DESNÉ MASIE: UK enters terrifying era of mass stabbings with London train attack 

I am writing this column from Ulverston in the stunning Lake District of Cumbria, England. It is a perfect autumn Sunday with blue skies and calm scenery of lakes, mountains, forests and beaches. But my peace of mind is disturbed by thoughts of the stabbings that happened on Saturday night on a high-speed train in Cambridgeshire. Two men stabbed an estimated 11 people, one of the worst violent incidents in the UK’s recent memory.

The train was the 6.25pm LNER service from Peterborough to King’s Cross in central London. Around the same time, I was travelling on an Avanti train out of London Euston to Lancaster after having taken a Thameslink Peterborough train to get to Kings Cross from Blackfriars.

I often tell people one of the reasons I enjoy living in the UK is that an intrepid woman can travel safely on her own. I’ve been all around the Scottish highlands and islands by coach and train and done the length and breadth of the UK on my adventures. But now I’d think twice.

Many South Africans who emigrate to the UK cite SA’s high crime rate as a precipitating factor. But the UK, especially London, is not the safe haven it used to be.

I was relieved when I arrived in Cumbria to be able to use my phone to navigate to my hotel without fear of one of London’s notorious moped phone thieves swiping my handset out of my hand. Incidentally, Cumbria is one of the UK’s safest regions with the lowest knife crime statistics. I honestly think it’s because people here are close to nature, which makes it feel like less of a pressure cooker.

Knife crime in the UK is getting out of hand. The country has one of the toughest gun licensing regimes in the world, with shotguns and rifles effectively banned. It is rare to hear of homicides taking place by gun, which I always felt comforted by after SA’s high rate of gun crime, where almost half of all violent attacks involve a firearm.

For a long time I also thought the UK was far safer than the US, where “lone-wolf” mass shootings are so rife that there are sometimes foreign office warnings in place for travel there.

But the unfortunate side effect of the UK’s tough gun laws has been the rise and rise of knife-related violence, the statistics of which are hair-raising. And most worrying is the new era of mass stabbings.

The train stabbing on Saturday night evokes terrible memories of the Southport stabbings in which a mentally ill teenager, Axel Rudakubana, went on a rampage at a children’s dance class in Southport in July 2024, killing three young girls and injuring 10 other people.

While mass stabbings get the most attention, the cumulative smaller daily incidents are becoming equally horrific. According to the House of Commons Library, in the year ending March there were about 49,600 offences involving a sharp instrument in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester).

Home office data shows there were 262 homicides using a sharp instrument, including knives and broken bottles. This meant sharp instruments were used in 46% of the 570 homicides that occurred in England and Wales in 2023/24. Office for National Statistics data shows that in 2024/25, Metropolitan Police (serving Greater London) recorded the highest rate of 182 offences per 100,000 population. In contrast, Cumbria Police recorded the lowest rate of 31 offences per 100,000.

It’s difficult to say what legislators should do from here as mass stabbings proliferate in the UK. For today, my thoughts are with the victims and their families.

• Dr Masie is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.