Frances Lawrence repeated her criticism of the Government, saying it had not gone far enough in its response to the killing on December 8 at St George’s School in Maida Vale, west London.

Speaking after Mr Lawrence was voted personality of the year by listeners to Radio 4‘s Today programme, Mrs Lawrence said that government moves to tighten laws on the possession of knives, announced a few days after her husband’s death, were not enough. She called for a forum of politicians, churchmen and ordinary people to try to provide a framework of guidance to escape from what her husband called the “obsessive drive for personal possessions” and to return to spiritual values.

She said: “It is not enough to get rid of knives. That won’t get rid of violence. We have really got to attack it on a much more basic level. The time is long overdue.”

Mr Lawrence, 48, was fatally stabbed outside his school after going to the assistance of a pupil who was being attacked.

Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, said the Radio 4 vote showed many wanted moral and spiritual values to prevail.