Harrowing, atrocious, abominable. These words to not do justice to the unspeakable act of cruelty and violence which has been perpetrated in Southport. Three innocent little girls, murdered for no reason whatsoever. The sanctuary of a summer dance class, destroyed by a thoughtless attacker, his motives still unknown. This is the deadliest attack on children in the UK in recent years. It’s so incomprehensible to imagine the horror those children must have experienced in those few minutes, and the pain being experienced by the families of those killed.
The accused is Axel Rudakubana, a 17 year old from Swansea born to parents of Rwandan origin, a child himself at the time of the attack. Rudakubana was arrested at the scene and charged yesterday with counts of murder, attempted murder, and possessing a blade. His motives are still unclear, and I expect always will be. A court date is yet to be set, but the entire country will be anxious for it to find out why, in his mind, he felt compelled to commit this disgusting act. He has not only destroyed three innocent lives, and the lives of the girl’s parents and families, but also his own. He will spend the rest of his life in prison, and rightly so.
Rudakubana, as a minor, should not usually have had his identity revealed until he comes of legal age. However, Liverpool Crown Court decided that withholding his identity was doing more harm than good as theories about the attackers identity began converting public grief into misguided outrage.
The scenes in Southport following the attack were almost as despicable as the attack itself. Fomented by online misinformation, spread by fascist pigs like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Andrew Tate, claiming the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker named “Ali Al-Shakati”. This was picked up and circulated by racist and fascist groups like the EDL, who bussed in their knuckle-dragging membership to Southport from across the country to launch an attack on the local mosque the day after the attack, based on little more than tweets from unverified sources. Local police managed to disperse the rioters within a few hours, but not before the rioters caused as much disruption and damage to the community as possible, a community which they did not belong to.
In the proceeding days, the riots had spread across the country, with brainless bigots using the tragic deaths of three young girls as an excuse for destruction, racism, and violence. These acts of thuggery continue, even as I write this article, across parts of England and Northern Ireland. Hotels housing asylum seekers have been targeted by the thugs, who attempted to burn down buildings where women and children are being sheltered. Businesses have been looted and high streets smashed up, communities damaged, men and women attacked in the street for the colour of their skin.
What makes this moment of profound national sorrow and shame all the more shameful has been the reactions of some of our elected representatives. Not many, but a few. Who they are will not shock you.
Nigel Farage, still euphoric from winning his long-sought seat in the House of Commons, took to Twitter to make comment on the incident in Southport. He did not offer words of condolence for the injured or for the families of the children killed, he did not call for peace and patience whilst law enforcement conduct their work with as much privacy as they are entitled. No, he chose instead to take bellows to the flames of division and ask; “What are they not telling us?”.
This rhetoric is taken straight from the Trump playbook, a man whose arse Farage can still taste on his tongue. His language was vague, the type than cannot be effectively disseminated in a court of law, but the dog whistle was clear enough for vermin like the EDL to take up the call. Farage’s post, although quiet in voice, screamed islamophobia, which is why the first place attacked in Southport was the mosque. Rudakubana is not a Muslim and has no connection to Islam.
But, Farage, Yaxley-Lennon, Tate, and the rest of them are in the minority, for which we should all be grateful. Their views are still on the fringes, but those fringes are, unfortunately, growing wider, like the banks of a river slowly drying up.
Wherever these ugly protests reared their heads, they were met with stout resistance from anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrations, who showed up in far greater numbers than the fascists to protect their communities. Police worked bravely to supress the violence and keep the clashing parties apart, and to drive those seeking violence, on both sides, away. Hundreds have already been arrested, and more will follow. Prisons are already close to capacity, but space will be made to accommodate these criminals.
Because the response to the fascist riots has been so swift, many on the far-right are accusing Keir Starmer and the new Labour Government of creating a “two-tier” policing system, where white people are more harshly treated than ethnic minorities. This is ignoring the fact that you’re still far more likely to be arrested if you’re from an ethnic minority background in the UK, and that the UK prison population has a higher percentage of ethnic minority inmates than the country proportionately. Fascists and racists like to imagine themselves as a persecuted part of society, and fetishize their movement by calling themselves, and thereby all white Christian people, downtrodden. That’s the narrative pushed by the leaders of their cult. This is a lie.
The message must be clear; there is no place and no acceptance for fascism in this country. We must all be anti-racist and anti-fascist. Freedom of speech is precious and must be protected at all costs, but your right to freedom of speech ends at the incitement of hatred and violence. Thus has it always been, and this must it always be. There is no place for it in this country.
stay safe
/e