One year on, this is how the Southport attack has changed Britain

Telegraph

5 days ago

A year ago today, 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana walked into the Hart Space dance studio in Meols Cop, Southport, where 26 children were midway through a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. In a 12-minute knife rampage, Rudakubana murdered three girls, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and attempted to murder many others. In January, Rudakubana was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 52 years.
While the survivors and the families of the victims try to rebuild their lives, 12 months on from Rudakubana's attack, its effects continue to reverberate around Britain.
The days after the attack provided a second tragedy. Initially, police stated only that a man 'born in Cardiff' had been arrested. As false rumours that the killer was in fact a Muslim asylum seeker spread quickly online, a wave of public disorder was unleashed in Southport and beyond.
Emotions stirred up by the nature of the killings combined with online misinformation and a lack of clarity from authorities to provoke widespread rioting. This was not just in Southport, where 50 police officers were injured, but all over the country: London, Belfast, Burnley. A judge eventually named Rudakubana, the Cardiff-born son of Rwandan immigrants, who had moved to the UK in 2002, but the fuse had been lit.
In Tamworth, rioters attacked police and attempted to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. Filipino nurses were attacked in Sunderland. In Stoke-on-Trent, 94 people were arrested. In total, more than 1,800 were arrested, many sentenced summarily as Keir Starmer sought to restore the impression of order. In January, Andrew McIntyre was jailed for seven and a half years for using an account called 'Southport Wake Up' to encourage disorder around July 30.
The Southport attack was a crime of such enormity, and the scale of fallout so large, that it has had ramifications far beyond the immediate victims and surrounding area. Policing, sentencing guidelines, immigration, knife laws, free speech, the right to protest: all have been in the spotlight since last July. Ministers promised that things would change. In January, when the Home Office announced a public inquiry into the killings, the prime minister said that Southport must be a 'line in the sand'.
Six months on from that statement, it has not proved so. Fractures exposed by Southport and its aftermath are far from healed. Recent protests outside an asylum hotel in Epping Forest and a supposed asylum hotel in Canary Wharf are obvious examples of stories that can be traced directly back to Southport. But the attack's macabre echoes can be heard whenever an online rumour spreads before authorities can react, or someone is arrested for a social media post, or a peaceful protest threatens to spill over into something more sinister.
A town changed for ever
In Southport, reaction to the attack was grief and fury. Thousands of locals held a vigil, laying flowers and clutching pink ribbons. As the outpouring gave way to rage, the recently elected Labour MP for Southport, Patrick Hurley, told journalists the town was 'united to say the atrocity on Monday, which is the worst in living memory in the town, and also the riots on Tuesday night, are not the Southport we know and love'.
The mosque still has shutters over its windows. Child-focused businesses report lower levels of trade. In the aftermath of the attacks, many other youth clubs and classes reviewed their safety procedures, some cancelling them altogether.
But in other ways the town is slowly putting itself back together. In an interview earlier this year, Marion Atkinson, the Sefton council leader, said Southport would 'not let one person's actions break us apart'.
A new £10m garden is being built in the centre of town, a 'legacy' rather than a memorial. 'I don't think we can move on from what happens,' she tells The Telegraph. 'Moving forward, is how I would say things are going. Our community's response was bravery, compassion, solidarity, and we keep that in our hearts as we go forward. People are still grieving; the most important thing is to remain as supportive as we can.'
The victims' families, supported by Sefton council, asked that there be no large-scale vigils or flower-laying to mark the anniversary.
'This period is incredibly hard for the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie and all of those children and adults injured or who suffered lifelong psychological impact of witnessing the attack, and we acknowledge the huge impact on their lives too,' it said in an open letter. Instead it urged people to donate to local causes.
'While it showed the worst, it also showed the best of us, and it definitely grew our community together,' says Atkinson. 'We have to keep on looking after each other.'
More calls for knife control
Rudakubana used a knife he had bought on Amazon when he was 17, despite it being illegal to sell knives to under-18s. In September 2024, six weeks after the killings, Starmer and Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, launched the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime, with the actor Idris Elba as its figurehead. So-called zombie knives, which are serrated to make wounds more difficult to treat, were banned on September 24. Ninja swords will be banned this Friday, August 1.
Announcing a new Crime and Policing Bill earlier this year, Starmer said that it 'remains shockingly easy for our children to get their hands on deadly knives', adding that 'the lessons of [the Southport] case could not be clearer'.
Patrick Green, the chief executive of the Ben Kinsella Trust, a knife crime charity, says: 'One of the issues Southport raises is how easy it was for the perpetrator to get hold of knives. It's deeply concerning because we know it's not an isolated incident. Recent legislation is a step in the right direction but much more needs to be done. It has never been easier for an under-18 to buy a knife than it is at the moment.'
The legislation includes measures to raise the maximum sentence for selling knives to children from six months to two years, and make tech executives personally liable if illegal weapons were listed on their site. Those trying to buy knives online would be required to submit two types of identification. While the law restricts ninja swords and zombie knives, however, would-be attackers can still easily get hold of kitchen knives. In May, Leanne Lucas, a dance teacher who survived the attack, launched Let's Be Blunt, a campaign to have pointed tips on kitchen knives replaced by blunt ones.
'As a consumer you have a choice,' Green says. 'You don't have to buy a pointed knife. Our kitchens are an armoury. Rounded knives perform the kitchen function as well if not better than a pointed knife. As consumers we all have a part to play.'
The implications for free speech
In the months after the attacks, police forces around the country clamped down on online speech. Southport did not begin the trend for policing social media, but it accelerated it.
The most famous case was that of Lucy Connolly. In July 2024, during the frenzy of online speculation about the identity of the attacker, in which it was thought it might be an illegal immigrant, Connolly, then a 41-year-old childminder from Northampton, wrote a 51-word post on X: 'Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care. While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.'
She deleted the post less than four hours later, but by then, it had been seen more than 310,000 times. In October, Connolly was given a 31-month jail sentence after admitting inciting racial hatred.
Her case has become a flashpoint for conversations about free speech in the UK. Stephen O'Grady, an officer with the Free Speech Union, said the case was 'emblematic of wider concerns' with regard to police interest in online activity. Police make an average of around 30 arrests per day for online posts. In November 2024, Essex Police visited Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson's home over a post on X about the Israel-Hamas war which incited racial hatred.
Coming in and around a United States presidential election in which freedom of speech was a contested topic, particularly by Elon Musk, such cases were used as evidence that the UK – and Europe – was far behind the US on free speech. JD Vance, Donald Trump's vice-president, has repeatedly attacked Europe for its limitations on freedom of speech. In a scathing speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance made reference to the case of Adam Smith-Connor, who was jailed for praying outside an abortion clinic, and argued that 'the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular' were under threat. In May, Trump said he was 'monitoring' the Connolly case.
As high-profile police investigations into the music acts Kneecap and Bob Vylan have shown, it is not only during riots that police are using their new powers, but day-to-day.
This week, it was reported that the police are planning to set up a new elite unit, the National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, to help police online posts. The unit, proposed in a letter to MPs by the policing minister, Diana Johnson, as part of the response to Southport, would offer 'enhanced capacity to monitor and respond to social media at the national level'. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said the proposal was 'sinister, dangerous and must be fought', and that it was 'the beginning of the state controlling free speech'.
Public protests tipping into riots
The eruption of public violence in late July and early August last year saw the most damaging public protests since the riots of 2011. They showed how difficult it can be for the authorities, bound by restrictions on what can and can't be said, to keep pace in the internet era, when a lie can travel the world in seconds. The police were not legally allowed to name Rudakubana, as he was under 18. A local parent, Eddie Murray, posted on LinkedIn claiming a 'migrant' was responsible for the attack, which was quickly reshared by prominent Right-wing accounts. To try to quell the violence, by August 1, a judge had removed the reporting restrictions, arguing that the 'idiotic rioting' made it in the public interest for the killer to be named.
Dame Melanie Dawes, the Ofcom chief executive, wrote: 'Posts about the Southport incident and subsequent events from high-profile accounts reached millions of users, demonstrating the role that virality and algorithmic recommendations can play in driving divisive narratives in a crisis period.'
Unlike other comparable protests, the riots after Southport were not organised by one group but rather by the coming together of many different groups, fuelled by misinformation. They led to counterprotests, too, by anti-racist groups.
In a recent paper, John Drury, a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex, argued that the Southport protests had more in common with the 'race' riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958 than with the riots of 2011. Rather than protests by minorities against authority, the protests in response to Southport were more like 'some kind of direct action' and were more attacks than traditional protests.
The recent charged protests in Epping Forest and Canary Wharf follow the example of Southport: information spreads online, harnessed by disparate Right-wing groups, who descend on the target location. There, they are often met by counterprotesters.
Georgina Laming, the campaigns and communications director of Hope not Hate, believes the far Right has been emboldened by the killings and their violent aftermath. 'Those more extreme protests have emboldened people to share more racist views than they would have before,' she says. 'It has had a knock-on effect of more persistent everyday racism. I don't think we are prepared for another set of riots. It's essential the police and Government learn the lessons.'
Policing under renewed scrutiny
One of the most shocking revelations in the case was that Rudakubana's teachers had warned the Prevent counterterrorism scheme three times that he was obsessed with violence.
On each occasion, his case was closed because he did not have a terrorist motive. In a major review of Prevent released earlier this month, Lord David Anderson KC argued that it could have intervened and possibly stopped Rudakubana before he had become violent.
'It's a failure of the system,' Lord Anderson said, adding that 'it has to be made clear that these so-called violence-fascinated individuals do fall within its scope'. In January, Yvette Cooper argued that Southport had been failed by the police, the courts and Prevent.
Widespread changes to Prevent have been announced, including new referral thresholds, improved training and an independent commissioner to act better on warning signs.
The Government has also re-prioritised community-based policing and services as a counterbalance to online misinformation. In January, the Government announced another £200m for local policing.
A report about the attacks by Cetas, the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security, said that because trust in official sources was so low, unofficial sources could help dispel false narratives. 'There are quite low levels of trust and confidence in government and law enforcement,' said Sam Stockwell, a co-author of the study. 'So if you can get non-government-affiliated sources sharing the same kind of information and facts, you are more likely to be able to resonate and engage with wider audiences.'
Concerns about knife crime, free speech, immigration, protest and children's safety did not begin with Southport. The attack was so terrible that it exposed cracks that were already growing. Arguably no other single crime in recent memory has had such a disastrous effect on public order.
The chaos after the attack gave politicians, such as Nigel Farage, space to make political hay with Southport. Ultimately, Southport undermined faith in the authorities and became a rallying cry for the far Right. For them, Southport was evidence of the need for tougher policing and sentencing. Despite Rudakubana being born in the UK, it also became a flashpoint for concerns about migration.
For those on the Left, the response to Southport was evidence of far-Right opportunism in using a tragedy to advance its arguments, on immigration, for example, regardless of the truth of the events.
The murders may have united Southport in grief and solidarity, but it is far from clear that it has had such a potent effect on the country at large. A year on, the long-term effects of Southport are only just becoming clear.