Idris Elba has called for more urgent action on youth knife violence – including the immediate banning of machetes and “zombie” knives, and more funding for youth services – saying the time for excuses and delays is over.
Speaking to the Guardian on Monday, the star of Luther and The Wire said society was capable of coming together to solve the problem, adding that experts in youth services and bereaved families needed to be able to sit in the same room as politicians and the police, among others, to achieve that.
“When the world is looking in on us, they’re thinking: ‘[England] must have a tolerance for knife crime.’ And we don’t, we shouldn’t,” Elba said.
He added that he wanted to set up an advisory group comprised of bereaved relatives, youth workers and community leaders, as well as “aspirational” young thinkers he said could give an idea of how their contemporaries were thinking. He said he would also invite the police to think about their interactions with different communities.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. But there is a 10-year-old, that we can intervene in their life between now and 17, 18, 19 with what we think about today. There is that person and we should go for it.
“I don’t speak as an entertainer, I speak as a society member, I speak as a parent, I speak as a taxpayer. I speak as someone that has empathy for young people dying needlessly.”
While Elba, 51, said the approach needed to be multifaceted, he said an outright ban on zombie knives and similar weapons would be an important symbolic act.
“The government know zombie knives, machetes and swords have no place in our society … there is a real strong symbol in asking for that ban to be immediate, to tell us … we are running out of tolerance for what’s happening to the young people.”
The sale of zombie knives was largely banned in 2016, with the threat of prison time attached. But, by last April, ministers were still talking about the need to close a legal loophole before the weapons could effectively be considered banned.
Progress on passing new legislation has been slow and several high-profile incidents have occurred since it was promised; including the killing of the schoolgirl Elianne Andam. The 15-year-old was stabbed to death in September on her way to school in Croydon, south London, with what was believed to be a large zombie knife. A 17-year-old boy has been charged with her murder.
“We’re a society that, when we put our minds together, things can get done very quickly. And we can do it – we’ve proven that. We’ve seen legislation come up very quickly and get passed, and this one seems to always slip under the radar,” Elba said.
Nevertheless, he said it would be naive to assume that legislation alone would be enough. By some counts, youth service budgets in England have been cut by nearly three quarters since 2010-11. Elba said addressing this was a vital issue.
“We need to give young people more of a reason not to carry a weapon in the first place. That means investing in the services that address the root causes of violent crime.”
As part of his campaign, called Don’t Stop Your Future, Elba is releasing a song called Knives Down.
He opened the initiative with an installation in Parliament Square in London on Monday, where neatly folded outfits were laid out; each representing someone who has died. The display was intended to be a respectful tribute to the lives lost, while also shining a spotlight on the scale of the issue.
Don’t Stop Your Future has produced a series of billboards across the country to highlight the risk, including in London, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield.
Figures for England and Wales from July 2022 to June 2023 show that 247 people lost their lives due to knife crime. Those numbers do not include teenagers such as Alfie Lewis, 15, who was fatally stabbed in Leeds in November. or Harry Pitman, 16, who was killed on New Year’s Eve. They will be included in the next set of figures to be published.
Elba said he was keen to combat misconceptions that youth knife violence was localised to people of colour in London, saying that made it “easier for people to turn away from the issue”.
