Don't Vote Labour (Part 13)

The Southport Development

As I covered in the first instalment of this series, Starmer grossly mishandled the riots in the summer. These were sparked, of course, by the killings of three young girls in Southport (and the stabbing of 10 other people) on July 29th. The whole thesis of the government was that 'far right thugs' were using the killings as an excuse to commit violence, and this had been optimised by misinformation circulating online.

It is true that seemingly baseless claims were posted on the LinkedIn account of a local man, Eddie Murray. One, now deleted post, said: "BBC news are lying... The [suspect]  was from Africa. He was on MI6 watch[list]. His name is [Arabic sounding name]". Murray may have been referencing some other sources, but these are unknown.

Another post - the one widely replicated, and shared three hours after the attack - read:

My two youngest children went to holiday club this morning in Southport for a day of fun only for a migrant to enter and... fatally wound multiple children. My kids are fine. They are shocked and in hysterics, but they are safe... If there's any time to close the borders completely it's right now! Enough is enough

The BBC claim Murray's children did try to go to the dance class, but were turned away because it was overfilled. The second post was later deleted, but had already been copied and pasted by many accounts on different platforms. One of these was the Twitter account of an amateurish Indian news site (UPUK News), with the caption: "[a parent] confirmed the knife attack suspect was a migrant". Meanwhile, Bernie Spofforth, owner of a large X account, appeared to have seen Murray's posts. Spofforth Tweeted:

SOUTHPORT - If this is true then all hell is about to break loose. Southport Stabbings suspect, [name], was on MI6 watch list and was known to Liverpool mental health services. He was an asylum seeker who came to the UK on a boat last year.

Note she writes "if true", which is a clear qualifier covering her from committing libel or prejudicing a case. Neither does she encourage any violence as a reaction. It is for these reasons Spofforth was not prosecuted, and rightly so. Nigel Farage had made similar qualified comments, for which he was castigated and scapegoated for causing the riots, but there is no legal case there. Like Murray did with his post, Spofforth took it down, but she was still arrested and spent 36 hours in police custody.

Others spreading the Murray post alongside their own commentary were Paul Golding (leader of Britain First), Nicholas Lissak and Laurence Fox. None of these outright said that the suspect was an asylum seeker or migrant. Laurence Fox came closest, by saying: "Close the borders. Do it now". However, this is implying the suspect is a migrant, not a direct statement of fact. Andrew Tate released a video which did outright state it , but he was not in the UK, thus was not subject to UK law.

So an undocumented migrant decided to go into a Taylor Swift dance class today and stab six little girls. That's right, somebody arrived in the UK on a boat, nobody knows where he's from...

So what did these posters get wrong? The suspect's name was incorrect, he was not a recent asylum seeker or (as far as we know) on anyone's watch-list. The real suspect was not technically a migrant, in the sense he was born in Britain to Rwandan parents and is a citizen. However, Axel Rudakubana clearly has a cultural, ethnic and familial connection to Rwanda (or 'Africa') and in that sense he is not British. Immigration is still a relevant issue to discuss in relation to his alleged crime.

None of these originating claims explicitly say the suspect was a Muslim or Islamist (although the Arabic sounding name does suggest this). Neither do they say he had a terrorist motive. It was other people that publicly made this assumption. The most prominent was Wayne O’Rourke, owner of the ‘Sick of It All’ X account. Rourke was jailed for 3 years, not simply for saying this, but for being inciting violence in other posts. It did indeed appear to be incorrect that the suspect was a Muslim. Rwanda is overwhelmingly Christian, after all. Yes he could have been a convert, but it seemed unlikely. As for the terrorist motive, almost immediately the police had stated - and still state - that the Southport attack was not deemed to have one.

Three months later, there was a huge development.

On October 29th, it was announced Rudakubana would be officially charged with offences under the Terrorism and Biological Weapons Acts, because police had found in his home an Al Qaeda-produced document and a quantity of ricin - the lethal poison popular with terrorists. These charges were heard in court on October 30th. They are separate from the murder and attempted murder charges, made on August 31st. We must tread carefully here, and must not suggest the two things are connected, nor suggest the suspect is guilty of any offence. There has to be fair trial and by the letter of the law he is innocent until proven guilty.

The line the police are taking is that 'motive' does not need to be proven under the Terrorism Act. For an offence to be considered terrorism, meanwhile, they say motive *does* need to be proven. The Chief Constable of Merseyside remarked:

The matter for which Axel Rudakubana has been charged with under the Terrorism Act does not require motive to be established. For a matter to be declared a terrorist incident, motivation would need to be established.

I will leave it to legal experts to debate the technicalities of law here. Suffice to say, once the trial has been held, the facts might cast a light on what was 'misinformation' and what wasn't. It may also place a question mark over arrests, prosecutions or convictions relating to people deemed to have been spreading it.

Did the misinformation - or at least unfounded information - lead to the riots? Did it make certain places or people the targets of protests and rioting? You could say yes - mosques and asylum seeker hotels were certainly targeted. Then again, perhaps it was inevitable that these places received the focus of the rioters, seeing as violent crime, mass immigration, the asylum crisis and radical Islam are inextricably linked in many peoples' minds. It was not right, of course, nor was it right for police to be targeted, but if we're trying to understand what happened, we can't dismiss this perception. Did the riots really require some social media users getting the details wrong? We should also point out the bottom line: the only ones responsible for violence were the people doing it. 'Misinformation' might have stoked the atmosphere, but it didn't put a brick in anyone's hand or set a wheelie bin on fire.

There was also unfounded information on the government, mainstream media and 'counter protester' side. The protests and riots were deemed 'far right' despite only two confirmed extremists having been seen in attendance (a former member of the proscribed Patriotic Alternative and a man with swastika tattoo). Nick Lowles of 'Hope Not Hate' Tweeted there were 'reports' of a Muslim woman being attacked with acid, which was amplified by many leftists including a Labour MP before police dismissed the rumour as false. It was widely suggested or outright stated that the English Defence League (EDL) was present, despite having been disbanded a decade ago. There were the claims Farage or Tommy Robinson had caused the riots, contrary to anything they'd said. Then there was the 'intelligence' - again from Mr Lowles - that there were protests and riots planned at asylum-related sites across the country. This was used to mobilise the hard left rentamobs to come to the rescue and provide a propaganda victory.

All of these aspects can be deemed to have stoked tensions and influenced violent individuals within the 'counter-protesters'. There were many videos during the riots seemingly showing Asian Muslims attacking or remonstrating with white people. Some of these assailants could be held shouting about the EDL and the acid attack. In the case of the Lowles 'intelligence', the apparent misinformation put a lot of people on the streets and risked more disorder.

As for this notion we should 'watch what we say' in case we prejudice the case or end up in trouble, indeed we should. But we should also note that the Home Office Tweeted out a video of a rioter being arrested, describing the individual and others like him as 'criminals', despite no trial having taken place. This followed Starmer and every modern leftist repeatedly calling the people on the street 'rioters', 'far right' and all manner of things,  even when no court cases had been held. Where was the caution then? Motive had been ascribed before anyone had been tried. But those people were the political enemy, remember. See also what happens whenever there is a white man suspected of an outrage against people from an ethnic minority. The suspect can be designated as a terrorist or 'far right', sometimes within hours.

We should look now at the announcement of the terrorism charges. It is inconceivable that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister did not know about the items found in the suspect's home. The police likely found them mere days after the Southport killings. The discovery of these items, and the charges they incurred, must have been kept out of the public domain so as not to further inflame the riots, which were already beginning. Perhaps the government wanted to be able to deny the allegations being made about the murder suspect's motives and background. They must have known, and they chose not to tell. Farage was right that they were keeping something from us.

The police claim that the charges were arrived at after lengthy and painstaking investigations, which took four months. I'm very sceptical about it taking that long, if the paraphernalia was just sitting there. The government insist sentencing is nothing to with them and is up to the CPS. Surely there is no strategic collusion between the two. In other news, I have purchased a bridge. 

The authorities had to announce the charges at some point, but it is almost certain that they stalled them until the riots had been quelled and much time had passed. According to the Guido Fawkes website, GF was going to break the story of the imminent charges on Friday 25th October, but was leant on by the authorities to wait until Tuesday 29th. Instead GF simply reported there was a delay.

Why did this delay happen? Most probably because the fugitive Tommy Robinson had decided to return to the UK and hold a protest on Saturday 26th. It appears the authorities didn't want to ferment trouble there so they sat on the story. It was reported that two-thousand riot police were on standby following the announcement, which shows their level of concern. The announcement also came close to two huge events, The Budget (Oct 30th) and the US election (Nov 5th). The tactic was probably to try and 'bury the bad news' under these, naive though that might sound. Some even suggest the opposite is true, that the charges were announced to distract from The Budget and how poor it was!

Is there a legitimate reason for doing such a thing? Does the government have a responsibility to uphold stability? Obviously there are national security concerns, and the state by law can mandate a secret. If a secret being known would risk the lives of British forces or agents, lose a war or wreck a vital treaty, then it would be legitimate for a government to keep it under wraps. This however, was in the public interest. The crime in Southport touched a raw nerve, hitting at something we hold dear, our children. If we were told the suspect was also allegedly involved in terrorism, it might have informed us of the wider potential threat, allowing us to be more vigilant and able to make informed decisions about our safety.

Let's take an unrelated example. There was a terrorist murder and stabbing in Hartepool on October 15th 2023. A pensioner was stabbed to death by a Moroccan asylum seeker (who arrived here in 2020) enraged about Gaza. All press reporting on the incident was banned by a government 'D notice'. It was only when the trial was over on May 17th 2024 that the details were released. This move, I venture, was not about protecting the integrity of the case. It was about managing the public reaction, either to shield the government from embarrassment, or stop anger rising on the streets. The affair shows it is not only Labour who engage in the secrecy game.

The widespread hostility towards Starmer, needless to say, has only worsened in the light of the new Southport development. Once again he has appeared out of touch with public anger and public concerns. All he can say now is we should "let the police and CPS do their jobs" and wait for a trial to "establish the facts". He has been perceived as an elitist technocrat managing and manipulating the people rather than leading them.

Because what the concealment of these terrorism charges say is that the state, politically led by Starmer, does not trust us to know what's happening in our country without turning to violence or 'extremism'. It suggests we do not deserve to know about the potential threats facing us and our families. It reduces us to impotent pawns, awaiting in ignorance to suffer for the state's policy failures. It also suggests that, in general, the government is losing control of crime and certain kinds of religious-political fanaticism. Their solution? Cover up any suggestion it is happening. Even though it is obvious to those of us who pay attention, they are banking on the average 'normie' not being aware. These folk are expected to go to work, create tax revenue, come home, watch trash TV and not worry about their society teetering on the abyss.

Perhaps to some extent this is working. Observe how the story, though it flared angrily for a few days, has been semi-forgotten while we await the trial in January. When the verdict is reached, the story may be briefly resurrected; but I fear it could soon slide away again, and be one more tragedy in a terrible, growing list.

Written by Ed Pond, 2024, all rights reserved