Like the paedophile summer of 2000 and the hoodie summer of 2005, 2008 seems all set to be forgotten as the summer of knife crime. Rather than pit-bulls or perverts this season’s ephemeral terror is the blade.
Which is not to mock the horror of reality. If ownership of knives really is on the increase it’s a genuine cause for concern. What does deserve ridicule is the political and media response. As discussed in this post written during the great hoodie terror of 2005 such moral panics have little to do with solving social problems and a great deal to do with selling newspapers and furthering political ambitions.
As suggested at that time, the fact that these vital crusades are dropped as soon as something else comes along is a good measure of the sincerity of those leading them. Judging by the date, the London bombings were soon to blow the hoodies off the headlines. By the time the dust settled the threat posed by jogging-tops was long forgotten.
Hopefully it won’t take anything as awful as the London bombs to remove ‘knife culture’ from the front pages, but in the event of slow news summer (i.e. no large quantities of dead westerners) we can still fully expect the issue to wear-out and slip from the public eye. As a threat with a long pedigree, and a long list of personas (teddy-boy razor gangs, skinheads with flick-knives) it will surely re-emerge in time, with a suitably macabre new name. But for the meantime it will be consigned to the same scrapheap, or rather recycle bin, as mad dogs and trampoline photography.
In the midst of a given panic such observations will likely encounter indignation. Some will contend that even if such campaigns are short-lived and insincere they are better than nothing. But it’s a difficult position to defend. In most articles the growth of ‘knife culture’ is attributed to two factors, fashion and fear: Some children see knife ownership as an essential part of seeming tough while others claim it's necessary for self-defence. If this is the case then saturation media coverage can only exacerbate the problem. The press are actually cranking-up both the sinister glamour and the perceived threat.
And even if evidence could be found that a saturation of ‘knife culture’ articles really does reduce knife crime, wouldn’t this imply negligence of other topics? The fashion for reporting every single dog attack on every single news bulletin has long passed but the attacks continue. Should we assume that the current crusade is causing more children to be mauled by diverting our attention onto knives?
The only possible beneficiaries it seems are those breast-beating from the bandwagon. Cherie Blair must be hoping for a bit of the Princess Diana landmine factor to rub off on her. Perhaps it’ll help to detract from the great lake of children’s blood her husband has spilt. The media on the other hand always enjoy a firm moral stand when there’s no risk of its own implication. British newspapers don’t have a history of excusing children for stabbing each other like they do for excusing governments that drop bombs on children. A convincing moral crusade should always focus on the guilt of others, the last thing you want on board is uncertainty about your own deeds.
