Leading Article: A criminal bid for votes A knife ban cuts no ice
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Your support makes all the difference.Michael Howard has found himself in an unusual position. Bullied by the opposition parties, harried by the new moral majority and assailed by the Tory right, the Home Secretary has retreated backwards, all unknowing, on to the true moral high ground. For Mr Howard has been reluctant, and rightly reluctant, to bow to the clamour for a ban on so-called combat knives. This is a half-baked idea which has survived so long in the political domain not because it promises to save lives - it is most unlikely that it will - but because we happen to be close to a general election. Populism rather than pragmatism is driving the argument and for once Mr Howard managed to resist the lure of the easy vote and the glib soundbite. Not so Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
The genesis of the debate about a ban on knives, it will be remembered, was the letter written last month to the Times by the widow of Philip Lawrence, the London headteacher who was stabbed to death. Frances Lawrence wrote mainly about moral matters, about healing the fractured and violent society that claimed her husband's life and about the need to impart to children a better understanding of right and wrong. She made one notable, practical suggestion, which was that the sale and ownership of combat knives should be prohibited. This was a very similar idea to the "Snowdrop" demand for a ban on handguns, then at the height of public debate. While they roundly endorsed Mrs Lawrence's more general observations, both Mr Howard and John Major, the Prime Minister, pointed out that a combat knife ban presented difficulties of definition. For this they were howled down, both in the press and in the Commons, as ineffectual wimps. The opposition parties have refused to let go, producing a succession of proposals which have highlighted the Government's lack of enthusiasm, and it is likely now that we will have a law after all.
This law is unnecessary. A raft of Acts of Parliament already exists to regulate knives. It is, for example, an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment to carry a knife of any kind in a public place, unless it can be proved that the knife is carried for a good reason. A good reason might be that it is a work tool such as a butcher's knife, being carried home, or that it forms part of a national costume. And a public place is not just the public highway, but anywhere to which the public has access by payment or otherwise - so pubs and clubs are included. A range of exotic (and easily defined) weapons, such as knuckledusters, swordsticks and flick-knives, is also specifically banned. As for the use of knives, if you threaten someone it can constitute an assault, which carries heavy penalties. And if you wound or kill, Mr Howard has seen to it that a long prison term awaits you. Knife crime is increasing, but a new ban on a particular type of knife which is both rare and expensive is hardly likely to make a difference in tackling it. There is no evidence that it would even have saved Mr Lawrence, for we do not know what type of knife was used in that murder. A knife was recovered in a nearby street, described as a specialist craft- or carving-type knife, but police could not prove it was used. It was not a combat knife.
The argument is made that a crackdown on the advertising and sale of these knives, which are without doubt vile objects marketed in a vile manner, would do something to curtail the knife culture which is taking hold among young gang members. This might be a good thing, but alongside the growing problem of knife crime, the vast majority of which - to repeat - has nothing whatever to do with combat knives, it is frankly frivolous. We do not need new laws; we have them aplenty (and in case we did not, Mr Howard has now extended police powers to stop and search for weapons). We need instead to do something about the more effective enforcement of the laws that we have, and above all we need to do something about the causes of crime. This was once Labour's catchphrase, but Jack Straw, the shadow Home Secretary, seems to have forgotten it. Instead he has been profiting from the public approval that greeted Mrs Lawrence's letter to embarrass an uncharacteristically prudent government into action, and he has enjoyed the support of the Liberal Democrats in doing so. This may be good electoral politics, but it has nothing to do with mending a fractured and violent society.
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