Violent gangs are turning our streets into a war zone...

IN assembly at my son’s school this week they weren’t discussing the arrangements for sports day. Or the closing date for the summer raffle.

No, they were being lectured on how to avoid getting stabbed to death at the weekend.

And as a boy his age, just 15, was killed a mile or so away last Saturday evening, it seemed a pretty good topic for assembly.

According to figures out this week, there are now 30,000 British children aged between 10 and 15 in gangs.

And the number of kids between 10 and 15 being treated for stab wounds in England has increased by 69% in five years.

We’re not sending our kids out to the cinema and a Nando’s on a weekend now – we’re sending them into a war zone.

The reasons for this are long and complicated: there’s a booming drugs trade dependent on youngsters for its distribution network; drill music; social media posturing; an increase in school exclusions; a reduction in children’s services and referral units; and a general sense of hopelessness among many young people.

But also, increasingly it feels that gangs are thriving purely because they’re there.

They are there sprawling in the void in some kids’ lives which should be filled by parents who care, a community which guides and police who discipline.

Or as children’s commissioner Anne Longfield says, criminals are preying on youngsters by “taking the place of society”.

It’s a devastating assessment. It’s more than 30 years now since Margaret Thatcher made her famous comment in an interview with Woman’s Own (where else?) that “there is no such thing as society”.

But however bleak things may have appeared then – after eight years of Tory austerity – they’re now even worse.

Sports centres, libraries, pubs, shops, police stations, youth clubs

There is an awful void in some kids’ lives

and toddler groups have faded from view in recent years. A double whammy of public funding cuts and the advance of souless online traders have ripped the heart out of communities.

They have shredded what sense of society made it through the Thatcher years.

Meanwhile, police are under resourced with morale at rock bottom. And parents? Well some of them just aren’t up to the job.

And this – where 10-year-olds join gangs to gain a sense of belonging – is where we end up.

My son isn’t a gang boy. I’m sure your sons and grandsons aren’t either.

But there is nothing preventing any of them from falling victim to this growing army of the disaffected, dispossessed and undisciplined.

And until our politicians come up with a serious plan to mend our broken youth, they will continue to remain at risk.