Thursday briefing: ​How Henry Nowak’s ​death has been twisted into a rallying cry for the far right

When Henry Nowak’s father, Mark, stood on the court steps after his son’s murderer had been sentenced to life in prison, he was clear: “We want to use Henry’s heartbreaking story to make change for the better. We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred, or tension. We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone”. Henry’s killer, Vickrum Digwa, 23, used a dagger to fatally stab the 18-year-old university student last December, falsely claiming Digwa had been racially abused and attacked by his victim. Harrowing body-camera footage released by Hampshire police shows Henry being handcuffed despite repeatedly telling police officers he could not breathe and had been stabbed. “I don’t think you have mate,” one officer replied. The chief constable of Hampshire police apologised directly to the family yesterday evening and the police watchdog, the IOPC, is now investigating. Mark Nowak called for their probe to be “fearless and transparent”, and urged the government to “treat knife crime as the national emergency it is”. And this is where our focus should remain, with Henry, who his father lovingly described as “one of the kindest, friendliest, and most inclusive people you could ever hope to meet.” But it can’t rest there entirely. Because, in crass disregard of the wishes of Henry’s family, bad faith actors in this country and farther afield have hijacked this singular tragedy for their own ends, fomenting violence on the streets . I spoke to the Guardian’s police and crime correspondent Vikram Dodd about all this, and the myth of two tier policing, but first the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | The prime minster’s close ally Darren Jones sent his commiserations to Peter Mandelson after he was sacked as US ambassador in messages that were not disclosed as part of the humble address release.. UK news | The NHS is taking action to tackle antisemitism after a government-ordered report found that Jewish patients and staff face “routine ostracism” in the service. Middle East | Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire to end hostilities, the Trump administration has announced, as the US looks to overcome one of the largest barriers to reaching a broader deal to end the war with Iran. US news | Donald Trump has threatened tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners including the UK, the EU and Australia over alleged forced labour failures. UK news | Disability campaigners have called on the government to halt plans to cut funding for specialist tech support for tens of thousands of disabled students in England. In depth: ‘Nigel Farage’s cynical hijack of Henry’s murder is no surprise’ Protesters and police faced off in Southampton earlier this week. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images On the night of 3 December 2025, on the streets of Southampton , Vickrum Digwa stabbed Henry five times with a 21cm ceremonial dagger. Digwa’s brother called 999, claiming Digwa had been the victim of an assault. When police arrived, Digwa repeated the lie, claiming Henry had grabbed his turban and called him a racial slur. Henry tragically died from a fatal wound to the chest, shortly after being handcuffed. “The charge, pushed by the far right and their helpers, is that the police treated a claim of racism more seriously than the vicious attack suffered by Henry Nowak,” Vikram says. But, while the police watchdog inquiry is ongoing, “There are no facts to support that, there are facts to support a simpler explanation, which is still disturbing, but of little obvious help to the far right.” Why didn’t police realise at first Henry had been stabbed? The body cam footage suggests it took several minutes for the police to realise Henry had been stabbed. As the judge explains in his sentencing remarks: “It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife through it, would not have been obvious ... Henry was complaining that he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe but that would not have necessarily told the officers how serious the situation had become ... sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released.” According to the trial pathologist, Henry’s fatal injury caused catastrophic internal bleeding, so not the evident blood loss that would immediately indicate a stab wound to officers. But after the video that was made public ends, Vikram says, the police do realise that Henry’s situation is life-threatening. They uncuff him and administer CPR. As the court heard: no amount of intervention, no matter how quickly he received it, could have saved Henry’s life. Is it legal to carry a kirpan? The trial heard that Digwa wore a small kirpan, the ceremonial dagger carried by practising Sikhs to meet ceremonial obligations. It sat under his clothing around his neck, but Digwa also chose to carry a much larger blade that he used in the killing. Reform UK have called for kirpan to be banned, while Donna Jones, police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, is leading calls for a review of religious exemptions on the carrying of knives. But, as our community affairs correspondent Aamna Mohdin has reported, Sikh leaders, who have unanimously condemned the murder , said the blade used by Digwa was not in fact a kirpan, while the Sikh Press Association said plans were under way to ensure every initiated Sikh in the UK would be addressed directly regarding kirpan rules and responsibilities. In recent days Aamna has also spoken to community leaders who report Sikhs being aggressively questioned on the streets by groups of white people about whether they were carrying weapons, as fears of a violent backlash grow. What is the police strategy on race ? In the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis by a serving white police officer, and the Black Lives Matter movement, UK policing authorities published the police anti-racism commitment (pdf) in an effort to address concerns about racism within their ranks. Policing minister Sarah Jones said yesterday that this document was being reviewed because the language in it was “wrong”, while Conservative critics accused police chiefs of trying to reverse engineer results in its call for “equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups”. But only two months ago, Vikram reported that five years on from publication, independent monitors found this document to have had “no meaningful impact”. He makes the crucial point now that “it’s incredibly unlikely any frontline officer has heard of it, let alone read, it, let alone acted on it.” Addressing one of the its contested phrases – that equality in policing “does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’”, he suggests a clear example: someone Jewish may need reassurance from the police that a brick though their window will be investigated as a hate crime given the current antisemitic climate, not just an act of criminal damage. Two tier policing? As we reported in 2024, the myth that white far-right demonstrations are policed more harshly than, for example, Black Lives Matter or Palestine Solidarity protests is a pernicious one spread by apologists for far-right violence. When it was brought up again at prime minister’s questions yesterday, Keir Starmer was explicit: “I don’t believe there is two tier policing in this country.” The prime minister also accused Nigel Farage of ignoring the wishes of the dead teenager’s family, and later, a senior police source warned that politicians like Farage were attempting “to stoke up tensions for political gain” and “were reckless about whether their comments would lead to trouble on the streets” . The concept of institutionally racist policing was first formally identified over a quarter of a century ago in the Stephen Lawrence report. In 2023, a report by Louise Casey found the Met to be “institutionally racist”. Vikram notes there has been a consistent backlash to these findings, despite a lack of evidence from those who dispute it: “When you look at all the statistics for police use of force, Taser use, stop and search, these are all disproportionately used against people who are ethnic minority, especially those who are black.” In March, he revealed how black people are up to 48 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in some of London’s best-off areas. A recent report for Inquest found that black people are seven times more likely to die than white people following the use of restraint by police. What was striking about the Southampton protests, orchestrated by far-right activist Tommy Robinson , was the calculated co-option of language of the antiracist movement: crowds of white people chanting “racist police off our streets” and “I can’t breathe”. Nigel Farage’s cynical hijack of Henry’s murder is no surprise given that the Reform UK leader is eager to channel public anger. Farage faced being outflanked by those even further to his right, including his populist rival Rupert Lowe. As horrific as the case is, it is also almost tailor-made for those on the ethnonationalist far right who are driving an explicitly racist agenda. Who was Henry Nowak? When a tragedy is weaponised as this one has been, it’s too easy to lose sight of the individual at its heart, to forget to be curious about who they were in the years before their death became a matter of public discourse. Henry Nowak, the oldest of four children, was in his first year studying accountancy at Southampton University when he died. Growing up in Essex, he was a keen footballer, loved dancing and was a teenager who “would not tolerate racism, sexism or bullying”. He was a young man who wanted to do the right thing: he told his stepfather he felt guilty about accelerating to 32mph in a 30mph zone just after he had passed his driving test. It’s evident he loved Christmas – his last family outing was to the pantomime, a few days before he was murdered. When his family visited his university hall to clear out his room they found an Advent calendar, with only three windows open.