The Huntingdon horror: this is not normal

‘Be vigilant.’ Among the oddly muted government responses to the mass stabbing on a train heading from Doncaster to London on Saturday night, the words of UK defence secretary John Healey stuck most in the craw. You’d think he was talking about a rise in pickpocketing, not another act of barbarism on British soil.

Barbarism – there really is no other word for it. Eleven people were injured, and five remain in hospital, after a knifeman slashed at innocent passengers shortly after the LNER Azuma train left Peterborough, bound for King’s Cross. The eye-witness testimonies talk of panic, blood everywhere, the killer pursuing his prey as if possessed. According to one terrified passenger, he said ‘the devil is not going to win’ as he walked by.

Were it not for the quick thinking of train driver and Iraq veteran Andrew Johnson – who diverted the train to Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, allowing armed police to arrive and detain the suspect – and the heroism of an LNER crew member who put himself between the killer and passengers, the carnage could have been even greater.

Appearing on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday-morning show on the BBC, as a nation once again reeled from another horrific mass stabbing, Healey hardly found the words for the occasion: ‘I think what this says to us all as the travelling public is: be vigilant, look out for each other. But the British public are pretty resilient.’

He also refused to rule out introducing airport-style security at train stations, and encouraged members of the public not to speculate about the case – sentiments echoed by home secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Yes, there is always a lot of lurid nonsense circulating following atrocities. Yes, our contempt-of-court laws mean wild speculation is not only unwise, but also potentially illegal. But the public would be forgiven for thinking that the message from the Westminster government at this time is: keep calm and shut up.

There is much we don’t know, and plenty we can’t say. The suspect is 32-year-old Anthony Williams, a black Brit from Peterborough. He has been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, one count of actual bodily harm and one count of possession of a bladed article, relating to the LNER attack. In court earlier today, Williams gave his address as ‘no fixed abode’.

But already questions are mounting about opportunities to apprehend the suspect that may have been missed. Footage has emerged of Williams waving around a knife inside a barber’s in Peterborough, the day before he boarded that train. In the early hours of Saturday, he (allegedly) stabbed someone at a London DLR station.

Police have said this is not being treated as a terrorist incident. The government has declined to say whether or not Williams was known to mental-health services.

But whatever the motive behind the horror in Huntingdon, it will feed the atmosphere of terror, of helplessness in the face of murderous violence, that has descended over the nation. Coming so soon after the murder of bin man Wayne Broadhurst in Uxbridge last week, slain while walking his dog in broad daylight, millions will be wondering ‘what if’ – what if they were on that street corner, or that train, when evil appeared.

We can argue about knife-crime statistics until the cows come home; BBC Verify assures us it’s down by a few percentage points, as if that’s much reassurance. But the fact remains that the instances of nihilistic, almost random violence we are now routinely witnessing are both intolerable and, in many cases, avoidable.

Anyone who has been following the Southport inquiry, into Axel Rudakubana’s cold-blooded murder of three defenceless young girls, can see the British state is catastrophically failing to protect its citizens – out of a mix of dysfunction, ineptitude and political correctness.

That Rudakubana was able to break into that dance class, even after he showed up at school with a knife, had harboured murderous intent since the age of 13 and was referred to Prevent three times, points to a state failure of the most grave and despicable proportions.

The headteacher at Rudakubana’s school has told the inquiry that her ‘sense of dread’ about what the teenager might be capable of was dismissed by mental-health workers as racial profiling of a ‘black boy with a knife’.

Or there’s Valdo Calocane, the paranoid schizophrenic who was free to stab three people to death in Nottingham in June 2023, despite a history of violence, a warrant out for his arrest, and having admitted to mental-health services that he wasn’t taking his meds. He, like Rudakubana, didn’t so much slip through the net as easily climb out of it, while the authorities did nothing.

So often, the killers are treated as the vulnerable ones, as those in need of ‘safeguarding’ – until it is too late.

Whether this violence is committed by a disturbed teenager known to harbour sinister thoughts, a severely mentally ill man who was clearly a threat to others, or an illegal migrant who should never have been here in the first place – the picture that emerges is the same. Of a British state so sclerotic, and so hamstrung by orthodoxy, it has become a menace to public safety.

And the response from the establishment? Perhaps we should give up our liberties. Perhaps they should take the tips off of knives. Perhaps Amazon is to blame for selling knives without first subjecting the purchaser to a six-week background check. Perhaps we should just shut up about it, because shit happens.

Be vigilant? Perhaps those in power should finally take some responsibility, and stop forcing ordinary people to pay in blood for their unforgivable neglect.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater