The moment when calm of a quiet Sunday lunch at upmarket city bar was shattered

POLICE were called to Tiger Lily, on Edinburgh's George Street yesterday after reports of an individual carrying a knife.

Terrified Sunday afternoon diners were quickly evacuated as officers tried to reason with the agitated man. But when negotiations failed, they rushed him with batons, tear-gassed him and wrestled him to the ground.

A police officer sustained minor injuries, believed to be cuts to his face, in the incident.

Richard Harris, a 49-year-old technology consultant from Balquhidder, was having lunch with friends when the drama began.

He said: "The man was standing at the bar and two policemen came up to talk to him. Four officers moved forwards with their batons, hitting him first on the wrist. He continued struggling so they then used CS spray."

Mr Harris praised the police response and said they had handled the situation "expertly." And he added that diners - although frightened - remained calm: "A few people were a bit upset, but nobody panicked."

He admitted initially thinking the incident was staged - but realised it was for real when police arrived.

Mr Harris said: "When I first saw him, I wondered for a minute if it was a piece of performance art - you never know during the Festival. It's not the sort of thing you expect to see in a peaceful restaurant."

A spokeswoman for Lothian and Borders police confirmed a man had been arrested: "A man was believed to be threatening people on George Street with a knife and was subsequently arrested in Tiger Lily."

A 38-year-old man is expected to appear at the city's Sheriff Court today charged in connection with the incident.

No-one from Tiger Lily was available for comment last night. But a staff member confirmed the restaurant had reopened shortly afterwards.

The Tiger Lily incident was an example of worlds colliding, with Scotland's obsession with knife violence unsheathed in a top restaurant.

In much of Scotland, particularly in Glasgow and the west of the country, knife attacks are regarded as a routine risk of life. According to the latest figures, the number of murders jumped by nearly a third in 2006-7 - with an even bigger rise in fatal stabbings.

There were 120 murders over the period, with 47 of them knife killings, up from 34 on the previous year. And around 30 people a week are treated in Scotland's hospitals for knife wounds. When a record drop in murders to 93 was announced in 2006, Cathy Jamieson, the then justice minister, hailed it as clear evidence that the Executive was winning the battle against knife crime.

A summer campaign that year to get knives off Scotland's streets netted thousands of weapons, and penalties for carrying blades were increased. There was also legislation to curb the sale of non-domestic knives.

But the fall in the murder rate now appears to have been a blip which the then-Labour administration seized on as evidence that they were succeeding in their bid to curb Scotland's violent streak.

And the Safer Scotland campaign to bin knives made no impact on the number of people caught carrying a blade. In the six months prior to the campaign, there were 1,910 arrests of people carrying blades and in the six months following it 1,984 arrests.

Strathclyde Police Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, who heads the force's violence reduction unit, warned that it would take "a generation to change the knife culture".

He said: "The fact of the matter is that too many young men carry knives and if they are carrying them, they are going to use them."

In a grim assessment of the scale of the problem, miles away from the ambience of restaurants like Tiger Lily and the optimism of politicians, he said anti-knife education would have to start in nursery schools and in investment to support parents, so infants would learn the social skills needed to help steer them away from a life of violence.