I've had a knife pulled on me and seen people chased with machetes – so I had to do something

Last year, I sat down to interrogate my upbringing and why my hometown, Luton, had its image. But through this, I wanted to reflect on why a working-class community might be surrounded by so much hostility. And in turn, how it affected young people growing up in the town like me.

It’s sad to say, but Luton is a town with one of the worst knife crime violence rates amongst young people in the UK.

My play, The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return, comes to Southwark Playhouse this September before touring the UK. I wrote this play as I was terrified by this issue and also felt a deep passion for needing to platform a story that spoke about this.

See, I grew up in Luton during the late 90s into the early 00s. This was in the wake of the financial crash, where Luton, and many other working-class towns, were suffering under a government-declared austerity – no jobs, no houses, a struggle for survival. Everyone was angry, and anger always breeds violence. We were surrounded by it.

And for young people like myself at the time, all of our youth services were shattered, and youth employment was at an all-time low. At the same time, the rise in gang culture or county lines was plaguing the town. It was so easy for young people to feel vulnerable, and you constantly felt the need to protect yourself.

And I tell you, when you feel this way in a town where danger lurks around any corner, the idea of protecting yourself becomes the number one priority, and sadly, the common misconception with protection was carrying a knife.

I’ve had a knife drawn on me. A boy I grew up with was stabbed 15 times on a night out. I’ve seen people chased with machetes and witnessed one fall out of a friend’s bag during class at school. I’ve spoken with mothers who have lost their children to a stabbing.

There was no support. The government had abandoned those most in need.

So I had to start writing.

Knife crime is not just a statistic; it’s a national epidemic. It is an unacceptable reality. Every week, I am reading headline after headline of another teenage killing. It’s harrowing. Why are we living in a society where this has become normal, commonplace?

Read more:

• Adolescence forced the country to sit up and take notice. But what’s next?
• Boris Johnson and David Cameron are not sticking knives into human beings. So what stops them?
• Cuts on our children’s faces from knife crime are undeniably caused by cuts to youth services

So, the play became an interrogation of the repression and suffocation of working-class towns like Luton and how that breeds crime and violence. The image you have of my town stems from systemic neglect, and so I had to challenge that narrative. In a way it has become a love letter to Luton, but alongside this, it is a deep investigation into violence.

And if this was all happening 15 years ago, has anything changed?

The simple answer is no – they are worse. The figures and statistics are chilling. Over the past 10 years, the number of teenagers killed with a knife or sharp object has increased by a shocking 240%. The murders of boys under the age of 16 have also reached a 10-year high, now at a staggering 300% increase compared to a decade ago, and the number of girls under the age of 16 murdered with a knife has doubled in the last year alone. Knife-enabled crime totalled 54,587 offences in the year ending December 2024.

Even Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, warned of the £450 million funding gap for knife crime intervention and said that if there isn’t more government backing, then rates of these crimes could only rise.

And do any of the above figures tell you that the government has control of this?

No. We are in a perpetual cycle of being let down. A perpetual cycle of feeling abandoned.

So, it takes amazing people, like The Ben Kinsella Trust (with whom I have partnered on this play), to carry the responsibility for change, and I needed to be a part of it.

So, Chaos… tries to use hope as a radical art. It follows two 16-year-old boys as they chase the highs of youth against a backdrop of systemic neglect, venturing towards the biggest house party of their lives.

With Ben Kinsella Trust, we are running a theatre-infused knife crime intervention programme looking to benefit a thousand young people in the UK. We give them an opportunity to rewrite the ending.

This is what they need. This is what is lacking. Ben Kinsella has proven that prevention works. That through education and early intervention, we can break the cycle of violence. But none of us can do it alone. We need collective responsibility and government backing.

If you read this and want to support us, we are actively looking for people to help fund bringing young people to our show and take part in our intervention work.

Contact us at chalklinetheatre@gmail.com or, at the very least, see what you can do locally to protect your young people.

Sam Edmunds is the creator of The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return, which runs at the Southwark Theatre from 3-27 September.

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