London Calling - Lessons We Can Learn From London's Knife Attacks

I recently read a headline that claimed the murder rate in London, UK, has overtaken that of New York. Whilst this is true on a month-by-month basis, for February and March, it is not true as a trend, over 2018, or 2017. What it indicates is that London has experienced a surge in murders, in these two months, and although they may remain statistical outliers, they highlight an underlying problem that London and the UK has always had to deal with, which is knife crime/violence. This is not a new phenomenon, and knife attacks have always been relatively common, even before there was a firearm ban. Having lived and worked in the UK, and London, I always assumed anybody that I was dealing with was carrying a knife, even if I couldn’t see one, and I still assume everybody I’m dealing with is carrying a weapon – this may seem paranoid, but life has made me this way. I also work to the understanding that a knife, or other weapon, can be pulled at any moment in the fight, rather than only at the start of the confrontation e.g. you can be punching the hell out of someone, believing that you are overwhelming them/shutting them down, and they may be “covering” and weathering the storm with their attention and focus on pulling their blade, etc. Real-life violence isn’t as neatly compartmentalized as it is often presented in training. It’s one of the reasons that I teach engagement as a means of disengagement e.g. be the first to attack and then get out of the fight at the first opportunity; it’s about survival, not ego i.e. you’re not there to punish, or teach your assailant a lesson. If you consider that many of the attacks in London, have involved groups, staying too long, may also see you in a multiple armed attacker scenario – in such instances, you may want to consider, whether disarming or overly-long combative solutions, which take time, are the most effective options.

This compartmentalization of the different components of violence, can lead us to train in an unrealistic manner, and this is especially true where knife is concerned. If we always train from the perspective of seeing the knife, and having it “presented” to us, before the actual attack, we are not training for reality. Somebody who is attempting to stab, slash or cut you, is unlikely to increase your chances of defending their attack, by either approaching you directly, and/or displaying their weapon. If they do, chances are that they are trying to intimidate you first, because they lack the initial confidence or surety to make the attack, or they have other advantages that can help give them an edge, such as numbers. I was once attacked in Green Lane, London, by two youths, one of whom had a Kebab knife (this is a knife that is nearly a foot long and is used for cutting meat). The knife was kept hidden behind a baseball cap, that one of them had taken off – I wouldn’t class this as a pre-violence indicator as such, but it drew my attention to this individual i.e. why do you just take a baseball cap off, and hold it in front of you, with both hands? As we passed by each other, there was little room for me to create space/distance and control range, and he pulled the knife back from the cap and made to shank it. At such close range, blocking in the traditional sense goes out the window, especially when you are working against an extremely long blade – you’ll never be able to get the arm out far enough to stop the knife, or pull the body back enough to avoid getting stabbed (especially when you are crowded, and your movement is restricted). This is where techniques, as techniques, fail and fall down, and you’re left with concepts to guide you e.g. get two hands on the attacking arm, and stop the movement of the knife, and only then look at possibly shutting the attacker down, before disengaging, etc. Getting temporary control, taking balance, and then disengaging was what got me out of the situation, but not without a 2-inch stab to my arm.

Violence involving knives isn’t neat and tidy, attacks are not always immediately identifiable, and assailants can mask and disguise their movements. When re-telling this event, many people had ‘helpful’ suggestions, most of which were the textbook responses, to a textbook knife shank – where the attacker approaches head-on, with space between them and their target, with the knife displayed, etc., rather than from the side, at close range, with a hidden weapon. Violence isn’t something we can fit our solutions into, and yet this is what often happens, which can see us blind-sided when we go to rigidly apply a technique that we think should fit, in a situation where it doesn’t. Techniques should guide us, and demonstrate ideas and concepts, that we can use to create solutions in the moment. Just as violent situations are fluid, so should our responses be. In that moment we are not there to demonstrate the system we train in, but to use the lessons it has taught us, to survive in that instance.

The best tools to survive such attacks, are in spotting them before they occur, either to avoid them altogether or prepare yourself for dealing with them. In the self-defense world, we often get our ratio of self-protection/personal safety training to physical training woefully wrong. We pay lip-service to identifying the warning signs, to improving our and our students’ awareness. In that incident, I missed the ‘target glancing’ and the ‘scanning”, which my assailants would have engaged in. If I’d been more switched on, I might have had an opportunity to get my techniques to work, but at the same time I have to acknowledge, that my attackers may have been better skilled at hiding and masking their intentions than I was at identifying them, and when that happens the conditions that make a technique work will not be met. We need to train our awareness to give us the time to create those conditions, whilst at the same time teaching self-defense as a creative process.