Knife Crime, The Northern Echo

The Northern Echo’s campaign to tackle knife crime was launched in response to the murder of 18-year-old Jack Woodley from County Durham.

He was brutally beaten up and fatally stabbed by a 15-year-old with a ‘Rambo-style’ survival knife. We argued funding is needed to address the root causes of knife crime, alongside the harsher punishments for those who carry and use blades and the suppliers who make them so attractive and accessible to teenagers. Sadly, weeks later 14-year-old Tomasz Oleszak died after he was attacked by Leighton Amies, also 14, at the time, in Gateshead. In January 15-year-old Holly Newton died after she was stabbed to death in Hexham. These tragic cases underlined the importance of our campaign. It shows how so many lives are being needlessly ruined in so many ways. Prime Minister Liz Truss failed to respond to our call for a meeting with two mums who are part of our campaign, and so has Rishi Sunak, although he did issue a message of support to the families when asked. In April, Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper met Zoey McGill and Tanya Brown, who lost her son, Connor, aged 18 after he was fatally stabbed in Sunderland in 2019. They spent an hour together and they pledged to use the mum’s testimony to inform their policies on knife crime if Labour form the next Government. We identified that there are already various organisations and charities in our region working to tackle knife crime but a recurring theme that emerged was the need for ‘joined up thinking’. In May, The Northern Echo proposed creating the North East Knife Crime Taskforce to bring together youth workers, headteachers, councils, senior police offices, crime commissioners, MPs, St John Ambulance and the mothers of murder victims. The idea is to enhance communication between these people and organisations, to enable the sharing of ideas and resources across the region, and to directly address key issues on the front line before causal factors of knife crime can take root. Already we have created partnerships between campaigning mums and St John Ambulance that will see visits to school children to warn of the real danger of knife crime and to teach young people how to treat a stab wound. The first meeting of the North East Knife Crime Taskforce was held at County Hall in Durham in June. A number of meetings have taken place since, including one earlier this month where we were introduced to a new virtual reality software to help educate teenagers about the dangers of knife crime. The success of the Taskforce came to light during the Labour Party conference, when Yvette Cooper referenced her meeting with the knife crime mums – set up by our campaign – as part of her keynote conference speech and reaffirmed her commitment to using this to implement new policy. The North East Knife Crime Taskforce has created a unified voice to address this social ill with the aim of saving lives.