My frightening brush with a young mob makes me fear for London - and our children

Two events occurred on Saturday night, with alarming synchronicity: I was travelling through London on my way to meet friends, when I had to walk through Liverpool Street station. As I crossed the platform on my way to take the Tube to King’s Cross, a mob of kids - for that’s the only way they could be described - descended the stairs.

- VICTORIA RICHARDS

They were intimidating both in number (there were around 20 of them) and behaviour, for they were loudly and aggressively chanting the words to “Rule Britannia”.

They were also aged around 14 or 15, at a push. Gen Alpha, if you can believe that. Small, white, male, shaved-headed... and wearing mean and surly expressions to match the red St George’s crosses painted on the sides of their faces; flags that - thanks to the likes of Tommy Robinson and his far-right followers - have come to signify fear, violence and racism.

Led by a couple of ringleaders at the front, carrying cans of beer (presumably someone older had to buy them for them), they traipsed through the station, fumbling the words to the unofficial national anthem. When a couple of adults stopped and stared - one asked them under his breath, “What are you doing?” - they shoved them. Then they lurched, unprovoked, into the path of a tourist who looked European and pushed him, too.

I stopped to ask him if he was OK - he was, but was shaken up. All I could think of seeing these boys, the same age as my daughter, was: “Is this what London has become?”

And then, on the train, I heard about Huntingdon. A savage and similarly unprovoked knife attack on the 6.25pm Doncaster to London service, leaving 11 people injured, including a “heroic” train guard who is in a “critical but stable condition”.