Southport attacker sentenced for the murder of three children

On 23 January, Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years’ imprisonment for the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar, three girls under the age of 10, at a dance class in Stockport in July 2024. He was also sentenced for the attempted murder of 10 other people and for Terrorism Act offences involving the production of ricin and the possession of an Al-Qaeda training manual. At the time of committing all these offences, Rudakubana was 17 years old.

Knowing as we now do that this young man had come to the attention of Prevent and other services on several occasions, it is natural to ask what else could have been done to stop this. Could those girls’ lives have been saved somehow if we had only taken action sooner? And if so, what kind of action?

Some observers, including the Prime Minister, have been quick to point out that the fact that someone under the age of 18 was able to purchase a knife online from Amazon (which is illegal in the UK) is an obvious point of failure. Proposals for enhanced verification for online retailers are, so far as they go, necessary and sensible. 

But there are many ways for potentially violent people to procure knives or other dangerous objects, and a variety of causes for violent behaviour when it manifests in society. Following Rudakubana’s murderous attack, a deluge of misinformation and disinformation online, amplified or produced by a variety of actors, including EDL-founder and far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA ‘Tommy Robinson’), helped whip up some of the most terrifying scenes of large-scale racist violence in our country’s recent history.

Given this, is the most productive approach to violent crime really to continue playing whack-a-mole with the objects that might be used by perpetrators? Or might we do better to ask what kind of conditions allow this sort of violence to arise?

Could lives have been saved if action had been taken at an earlier stage? 

The answer, I think, is ‘very probably’. But it would have taken a truly comprehensive anti-violence (and not just ‘anti-extremism’) strategy, one which took seriously the many other social factors which lead people into harmful and anti-social behaviour and then set about addressing those causes at the root. It would be a strategy which caught not only potentially dangerous loners like Rudakubana, but also the racist rioters who tore up significant portions of the UK in the wake of his attack. 

I have written elsewhere about the work of Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) now established in 20 police force areas (PFAs) around the UK. They have had notable successes over the last few years in achieving what the Home Office referred to in 2023 as ‘a statistically significant reduction in more serious forms of violence’, as well as a reduction in the number of those admitted to hospital with injuries sustained through violence.

There is still a high degree of variability in the data and at least some of this is likely to be attributable to the variation in how services are provided across different areas. We know Rudakubana was referred to a Youth Offending Team and mental health services at an earlier stage in his life and it will be worth the coming public inquiry examining whether, with proper resourcing, these bodies could have intervened more effectively.

Conclusion

However, the main problem for a government with a frightened and anxious public breathing down their necks after a horrific series of murders is simply that VRUs and interventions like them work too slowly. The labour of reducing the most serious forms of violence takes a long time to bear fruit and requires sustained investment in the social fabric. This does not make them useless, far from it, they have never been more necessary. 

But for politicians and the public looking for quick fixes that don’t involve much spending, it can feel more effective in the moment to start calling for tougher sentences and expanding the definition of ‘terrorism’. It looks like action; it looks like you are ‘taking the issue seriously’. Meanwhile, the next Axel Rudakubana is planning their own deadly attack.