It all began in November 2019 in conversation with the Chairman of the Tutu Foundation UK in London, Clive Conway, and the leading educationalist Sir William Atkinson, who had 'turned around' Phoenix High School, a secondary school near White City, and who is claimed to have been the inspiration behind Lenny Henry's character in the 1999 BBC TV series “Hope and Glory”. Both of them were enthusiastic exponents of societal reform, experts at bringing hope, and doing nothing just for glory. I was infected by what they had done, and the sleepless night that followed provided the inspiration for the journey I then began. I had only recently retired from practice at the criminal Bar, including a spell of five and half years heading a legal department for all three armed services, and was soon to retire after some 34 years as a part-time judge in the Crown Court. What could I do now to bend such experience to some enduring and positive end?
I had for something like 51 years been hearing testimony of some of the most tragic human stories that one could imagine, in the courtroom, in the cells with my clients, and from victims and families of those who had lost loved ones. I had been attacked with a large knife myself on one occasion overseas, by a boy who could have been not much more than 11 years old, who appeared to be high on drugs, and severely lacking in the maturity of judgment that might be required to hold him back. I felt for him, as he had nothing, and had lost his way as well. If he had been caught, he would have been unlikely to have survived what lay in store in that country.
For years, I called witnesses and teased their painful stories from them. I too recall the fear I felt myself, and the value of the kindness and support of strangers that followed. I heard the vivid accounts in every Crown Court in Greater London, where I had practised most of my life. I had met them, and seen how their lives had been shattered, and I had begun to understand how many who found themselves on the wrong side of the law had got there in the first place. Those that had done wrong received the punishment that society demanded that they receive, and a spell inside was what usually followed. Whilst deserving of punishment, what did we really offer to rehabilitate these very young lost souls, and what did we all do to offer self-belief and hope? The alternative for them was a cycle of crime, unemployment, and perhaps, the dangerously enticing but often lethal attraction of employment selling drugs as part of a gang. It seems to me that everyone has a duty to stop this happening. Put bluntly, knife crime, and our failure to deal with it, threatens the lives, hopes and opportunities of a generation of our young people in our cities and towns all over the country, and damages the lives of all those who care for them.
So, I left that supper with these great men, determined to do something myself. I was not young anymore, but I could still use any influence I had to provide a platform of real value. Real collaboration with those who know how to turn the levers of change, and who had worked often for years trying to directly influence the shattered young lives I had seen standing before me, was always going to be the key. What has been so encouraging is that so many who have contributed to the launch of this website speak of the value of such collaboration.
That inspiring evening was over a year ago. Today, with the help of some amazing individual and corporate funders, and with encouragement of so many, we have this website, and its social media arms. We have the additional backing of the students and staff of the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University behind us. We have a centre for news and information exchange, and a quarterly magazine. As we travel forward from today, we shall be a focus for research, and we hope your first port of call, if you are looking for help, or just want to offer it. There will be much to improve on this website, and we will learn.
We aim one day to be perhaps the most useful and accessible multi-facetted resource in Greater London for those organisations of every size and kind that are seeking to change young lives for the better, and to offer some real hope through information exchange, and for all those who directly, or through others, seek to find that help. That means hope of a life away from substance abuse, domestic harm, and gang culture. It means the hope of employment whatever the past might show. It means finding someone to care, to offer mental health support and mentoring, to help to find new pathways, to divert, to train and to inspire a future that is really worth having. We are determined that sports organisations, the Arts, mental health organisations, youth organisations, as well as educational, police, and governmental agencies, all join with businesses and community-based organisations in this broad collaboration. Through this website, we are joining together on a road where we can locate the pitfalls into which so many young lives have fallen, and provide the stepping-stones, the bridges and a destination for their hopes. We hope this website, properly used, can encourage them along every step.
As we built our database of information, we realised how many far more committed men and women have been working on their own for years doing such inspiring things in communities where these problems first emerge, and in the places where, in the end, solutions will be found. For them too, this website offers a window into a world of information and collaborative opportunity. Positive change can happen when people work together.
Finally, we ask everyone who has vested time and experience in the issues that this website draws together, to use the facility we offer, to add entries we have missed, to update the entries we have, and to use our news service advertise events and opportunities that should be shared. Please do this, and together we will have served our great city. Lastly, may I thank the many people who have helped me on this journey, who are mentioned elsewhere on this website, and in particular Dr Nadia Habashi FRSA, whose skills and contacts have been quite invaluable.
If you find what you see on this website helpful, however insignificant it may seem, please tell us. This will be so encouraging for us. Please also contact us if you would like to be included in our directory, be considered as a partner, or wish to post some news story here to inspire us all in the work we are trying to do.
Bruce Houlder
Founder www.fightingknifecrime.london
Email: Bruce.houlder@fightingknifecrime.london
