A judge has called for action to stop bars fuelling “grisly” knife violence by selling cheap alcohol to youngsters.

Judge Jeremy Carey said there was a feature of a wounding case that struck a cord with everybody who heard it - the amount of alcohol consumed by everybody.

Daniel Beresford, who was accused of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, had downed a great many sambucas after whisky and Stella lager “at cheap rates which encouraged him to get blind drunk”.

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The judge said: “Something should be done about alcohol being bought at low prices and consumed over long periods of time, which depressingly leads to violence.

“This could so easily have been an allegation of murder, so I hope I make my views clear.”

Judge Carey spoke out at Maidstone Crown Court after 23-year-old Mr Beresford was cleared of wounding Andreas Fantousi in Folkestone on December 13 last year.

Judge Carey told the jury: “This was a very serious case - serious from the defendant’s point of view because of the gravity of the allegation, serious from the injured party’s point of view, serious from the public’s point of view, because this case is an absolute model of all the grisly things we read about and see day after day after day.

“It is the reason why you and I are fearful of being on the streets late at night. It is the reason why we despair of young people. It is the reason the emergency services are stretched to deal with situations which could easily be avoided and take them from much needed other emergencies.

"Something should be done about alcohol being bought at low prices and consumed over long periods of time, which depressingly leads to violence.

This could so easily have been an allegation of murder."

Judge Jeremy Carey

“So, it is everything we disapprove of, which we should all deprecate. I hope I make my views clear. I hope what I have said corresponds with your view as right-minded and right-thinking members of the public.

"You, the jury, no doubt echo the views I make from the bench.”

The judge said of Mr Beresford: “He hears what I say and I suspect he has no desire to return to this court. There is one simple way to make that more probable than not. I suspect he knows what that is.”