People up and down the country were last night urged to hand in their pens to UK police stations as part of a nationwide Biro Amnesty, operating a no-questions-asked policy.
The crackdown comes as a commemorative walk was held for Melanie Thomas, a bank clerk, who was sacked following an incident involving a particularly vicious letter sent by an irate saver to Natwest Customer Services in November last year.
"It was a completely unprovoked attack," said Darren Tibbs, Melanie's co-worker. "She may have played fast and loose with the company guidelines on personal hygiene from time to time, but nobody deserves to go out like that."
Before Friday's march, Gareth Strachan, one of the organisers, said: "We're hoping to educate the kids, to enlighten them that, it's not big and it's not clever to carry pens, and to dump the bic and, hopefully, save someone's face."
"They might want to carry a pen to express themselves but they are, by statistics, likely to wind up in trouble at their own hands."
To support the initiative, Swansea police last night put on display their haul of writing implements handed in during a previous amnesty. They included a vintage Parker pen, some illegally imported highlighters and "a particularly lethal-looking home-made rollerball."
