On the morning of Monday 29th July, a horrific attack occurred in the Merseyside town of Southport.
The unthinkable, every parent’s worst nightmare, it saw the perpetrator, a 17-year-old male who cannot be named for legal reasons (owing to him being a minor), indiscriminately targetting children attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga workshop*.
*(The workshop was aimed at primary school children in years two to six and is thought to have been fully booked with 25 children attending the event).
Eleven children were injured in total during the senseless attack, with three having died as a result of their injuries:
Six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar.
Five children and two adults are still in hospital in critical condition.
Despite the police formally stating that the attack is not being treated as terror-related, there has been the usual racist rhetoric doing the rounds on social media, something which has only been exasperated by the media’s coverage whereby, upon watching the news last night, I was shocked to hear them reporting on the suspect’s parents’ ethnicity.
What purpose was there to reveal that the British boy’s parents are from Rwanda if not to cause further division?
We see it happening time and time again. When the rapist is black, plastered across all the tabloids are details of his ethnicity, as though being black was the motivation behind him committing the crime, but when they’re white, he’s ‘just’ a rapist.
And causing further division it certainly did…
On Tuesday evening, hundreds of people attended a vigil to remember those who were killed and to pray for those who are still fighting for their lives in hospital. People laid flowers and lit candles, and a minute’s silence was held.
Unfortunately, however, the night took a turn from one of peace to one of hate, with riots breaking out between far-right extremists and the police.
Officers were pelted with bricks and a police van was set on fire, Merseyside Police said, when violent protests were triggered outside a mosque after misinformation was spread online suggesting that the suspect was Muslim due to his parent’s heritage.
Gangs of masked men started to appear on the streets before throwing bricks at a local mosque, smashing their windows as people hid inside. Hours of violence subsequently followed, resulting in 27 officers being taken to hospital, with 8 having sustained serious injuries as a result of the violent protests involving the notorious far-right group, English Defence League.
Amidst the violence of the riots, one brave woman stood in front of the thugs holding up a sign with a message of peace.
The sign read:
‘One race — human, hope not hate, racism not welcome here.’
If only we could all align with this sentiment.
‘Hope not hate.’
Worryingly though, the police have intelligence of yet more events that are set to take place in the coming days, where the far-right is as steadfast as ever in their attempts to make scapegoats out of the marginalised.
A false report has been circulating online suggesting that the suspect was a recent immigrant who crossed the English Channel last week and was on an ‘MI6 watchlist.’
Unsurprisingly, such reporting, however unfounded, contributes to the blatant islamophobia that we have been seeing in the wake of Monday’s attack.
Also contributing to the islamophobia we have been seeing since the attack are racist politicians who are given a platform to spout their hateful rhetoric.
Nigel Farage, for example, leader of the controversial Reform UK party, (pictured above), has come under scrutiny by some MPs due to the comments he made surrounding the nature of Monday’s attack.
Nigel Farage said that he wonders whether ‘the truth is being held from us’ after the police deemed the Southport stabbings a ‘non-terror related incident.’
Instead of attending Parliament to get his questions answered about the attack though, Farage decided to spread his false allegations online instead, thus earning him the title of ‘Tommy Robinson in a suit’, as dubbed by Brendon Cox, the widow of the late MP Jo Cox.
The actual Tommy Robinson (pictured below) has unsurprisingly also been joining in with the hate-fuelled, completely unfounded rhetoric, too…
In a seven-minute video posted on Tuesday to his X account with the caption, “There’s more evidence to suggest Islam is a mental health issue rather than a religion of peace”, Robinson tells his 800,000 followers that “They [the government] are replacing the British nation with hostile, violent, aggressive migrants.
As I said, completely unfounded…
While it’s important that we gather all the facts surrounding the attack, seeking answers to the questions that we’re all thinking, such as:
Why did the suspect take the 4-mile (6km) journey via taxi from his hometown of Banks, a Lancashire village to the North of Southport, to specifically target this event?
What was his motivation behind killing innocent young girls?
It’s also important that we refrain from speculating so that justice can be sought.
As the truth always comes out in the end, so too will the answers, but to get there, to discover the answers, we must let the police do their job.
It’s natural to feel angry in the face of such injustice, in the same way that it’s natural to want to seek to find someone to shoulder the blame, but it’s both unhelpful and dangerous to be doing so when we don’t know the facts.
The above is a sentiment echoed by the Mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram, who said in response to the riots:
‘Mindless violence directed at the very people who ran towards the danger yesterday, and outright Islamophobia, only distract from the work of delivering justice.‘
And yet, upon searching ‘Southport stabbing’ on Google, the top results are all related to the violence that occurred by far-right extremists…
- ‘Violence in Southport after vigil for girls killed in UK mass stabbing.’
- ‘Agitators accused of Islamophobia for linking Southport attack to Muslims.’
- ‘Southport cleans up after riot.’
- ‘Clashes in Southport after town mourns in vigil for victims of stabbing attack.’
What was supposedly about taking back justice really only caused more hate.
As the sign read at Tuesday’s protests:
One race — human, hope not hate, racism not welcome here.
This is the real threat to Britain; racism, and far-right extremism, where the only ‘truth that is being held from us’ is the fact that we cannot overcome hate by becoming the haters ourselves, and where…
PEACE IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD.
Bebe, Alice, and Elsie, may you rest in peace.
ANARKISS 