AT TIME of writing, two people have been arrested by police in connection with a horrendous stabbing spree of at least ten passengers on a train last night. At least one of the alleged attackers was first shot with a Taser by police officers.
The arrests, in Huntingdon where the Doncaster to King’s Cross train was brought to an emergency stop, mean that legal proceedings are now active. It is highly likely that charges will follow imminently and the media must be extremely careful not to prejudice subsequent court proceedings.
The police, on the other hand, must learn from the mistakes of the Southport massacre of 2024 and not mislead the public with misinformation about the identity of those responsible or create hysteria and conspiracy theories with an information vacuum in which people draw erroneous conclusions.
It is a matter of great public interest that the full truth eventually comes out and the perpetrators of such horrific assaults on unarmed civilians are subjected to the full rigour of the law and receive an exemplary punishment. Nothing else will do. But already the obfuscation is beginning.
And where else but at the BBC? In their online newsfeed at 2.34am today readers were told that the real cause of the attack was knives and not the people who hold them. The report passes off the attempted massacre as a simple episode of knife crime.
It says: ‘Knife crime in the UK has “steadily” risen since 2011, according to government statistics. It’s become such a prominent issue that Sir Keir Starmer has branded it a “national crisis”.
‘Sixty thousand knives have been either handed over or seized by police as part of a broader government crackdown over the past year. Carrying a knife in public is punishable by up to four years imprisonment.
‘Last night’s Huntingdon train stabbing and last month’s knife attack at a Manchester synagogue, which left two dead, have both made international headlines.’
Reading between the lines, it would seem that even before any details of the alleged attackers have been released, the BBC were anxious to protect and excuse them. What does the BBC fear? What agenda is at work here to elicit such callous words at a time when surgeons must have been in their operating theatres fighting to save the lives of the nine victims who were grievously wounded?
A knife, like a snooker cue, is dangerous only in the hands of the one who wields it with wicked intent. Even nuclear weapons, without a desire to use them, are in themselves neither good nor evil. Knife crime is a problem in the UK today only because some among us are willing to use them to take the lives of others. The real question is ‘why?’
The behaviour of the BBC goes to the heart of a deeper problem which must be addressed with great urgency.
It is the willingness to be honest about the threats we face because if we cannot face the truth about such fundamental issues then we cannot defend ourselves and the people we love.
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