – Anti-knife crime campaigner on UK government tackling knife crime

Sir Keir Starmer has promised action to tackle the sale of knives online, which he says are too easily available.

At his first annual knife crime summit, attended by the actor Idris Elba and other campaigners, the Prime Minister also said they need to reach young people whose lives may be going off track, to bring them back.

Also taking part in the summit was Faron Paul, a knife crime victim turned campaigner. He was stabbed 18 times in two attacks but now runs FazAmnesty, a charity that takes unwanted weapons off young people.

We spoke to him and began by asking what is driving young people to put themselves at risk and hurt others.

Faron Paul: There’s a thing called – what I see as – children, and I believe any child in any environment are going to come with a thing called naivety – impulsive. You know, being a child, being naive and being young is something you’re allowed to do. But if that young person is in an environment, there’s certain material out that is just negative music and negative interactions and people sending threats through Snapchat and all the rest of it.

They haven’t got a chance in growing up, like being a normal child, to be naive because the things that they’re going to get involved with – the influences, the peer pressures, they can’t go back from that. They can’t go back from being stabbed. They can’t go back from being hurt. They can’t go back from having a criminal record for getting caught.

Jackie Long: On a personal note, you must have been involved with children and young people and something terrible has happened to them. They’ve either gone to prison because they’ve hurt somebody else or they’ve been hurt themselves. When you talk to children like that and young people, what are they saying to you? What’s the sense that you’re left with?

Faron Paul: Far too many times, the sense of a lot of the things that I feel when I get a message from a young person or a parent is fear and confusion. I only recently, I was messaged by a 14-year-old boy that showed me grievous injuries of where he’d been stabbed with a Rambo knife, and it’s left him with his arm being paralysed, and in the same instant – his mother was stabbed too. And it’s just like they go through that – and they are now living with fear.

After that initial interaction with the police and it all goes away, these people are still left with the injuries. They’re still left with their fear. The same people that hurt them still know where they go to school or where they live. So it then forces another young person that’s been in that situation to either suffer emotional post-traumatic stress or go and pick up a knife in the sense of revenge or defending themself. So it just becomes almost a vicious circle, you know?

Jackie Long: Exactly on that point, you sat around the cabinet table with the Prime Minister today. Do you trust in him to deliver? I know what you’re saying about ‘it will take time’. But do you trust in him? Do you feel he is committed to this?

Faron Paul: I’m saying actions speak louder than words. The Conservatives were in power for the last 15 years. And from what I’m seeing, from what I’ve been doing with knife crime, I don’t feel like the Conservatives were too concerned. The Labour Party has been in position for a short amount of time, and I feel like the direction they’ve taken with this coalition and the things they’re doing in such a short amount of time, I feel like it’s a positive action. But I just do believe that time and working with the right people in the right way is going to be the difference of how impactful this is.