After three tragic spates of knife violence rocked Nottingham, and were subsequently highly publicised, local campaigners organised a demonstration in Old Market Square to draw attention to the underlying, community problems that cause it. LeftLion went down to report...
It was a bright morning, with clear blue skies, on Saturday 8 March, when dozens of local people assembled in Old Market Square in wake of three spates of knife violence in-and-around the city centre.
The gathering had been organised by Dr Marcellus Baz, the leader of local social enterprise Switch Up. The mood was more impassioned than it was sombre; beside Dr Baz a four-sided placard had been set up for attendees to write what they thought the root causes of knife violence were.
Standing in front of the council house, Dr Baz asked everyone present to shed doubts and misgivings about tackling knife violence in Notts, particularly among young people. “The power is with the people,” he said. “The solution lies with you.”
It's all too easy to see knife violence as somebody else’s problem, especially if it appears to us just as a statistic. Earlier this month Nottinghamshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner told the BBC that knife crime in the county is statistically down since 2024.
However, since 2022 Notts police still recorded 1,223 incidents of weapon possession, which has made us 154% of the national rate for that crime. Further, looking at how young people below eighteen are so often associated with these cases, it’s clear that there’s a systemic problem that needs to addressed.
Many other speakers succeeded Dr Baz, including Nottingham East MP and LeftLion columnist Nadia Whittome, campaigner Roger Henry and local Zoe Cooke who tragically lost her son in a high-profile case of knife violence four years ago.
Each speech magnified an angle of the problem, be that public service underfunding, systematic racism, the eroding of community centres and cultural spaces, holding young people to account for their actions or just a general decay in what young people might see as an enriching life.
On meeting Keith Turney, a member of Zoe Cooke’s family, I asked him what he thought the underlying problems were: “it’s fear that’s running through our schools,” he said. “This fear that children have, wanting to protect themselves from vicious bullies, means that all they feel they have is a knife, because that equalises things. It’s not stopping the carrying of knives, that’s the problem, it’s stopping the fear that causes that.”
“When I was growing up on the Pit Estate: okay you’d have bullying and punch-ups,” he continued, adding “but I don’t remember growing up in fear. It just seems continual, and omnipresent now.”
Research definitely indicates that mental health and knife violence remain interwoven in the UK. Last year researchers at the Uni of Nottingham found that two thirds of knife violence offenders have mental health issues, so in most cases trauma focused therapy is more important than a ‘one-size-fits-all solution.’
There are also examples of this approach working well: back in January, Marcellus Baz told LeftLion that tackling trauma is central to Switch Up’s approach in lifting young people out of disadvantaged backgrounds: “it’s about tackling root causes,” he told us, adding, “not symptoms.”
As the demonstration dissolved the mood remained ambiguous. Many speakers were hopeful for the future but others were disappointed at the turnout that morning, especially the lack of young people present.
All the same solutions had been posed that morning, and emotions about the issue had been expressed. LeftLion can also confirm that meetings between local representatives, the city council and the police have been arranged for this month. Large scale solutions remain to be seen but change continues to be hoped for.
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