Protecting fair trials means ignoring far-right conspiracy theories

Don’t let the Axel Rudakubana case warp the justice system

Jan 21, 2025

Until a few weeks ago, I thought that Axel Rudakubana was a lone madman. After he stabbed to death three girls at of, all innocuous events, a Taylor Swift themed party in Southport, the authorities gave the distinct impression that there was nothing more to be said about him.

His murders provoked race riots across Britain. If the police lines had broken in Southport, worshippers would have burned to death in their mosque. If the police had failed to contain the mobs in towns across the Midlands, asylum seekers might have died in their hostels.

The violence was disgusting in and of itself. The targets of the rioters were wholly innocent people. That Elon Musk was legitimising them as soldiers in a “civil war” shows that leftists aren’t always wrong, and when they call him a far-right conspiracist, they are telling it like it is.

But there is no doubt that criticism of the rioters was helped by the belief that Axel Rudakubana was an unaffiliated psychopath, whose crimes carried no meaning beyond the fact that they were horrific acts of violence.

We should have recognised at the time that this was an immoral debating point.

Communal punishment is never justified. Yet many who shouted at the rioters and the men who led them on implied that it might have been justified under different circumstances.

When they said it was wrong to threaten violence because Axel Rudakubana wasn’t a migrant, or a Muslim, or any variety of political or religious extremist, they left open the possibility that violence would be justified if it turned out that Rudakubana was all or any of the above.

Which is exactly what has happened.

Yesterday Rudakubana pleaded guilty to all charges. It was only months after his murders that the prosecution revealed that, far from being a random killer, Rudakubana had been referred to the government's counter-terrorism Prevent programme three times because of his obsession with violence. He had also produced the biological toxin, ricin, and possessed an al-Qaeda training manual.

All of this feeds into a conspiracy theory pumped by Musk, the UK’s native far right movement, and elements in the Tory party and press that the police go easy on Muslim crimes for fear of encouraging racism. To their shame they may have done in the Telford grooming scandal. But the accusation is ludicrous in this case as Rudakubana has been arrested, prosecuted and will doubtless be jailed for the rest of his wretched life.

For all that, because the authorities did not announce the terrorist connections as soon as they found them, the right, which always wanted to diminish the seriousness of this summer’s riots, is having a field day.

Nigel Farage said, “The country needed to know the truth about this murderer and that he was known to the authorities. Even MPs were banned from asking questions about this man’s background. Cover-up Keir convinces no one.”

Matt Goodwin, a mild academic who is now trying to slum it as a wannabe rabble rouser, said in the Mail, “I have never experienced such a concerted effort by government and Left-leaning sections of the media to stifle dissenting voices.”

Well Matt ought to get out more, because all that happened was that the UK’s contempt of court laws came into play.

From the moment a suspect is charged with a crime, journalists are forbidden to mention anything that might prejudice their trial. As indeed are MPs, as Farage surely knows.

American reporters, who are used to a free-for-all, are often astonished by the level of secrecy the UK demands before a trial. But the fact remains that, in this country, the need to prevent a jury being biased takes precedence.

If a trial is prejudiced, the defence can demand that the suspect walks free.

This is what Starmer meant today when he said:

If this trial had collapsed because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.
The prospect of justice destroyed for the victims and their families.

I would never do that. And nobody would ever forgive me if I had.

I have absolutely no time for Farage, and all the other grifters and phonies who for the sake of a few votes or readers are pretending they don’t know this. But, let us be fair and accept that contempt of court law has a musty smell about it. The restrictions come from a time when there were a handful of TV stations and 20 or so national newspapers. It was easy for the law to insist on silence before a case came to court.

In our age of social media how can judges monitor everything that is said?

But be careful before you wish away our law. Years ago, I asked Jack King, from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in the US, whether allowing free speech before trial ever helped defendants in America. He could not remember a case where it had. All he could recall was prosecutors pressurising juries to convict.

He cited the example of

A Californian jury at the trial of an alleged child killer went home to consider their verdict. They turned on the news and heard the victim's father shouting at them to find the defendant guilty, he said. 'There's too much noise. Too many relatives standing on the steps of courts screaming. A judge can move the trial to another part of the state, but that doesn't work if it's on cable news. There's no place to hide from the television cameras.”

What would happen in the UK if our restrictions were lifted? The Tory press would demand juries convict environmental protestors. The online left would whip up Twitter mobs against conservative defendants.

Old liberals used to say that contempt of court law is the one restriction on freedom of speech we must unambiguously defend. It was true in the 20th century and it’s true today

Writing from London

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