Barely a week goes by without another young Briton being brutally killed in a knife attack. Acclaimed actor and writer Lennie James, who will star in Fallout, the TV version of Roy Williams's play about teenage violence, has watched in horror as the death toll mounts. Here, in an open letter to the knife carriers, he draws on his own difficult upbringing to make an impassioned plea to the lost generation of young boys who visit random savagery on their victims
Lennie James
Sunday June 8 2008
The Observer
Next month Channel 4 will show Fallout by Roy Williams, the screen version of his critically acclaimed stage play. Beautifully directed by Ian Rickson, Fallout is the enthralling story of the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Kwame, and the consequences that befall the four boys involved in the killing, the two girls connected to it and the police officers investigating the case.
I play one of the police officers, DS Joe Stephens, who is returning for the first time to the estate where he grew up to help in the investigation. He identifies greatly with the victim. Like Joe, Kwame had ambitions outside the confines and dictates of his estate and his background. Joe takes Kwame's death very personally, as if the killers had murdered Joe's younger self. This leads him to pursue the suspects with a zeal that alarms his colleagues, and to bend the rules to breaking point.
First and foremost, as it was on stage, Fallout is a wonderfully written, engrossing and entertaining story about belonging, escape, revenge and love. It is also a story that attempts to make sense of the seemingly senseless killing of a 16-year-old boy, stabbed to death for his trainers.
The issue of knife and gun crime among the young is firmly on the agenda at the moment, and rightly so. Since we premiered Roy's play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2003 some 350 teenagers have been shot or stabbed to death by other teenagers or young adults, and that may be a conservative estimate. Twenty-six teenagers were shot or stabbed in London alone in 2007. So far this year more than 100 have been attacked using knives. The number of dead is already at 13 and likely to rise.
Much has been written on the subject of this seeming spike in teen-on-teen violence over the past year or so. Columnists, commentators, politicians, child psychologists, law-makers, police officers, religious and community leaders, bereaved parents, gang members and ex-teenage killers have all expressed their opinions, apportioned blame and offered solutions. I myself was intent on writing a comparison between the war in Iraq and Afghanistan with the so-called 'war on street crime' announced by Boris Johnson, and others before him, and the relative collateral damage and loss of young lives. It was to be an investigation into whether the best response to our young people killing our young people is to declare war on them.
But as I sat down to complete the article, to add some statistics to bolster my argument and to clarify my misgivings as to whether Boris had an exit strategy for his war, I read of the death of Robert Knox. Robert, 18, was allegedly stabbed to death by a 21-year-old who was carrying two knives. So I scrolled up my article to change '13 [dead] and likely to rise' to 14 and likely to... As I did so I wondered how many more times I would have to scroll up and change that number before the article was printed. Would I have to change 16 to 17 and 18 and 19 and so on, and would it still be 'likely to rise'?
Suddenly the article I'd thought would be an interesting and insightful take on the subject became little more than another voice added to the collective hand-wringing and navel-gazing that seems to have characterised the response to this issue. It is all well intentioned and absolutely necessary if we are to find solutions. The problem is that we are so very adept at exploring our own deficiencies but so very slow to improve on them or to learn from them.
Like a huge tanker turning 180 degrees, it takes for ever for our sentiment to be made into decisive action. In the meantime, should the current trend continue, a teenager or two will be stabbed, possibly killed, every week for the rest of this year, like last, by someone no older than themselves.
So instead I have written an open letter to the knife-carriers, to the murderers-in-waiting and their potential victims. I don't know how many of them might be Observer readers, but in this www. world, where this is written may not be where it is read.
Since this article was written, two more teenagers have been killed in London, bringing the total to 16.
· Fallout, part of Disarming Britain, Channel 4's season on gun and knife crime, is to be screened at 10pm on Thursday 3 JulyTo whom it may concern,
My name is Lennie James. I am a 42-year-old father of three. I grew up in south-west London. I was brought up by a single mother. I was orphaned at 10, lived in a kids' home until I was 15 and was then fostered. I tell you this not to claim any special knowledge of how you've grown, but to explain how I have, and from where I draw my understanding.
I want to talk to you about the knife you're carrying in your belt or pocket or shoe. The one you got from your mum's kitchen or ordered online or robbed out of the camping shop. The knife you tell yourself you carry for protection, because you never know who else has got one.
I want to talk to you about what that knife will do for you. If you carry it, the chances are you will be called on to use it. It is a deadly weapon, so if you use it the chances are you will kill with it. So after you've killed with it, after you've seen how little force it takes for sharpened steel to puncture flesh. After your mates have run away from the boy you've left bleeding. When you're looking for somewhere to dash the blade, and lighter fluid to burn your clothes. When your blood is burning in your veins and your heart is beating out of your chest to where you want to puke or cry, but can't coz you're toughing it out for your boyz. When you are bang smack in the middle of 'Did you see that!' and 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' here's who to blame...
Blame the boy you just left for dead. Blame him for not believing you when you told him you were a bigger man than him. Blame him for not backing down when you made your chest broad, bounced into him and told him about your knife and how you would use it. Blame him for calling you on and making you prove yourself. Tell yourself if he had just freed up his phone or not cut his eyes at you like he did, he wouldn't be choking on his blood and crying for his mum.
Then blame your mum. When the police are banging down her door looking for you, or she hears the whispers behind the 'wall of silence', tell her it's all her fault for being worthless. Cuss her out for having kids when she was nothing but a kid herself, or for picking some drug or some man over you again and again. Even if she only had you and devoted herself to you, even if she is a great mum, blame her anyway. Blame her for not being around more to make sure you took the chances she was out working her fingers to the bone to give you.
When you're done with her, blame the man she picked to make you with. Blame him for being less than half the man he should have been. When he comes to bail you out and starts running you down for the terrible thing you've done, tell him straight: 'I did what I did coz you didn't do what you should have done.' Even if he did right; respected your mother, worked to provide for his family financially and spiritually, taught you right from wrong and drummed it home everyday... Even if he nurtured you as best he could, blame him for the generation of men he comes from.
The one that allowed an adolescent definition of manhood to become so dominant. The one that measures a man by how many babymothers he has wrangling his offspring, or by how 'bad' his reputation is on the streets of whatever couple of square miles he chooses to call his 'ends'.
Damn them for letting you believe that respect is to be found with gun in hand or knife in pocket. Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. Anyone who makes them heroes while damning hard-working, educated, honest men as weak, sell-outs or pussies.
If you are black, blame white people for the history of indignities they heaped on you and yours. For the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand or get down on bended knee or having to burn shit down before you are afforded something so basically fundamental as equality. If you are white, blame black folk and Muslims for taking all your excuses. Failing that, blame a class system that keeps you poor and ignorant so the 'uppers' and 'middles' can feel better about themselves.
You have good reason to blame them all. I wouldn't be you growing up now for love nor money. Your generation has so little room to manoeuvre. We had more space to step around the bullshit. We weren't excluded at the rate you lot are. Teachers hadn't given up or lost their authority over us. They still tried to protect and guide us even through our most disruptive years.
The police stopped and searched us, but we fought that right out of their hands - we hoped into extinction. But they want to bring back that abusive practice. They are still hooked on punishment rather than prevention. They seem ignorant to the fact that they are feeding you acceptance of an already prevalent gang mentality. As far as you can see, the police are not protecting and serving you, they are coming at you like just another street gang trying to boss your postcode.
When I was where you are now, generations of state agencies, social services, policy-makers and politicians had not abdicated all responsibility for me. We weren't left to our own devices like you have been. Is it any wonder that you end up expressing yourself in such a violently pathetic way?
We should be ashamed. I am. You have shamed us into a desperate need to do something about ourselves. We have collectively failed you and we should take all the blame that is ours for that... but so should you.
I blame you. I blame you because as a generation you are selfish, self-centred and have little or no empathy for anyone but yourselves. You are politically stunted and socially irresponsible and... you scare us. What scares us most is that you would rather die than learn. Your only salvation may be that still most of you aren't playing it out dirty. The vast majority of young men, even with all that is stacked against them, are finding their way around the crap. The boy you will kill, should you continue to carry that knife, almost certainly had the same collective failures testing him. He probably felt no less abandoned and no less scared. He also, almost certainly, wasn't carrying a knife.
Whatever it seems like, whatever you've read, whatever you tell yourself about protection being your reason, statistics show the life you take will be that of an unarmed person. That is what that knife will do for you. It will make you escalate a situation to where it is needed. It will give you a misguided sense of confidence. It will make you the aggressor. That knife will make you use it. It will bring you nothing worth having. There is no respect there. The street may give you some passing recognition, but any name you think you might make will soon be forgotten.
Your victim will be remembered long after you. Name me one of the boys who killed Stephen Lawrence. Once you've bloodied that knife you may as well be dead because you'll be buried for 10 to 20 years. Banged up for that long, only a fool would look back and think it was worth it. You'll be nothing more than a sad, unwanted, unnecessary statistic.
If you were mine, this is what I would tell you. I would make myself a big enough man to beg. I'd get down on bended knees if I had to. I would beg you to take that knife out of your pocket and leave it at home. I would tell you that I know you are scared and lost and that I know the risks involved in what I'm asking you to do. I know that what we could step around, you have to walk through, and that there is always some fool who isn't going to make it any other way but the wrong way. I'm just begging you not to be that fool.
Be a better man than that. Let the story they tell of you be that you exceeded expectations... that you didn't drown. Don't spend your days looking to be a 'bad-man' - try to be a good one. Our biggest failure is that our actions have left you not knowing how precious you are. We have left you unaware of your worth to us. You are precious to us. Give yourself the chance to grow enough to understand why.
Be safe.
Lennie James
Knives, young people and the law: The roller coaster of tragedy:
24 January 2007 Jevon Henry, 18, is stabbed to death in St John's Wood, north London - the first in a spate of teen-on-teen stabbings and shootings at the start of the year.
1 February 2007 Maximum sentence for carrying a knife is increased from two to four years.
22 February Church and community group leaders attend a Downing Street summit on knife crime. Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid promise tougher legislation, but Shadow Home Secretary David Davis says: 'This is the fourth summit on gun crimes and gangsters Tony Blair has had and at every turn the problem has got worse.'
Speaking on the same day in Manchester, David Cameron says the solution to teenage gun and knife crime is to strengthen the family: 'Gangs are crowded with boys who have never been part of an intact family, where people belonged with and to each other. The same boys may never have known the innate respect which flows from having access to a father's love and direction. They cannot survive in an emotional vacuum and their absent fathers know it.'
March 2007 Five teen-on-teen stabbings in the UK in under three weeks. Odwayne Anthony Barnes, 16, in Birmingham; Jason Spencer, 17, in Nottingham; Kodjo Yenga, 16, in Hammersmith, west London; Adam Regis, 15, in Plaistow, east London; Michael Metcalfe, 19, in Garston, near Liverpool.
19 March John Reid announces that police will now be required to record whether an incident involved a knife, telling Parliament: 'It has to involve personal and parental responsibility as well as the local community.'
27 March A one-off select committee inquiry into knife crime takes place. Martin Salter MP advises: 'We need to cut through all this nonsense and bring all the legislation together in an overarching knives and offensive weapons bill to simplify the process.'
April 2007 Blair claims that teen violence is a problem of black culture and cannot be solved 'by pretending it is not young black kids doing it'. Lee Jasper, senior adviser on equality to London Mayor Ken Livingstone says: 'The government has failed to respond to... a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection.'
1 October 2007 The Violent Crime Reduction Act comes into force, making it illegal to sell a knife or any item with a blade or point to a person under the age of 18. Previously the age limit was 16.
1 January 2008 Henry Bolombi, 18, becomes the first teen-on-teen violence fatality of 2008; stabbed after he gets off a bus in Edmonton, north London on the way home from New Year's Eve celebrations.
February 2008 Government publishes Violent Crime Action Plan, a three-year strategy to tackle gun and knife crime including a £20m investment for interventions and information sharing between police and communities.
May 2008 A survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.
5 May London Mayor Boris Johnson appoints Ray Lewis as his deputy for young people. Speaking at a knife crime summit in City Hall Lewis said 'We need to offer them [teenagers] outlets and guidance that will respond to their aspirations and divert them away from gangs and antisocial behaviour, whether it is sporting activities, after-school clubs or mentoring.'
24 May Harry Potter actor Robert Knox is stabbed to death outside a bar in Sidcup.
29 May A two-week campaign by police in London resulted in almost 200 knives being seized.
5 June 2008 A Downing Street summit results in the prosecution age for carrying a knife being lowered from 18 to 16.
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