'LIFE-saving' anti-knife crime classes are being run in Darwen over fears of children carrying blades.

Martial arts teachers at Sudellside Community Centre have attended a special course run by the Ben Kinsella Trust in London, so they can teach young people with no self-defence training, not to 'freeze' if attacked.

They decided to act after hearing children in their classes talk about a 10-year-old boy they know who regularly carries a knife around Darwen.

Instructor Ray Heeks said: “It’s frightening when the knife crime starts affecting a club as small as ours in a town as small as ours.

“This scheme is aimed at people with no training whatsoever.

“It’s about working on your reflexes."

He added: “These techniques aren’t pretty. They’re about doing something to save your life.

“During training we used a marker knife, which shows where you would have been slashed if the blade was real. It left marks all over these guys who are experienced black belts.

“The skills like making your neck shorter so you are slashed across the face rather than across an artery are about your instinct to survive."

Nationally, in the first nine months of 2010, 126 people died after being attacked with a knife or other sharp object - seven more than in the same period last year.

Lancashire Constabulary does not record knife crimes, but instead crimes involving ‘sharp instruments’. The force was unable to provide figures on knife crime in the region.

The Ben Kinsella Trust was set up after the 16-year-old Londoner died in 2008 after being stabbed 11 times.

It aims to promote knife-crime awareness and educate children of all ages of the consequences of knife crime and what it can do to a family.

Ben’s sister, Brooke Kinsella, a former Eastenders actress, has taken on an advisory role for the coalition government after she backed Conservative knife crime policies.

Lancashire police Chief Inspector Jon Bullas said they welcomed any initiaitve which taught children personal safety techniques, adding: “We don’t have the same issues as some of the larger metropolitan cities in the country and a lot of our work has been around education and prevention. "