The phones in the office had begun to ring off the hook; when that happens I know it’s not going to be good. Then the news came: a teacher in Leeds, Ann Maguire, had been fatally stabbed and a 15-year-old pupil had been detained.
In 1996, I was a youth worker in a church in south London when a local school rang the church and told my vicar that there had been a stabbing in the playground, and they wanted help — that’s how XLP (the charity I run) started. Over the past 18 years I’ve sat and listened to countess devastating stories of grief and have attended funerals of many young people, often because someone chose to carry a knife and use it. Another