“Southport is a quiet, kind place in which nothing ever happens,” said the Rev Thomas Carter, the morning after it happened. “People are struggling to understand it.”
It wasn’t just Southport; the whole country struggled to process the carnage that took place late on a sunny Monday one week into the school holidays.
Three girls were killed by Axel Rudakubana, a knife-wielding teenager who pleaded guilty to all charges when he appeared at Liverpool crown court on Monday. Eight other children and two adults were injured in the attack.
Rudakubana pleaded guilty to three charges of murder and 10 charges of attempted murder on the first day of his trial. He is due to be sentenced on Thursday.
He also pleaded guilty to possession of a knife. Rudakubana also admitted production of a biological toxin, ricin, on or before 29 July and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
The terrorism offence relates to a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual, which he is said to have possessed between 29 August 2021 and 30 July 2024.
Now 18, Rudakubana was born to Rwandan Christian parents in Cardiff, but a flood of misinformation quickly spread on social media that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker and had arrived on a small boat in 2023.
There was rioting in Southport that spread to towns and cities across England, a terrible, terrifying and racist orgy of violence that changed countless lives and led to almost 1,600 arrests and the jailing of more than 200 people, from children to new mothers and grandfathers.
The headlines on that Monday morning of 29 July had been familiar. The NHS could face more strikes, there were rows over the nation’s finances, and speculation about the latest Strictly contestant.
By the afternoon there was only one headline. Two girls at a dance and yoga event had been killed in a knife attack. Nine other children were injured, six of them critically. Two adults, including the class teacher, were critically injured. A 17-year-old male had been arrested.
A third child died the next day. The victims were Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.
The knife attack took place at the Hart Space studio, about a mile from Southport town centre. It was advertised as a Taylor Swift-themed event that would include dance, yoga and bracelet making for girls from years 2-6 and was fully booked.
Rudabukana arrived in Southport in a taxi, having travelled there from his family’s home in the West Lancashire village of Banks, about 5 miles from Southport.
John Hayes, 63, who owns a legal costs firm in the same building, was one of the first on the scene after hearing screaming. He ran to the class and was stabbed in the leg when he confronted the attacker. Hayes said he wished he could have done more. “I’m not a fighter,” he said afterwards.
“I was trying to keep away from this knife,” he told the BBC. “I tried my level best to get hold of it, but then it became apparent that I’d been stabbed in my leg, and there was sort of a bolt of pain, and I fell backwards.
“I used this phrase to the policeman, I said: ‘I would like to have been more Bruce Willis about the whole thing.’”
Full details of the attack have yet to officially emerge. One witness described it as being “like a scene from a horror movie”. The yoga teacher Leanne Lucas, who was critically injured in the attack, has been hailed a hero for her bravery in trying to protect the children.
People struggled to put into words their reaction. King Charles sent his “most heartfelt condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies”; Keir Starmer said the events were “just truly awful” and that “the whole country is deeply shocked at what they have seen and what they have heard”; Taylor Swift said she was at “a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families”.
The families, friends and teachers of those who were killed paid tribute to their girls. Bebe was a “joyful girl, whose kindness radiated”; Alice was the “happiest of souls, a true ray of sunshine”; Elsie “embraced life” with so much “positivity, hope and love” that her family said her funeral should be known as “Elsie’s Special Day”.
A numbness fell across Southport in the hours after the attack, and hundreds gathered for a vigil the following evening. But, in what has become one of the defining moments of an episode of such tragic loss, the mourning was replaced by burning. The evening was hijacked by far-right rioters who pelted police with bottles and bricks and attacked Southport’s mosque.
Fuelled by lies and propaganda, the violence quickly spread to towns and cities across England in places including London, Hartlepool, Manchester, Aldershot, Rotherham, Hull, Portsmouth, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds and Stoke.
In Rotherham, asylum seekers were trapped, terrified, as hundreds of rioters chanting “Get them out” surrounded and tried to set fire to the hotel where they were staying. In Sunderland, a Citizens Advice office was torched. In Middlesbrough, drivers were stopped by a rioter to check if they were “white” or “English”.
People caught up in the riots said they were traumatised and in some cases changed forever. One police chief talked about the “lasting psychological effects” on her officers.
The government strategy to end the riots was to fast-track arrests, charges and punishments. The prime minister demanded a “robust and swift” response and it is widely acknowledged that that is what the criminal justice machine delivered.
Many of those jailed had no political views, their lawyers said. One argued his client would not know the difference between the far right and the far left. Some were just drunk. Most were fuelled by adrenaline.
Rioters were not the only ones jailed. At Chester crown court, Julie Sweeney, 53, who lived a “quiet, sheltered” life, was jailed for 15 months for posting a comment on Facebook that said: “Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.”
It was the worst disorder seen in the UK since 2011, but there was also a flip side. The mornings after rioting, communities repeatedly came together to clean up the streets. People were angry and tearful that this was how the outside world saw their town or city.
On 7 August, more than a week after the murders, England braced itself for further violence but, as quickly as the riots started, they stopped. Thousands of anti-racism protesters thronged the streets, with little sign of the far right.
Campaigners believe it may take decades for the national scars caused by the riots to heal.
Three months after the attack, pink ribbons tied to lampposts, gates and railings in memory of the girls who died still fluttered in the wind, including on the street in Banks where Rudakubana had lived with his family.
Their house stands empty. His parents and brother fled on that July day, neighbours said, and have not been seen since.
Police maintained a constant presence on the street for six weeks, and the back garden was dug up, the neighbours said, but a bin of food had been left to rot, and they had to remove it themselves.
Now, with the police no longer present and the family gone, a passer-by probably would not know the significance of this street, which feels peaceful and quiet.
But there are reminders. Sometimes people come just to look, TikTokkers have come to film from the street, some visitors have even posed their children for pictures outside.
“Look, here’s some now,” one neighbour said, as two boys on bicycles rode on to the street, stopped outside the house, looked up at it, then cycled off.
At the end of October, the authorities revealed Rudakubana would face additional charges of possessing terrorist material and producing the highly toxic poison ricin.
Fearing the disclosure could trigger further unrest, about 2,000 riot police were placed on standby. They were not needed. Instead the charges caused a political row and accusations of a “cover up”.
In Southport, the effort to ensure the town recovers is a long-term one and includes learning from other major atrocities, including the Grenfell Tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing.
For the town to be forever connected to the summer’s racist violence was upsetting for everyone, said the resident and Sefton council chief executive, Phil Porter. “It’s not what Southport is. It is a lovely seaside resort. It’s very welcoming. It’s a lovely place to live.”
Recovery would be a long, difficult process, people involved have acknowledged, and it included asking people to take down tributes to the victims put up by private households and businesses.
Ollie Cowan was among the council employees knocking on doors making the requests. The reaction was not what he expected, he said.
“They were very grateful, which is surprising really.” He said people were finding the reminders upsetting but they did not want their removal to be seen as disrespectful.
“They were grateful to have some advice that the families were thankful but now is the time, if you wouldn’t mind taking them down.”
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