The British people should rightly react with “pure, cold, rage” after the death of Henry Nowak, Nigel Farage said, adding the British state is a fish “rotting from the head down,” and that urgent change is needed immediately.
Brexit pioneer and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage addressed Britons on Tuesday morning in response to the emergence overnight from Hampshire Police of body-worn camera footage from their officers responding to the death of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, who was stabbed by a Sikh man using a religious ‘shastar’ ceremonial knife. The footage showed officers handcuffing murder victim Nowak in his final moments of life, as they prioritised an invented claim of racial abuse made by the murderer while dismissing the real stabbing.
Farage invoked the description of Britain having evolved into a two-tier society, where interactions with the police are influenced by the race of those involved more than the pursuit of justice and equality before the eyes of the law. The nation must take a moment to “take a long, hard look at ourselves as a country and what we’ve become”, he said, and remarked:
What does he say, ‘I can’t breathe’. Remember, career criminal George Floyd who died in appalling circumstances in Midwest America a few years ago. Remember the reaction to that and the way the police behaved? Within a few days Keir Starmer was taking the knee, Black Lives Matter exploded all over the country. Churchill’s statue was defaced, the Cenotaph was vandalised. And yet what has the public reaction been from our leaders and politicians, and indeed, to be frank, much of the media to this? Silence. Absolute silence. Proof, if ever there was any, that we’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.
The British government manages race relations with hate speech laws, a “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) culture, and “positive discrimination” in favour of ethnic minorities over non-whites, Farage said. Thus, Britons should not be surprised at the instinctive response of police officers responding to a crime scene and deciding who to believe between a Sikh man alleging racial abuse and a white man alleging a stabbing.
While he condemned the individual decisions of the officers on the scene, Farage made clear they were reacting to their training, the policing culture, and its incentive structures. He said, “Much as we condemn the two police officers involved here, think of this, the biggest fear a police officer now has going about his or her duty on the street is the fear of being reported for having acted in a way that was racially biased. That fear now greater than dealing with a dying man lying on the ground.”
While praising Nowak’s family for their dignity after his death, Farage encouraged the public to focus their anger over the death and its handling by bungling police into demands for change. The Reform leader said:
I suggest the rest of us respond to this with pure, cold, rage. This is wrong. All the values and standards of living in a free country where everybody is judged equally before the law have been trashed and thrown away.
And there are one or two things that need to happen very quickly: the first is that the [police investigation into itself] needs to get to the bottom of this and produce a report very, very quickly. Secondly, even through to sentencing, the sentence given was actually lower than the recommended minimum for a sustained, aggressive, murderous assault. And I’ll be writing today to the Attorney General asking him to review the sentence.
But the most important thing that has to change if our society is not to be ripped apart, where communities start to distrust each other and deeply distrust the police and all the other institutions of this country, is we need a change in culture. Enough of anti-white prejudice. A promotion of the idea that white lives matter just as much as black lives. An end to DEI and positive discrimination, but a country that treats everybody equally and fairly before the law.
This is serious, this is urgent. I fear for where our society should be in a few short year if we don’t grip this and do it very, very quickly.
Farage reflected in terms of police culture “the fish rots from the head down” and the government and police chiefs, in order to regain public trust, should start the process of reform “today “.
Following Farage’s stated intention to write to the Attorney General to have the short 21-year minimum sentence for murderer Digwa reviewed, the government said it would consider a review, noting it had received “multiple requests” to look into the lenient sentence. The Guardian notes that the government has 28 days to decide whether to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.