Mean streets: Wrong time, wrong place

Sarah Harris thought the spate of violent crime in London had little to do with her. Then, on a night bus, her world and the one inhabited by knife-wielding youths collided - and life will never be the same

I never thought I'd see a stabbing. I don't carry knives or guns, pick fights, hang around on street corners peddling crack, wear a hoodie or engage in any other high-risk activity. Like many of us who have been shocked by the murders in recent weeks of teenage boys in London, I believed that this happened in a world that didn't touch me. And then, two weeks ago, I witnessed a knife attack on a night bus.

It was midnight on a Friday and I was sitting on the top deck of the N253 from Camden with my housemate. The bus made its way across north London as we ate our takeaway falafels and chatted.

At the junction of Stamford Hill we became aware of three young teenagers running up the stairs. They walked over to the boy sitting in front of us. What struck me was how furious they looked. The boy squared up to the group; they pushed him towards us, shouting and wrestling in the aisle.

The fight escalated, and it was only when I saw one of the boys frantically grabbing at something in his pocket that I began to feel really nervous. Visibly shaking, he pulled a hood over his face, wrenched a large jagged knife from his jeans and pointed it at the other boy. They were struggling almost on top of us with knives, a monkey wrench, fists and legs. We hid behind the seats and pathetically shouted for someone to stop the bus and help us. They didn't seem to care who was watching and who else might get hurt. It wasn't until another passenger yelled to them "Cameras!" that they piled off.

When we shakily got off at the next stop we saw a splash of very red blood on the floor. The bus didn't even stop. It felt as though we had entered some kind of anarchic twilight zone where it was OK for children to knife each other, in front of a bus full of people and CCTV cameras - and no one would raise an eyebrow. When I got home I reported what had happened to the police, but later found out that a young man had been admitted to a local hospital with a knife wound to the leg but refused to "substantiate any allegation".

I was shocked. I've lived in London all my life, and have always hopped on and off buses in the dead of night, in high heels, with expensive mobile phones. "It's fine," I thought."I'm a law-abiding middle-class girl with a degree, a good job and a nice house - it's the "yardies", the gangsters and the "rude boys" that attract trouble, not me". Evidently, that is not the case.

Violent street crime is nothing new. In London the grainy newspaper images of dead young men, and the tattered wreaths of flowers tied to fences and lampposts, are all too familiar. Last month three youths were shot dead in south London in the space of 11 days, and there have been seven teenage stabbings in the past three weeks, including, most recently, Adam Regis, 15. As the nephew of former Olympic athlete, John Regis, he brought the threat of violence into the middle-class consciousness. If Adam, an educated boy from a good family, can be brutally stabbed on his way back from the cinema, then it could happen to anyone.

My 16-year-old brother, Joe, knows how true this is. He's more into PlayStations and cricket than gangs and knives, but last summer his group of private school friends were attacked by "rudes" on Hampstead Heath. Someone was stabbed with a broken bottle and put into intensive care. Joe has already been mugged for his phone twice this year, and recently a boy in the year below him was stabbed in the chest with a screwdriver.

"Something will happen to a friend of mine perhaps once every month," he tells me. "It's a fact of life. At first being mugged makes you feel defenceless and angry, but now I just roll with it. If they come and mug me, I care, but I don't walk around being worried."

In London last year there were 1,200 reported stabbings, and 30 per cent of murders involved a knife, according to Police and Home Office statistics. These statistics also show that around 16,000 males between the ages of 11 and 19 were victims of "violence against the person". Yet police say that violent crime in the capital is falling - down 4.9 per cent since last year. Can this be right?

Det Supt Steve Bending of the Metropolitan Police believes that while there is less crime overall, violence is more prevalent. "The difference," he says, "is that people are prepared to use the threat of a knife at a far earlier stage than in the past. There is an emerging culture among some young people that it is cool to carry a knife." And, in his experience, the young are the most frequent targets.

In January my friend Sonja, 26, was on her way to the pub in east London after work, when she was mugged at knifepoint by three young teenagers. "They weren't scared," she recalls. "They just grabbed my bag from behind and said something like, 'Don't put up a fight. We've had a really hard life so just give us your stuff.'

"They stole my phone, wallet and digital camera - and when I started to cry one of them pointed to his thigh and showed me a big kitchen knife. They told me to run away and call the police - they were fearless. I never felt threatened walking around London before," she tells me. "Now if I see three boys coming towards me, my stomach turns."

It's all perception, according to Det Supt Bending, who reiterates that crime is falling. But our perception of how dangerous London is is a matter of how closely violence spills into our everyday lives. It's only when you see someone being stabbed on a busy night bus that you are forced to recognise what has always existed outside the middle-class ivory tower.

Contained violence is a myth if you are a young person living in London, and no matter what you do, or who you are, we are all on the front line to a certain degree. From now on I'm sitting on the bottom deck.

THE NUMBERS

42,000 Number of people mugged at knifepoint last year

16,642 Number of males aged 11 to 19 who were victims of violence against the person last year

42% Percentage of boys aged 11 to 16 in state-funded schools who admit to having carried a knife

170 Number of pupils aged 12 to 14 who were convicted in 2004 of possessing a knife. This was double the 2000 figure