On July 29th a 17-year-old boy, born in Cardiff, entered a dance studio where children were gathered for a Taylor Swift-themed workshop. He grabbed the nearest girl and began stabbing her. He continued to stab as many people as he could until the police arrested him about 15 minutes later. Three girls were killed. Many others were severely injured.
That much was apparent in the immediate aftermath of one of the worst mass stabbings in British history. The police did not divulge the name, ethnicity or motive of the suspect they arrested (though they said they did not think the attack was terror-related). Online misinformation spread rapidly, claiming in turn that the suspect was, among other things, a Muslim, a small-boat asylum-seeker or a terrorist. By the next evening, a mob had attacked dozens outside a local mosque. In the days that followed, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim riots spread nationwide.
The Southport murders have become a lightning rod for a debate on how transparent authorities ought to be when dealing with crimes that cause national outrage. Critics argue that the police were too slow to name and identify Axel Rudakubana, a black citizen with Rwandan parents, who pleaded guilty in January to all counts related to the murders. The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said the “information vacuum” probably fuelled the riots.
The crimes were themselves something of a perfect storm. That Mr Rudakubana was nine days short of adulthood at the time inhibited the police from saying much about him before a judge gave approval. No clear motive for his crimes has emerged, beyond the desire for senseless violence, making it hard for the public to understand why the attack had happened.
Subsequent releases of information were jarring. Extra, terror-related charges announced months later—including that Mr Rudakubana possessed an al-Qaeda training manual—added to speculation about a cover-up (Mr Philp has called for the planned public inquiry to clear up what the government knew and when). News outlets could not publish photos of the accused beyond court sketches and childhood snaps until justice had concluded. The mugshot then released, depicting a glaring, unkempt man, was a shocking comparison.
Defenders of British justice pride themselves on its discretion. Keeping the media quiet on the alleged facts of a case after a suspect has been charged ensures a fair trial for the accused. Not disclosing many details about their background, particularly if they are a child, protects the innocent from the court of public opinion before the jury reaches a verdict.
Nor is it clear that more information about Mr Rudakubana would have prevented the riots. On the day of the attack the police announced that the teenager they had arrested was Welsh-born. That did not stop thugs from trying to set fire to a hotel housing asylum-seekers. Riots continued even after more titbits about Mr Rudakubana, such as his name and ethnicity, were revealed.
But discretion must be balanced with the need to inform the public in cases that provoke widespread outrage. The instinct to keep quiet solely out of fear of a public backlash is a wrong one. That does happen, even if it is not yet clear whether this indeed occurred in the aftermath of the Southport atrocity. In another recent verdict, it was initially ruled that the names of family-court judges who had dealt with the care of Sara Sharif, a young girl killed by her father, should remain secret due to a “real risk” of harm from a “virtual lynch mob”. The Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in January.
Much about the riots of last summer suggests a deeper mistrust in slices of British society than solely over the handling of the Southport murders. And the state did fail to protect the public. Mr Rudakubana’s fascination with violence was known to at least half a dozen public bodies, including the police and Prevent, a counter-terrorism programme. Whether the state stayed too quiet afterwards is one question; a bigger problem is that it failed to act beforehand. ■
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Correction (February 3rd 2025): The original version of this article called Prevent a counter-terrorism agency rather than programme. Sorry.