Amid the chaos of rioting and misinformation that followed the Southport attack last summer, the abject horror of the crime itself almost seemed to recede: the murder of three little girls, and the attempted murder of eight others and two adults. This horror is clearly back in view this week – with a new scrutiny on all the missed opportunities to stop it. The fact that has gained most attention is that the 18-year-old killer, Axel Rudakubana, had been referred to Prevent, the government’s counter-extremism programme, three times in 2019 and 2021. Each time, Prevent concluded his preoccupation with violence was concerning but did not intervene. Rudakubana did not have a coherent ideology, so he was not considered suitable for the programme.
In a press conference about the Southport killings on Tuesday, Keir Starmer said this decision was “clearly wrong”, and pledged to change the law so that lone wolf killers without a clear ideology can be prosecuted as terrorists. “When I look through the details of this case, the extreme nature of the violence, the meticulous plan to attack young children in a place of joy and safety – violence clearly intended to terrorise – then I understand why people wonder what the word terrorism means,” he said. UK law defines terrorism as violence, or the threat of violence, carried out with “the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. It’s not clear what would be gained by expanding the definition to include non-ideological violence. Rudakubana was obsessed with US school shootings, and in his call to expand terror legislation, Starmer drew a comparison with these acts of mass violence. But in the US, most mass shootings are not classified as terrorism. Sometimes, violence is violence.
