The Far Right 'Has Hijacked Henry Nowak's Death' Against His Family's Wishes
Campaigners Kojo Kyerewaa of Black Lives Matter UK and Tippa Naphtali of 4WardEverUK tell the Byline Times podcast how years of progress towards equality are being rolled back
Black social justice campaigners have told the Byline Times Podcast the tragic death of Henry Nowak is being weaponised by the far right to stir up hatred and roll back years of progress towards equality.
Vickrum Digwa was convicted of murdering the 18-year old university student and sentenced to life imprisonment this week at Southampton Crown Court, but bodycam footage released after the trial prompted claims of “two tier policing.” Officers attending what they were wrongly told was a racist attack, were heard to reject Henry’s claim that he had been stabbed and handcuffed him as he lay dying in the street.
The police watchdog, the IOPC, is now investigating the incident, but Reform UK leader Nigel Farage didn’t wait for their verdict before calling on the British public to react with “pure cold rage”; whilst professional rabble rouser Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka ‘Tommy Robinson’) attended a violent protest in Southampton on Tuesday night, which led to 11 police officers being injured. This, in spite of calls for calm by Henry’s father, Mark.
Kojo Kyerewaa, national organiser for Black Lives Matter UK condemned the “far-right grifters who are trying to create grievances out of myths,” and pointed out that the manner of Henry’s death was, sadly, not one-off.
He recalled the case of Tracie Cooper, a white woman, also in Southampton, in 2020: “She was arrested in her own home by Hampshire police. She said to them that she was feeling unwell, and the officers responded by saying ‘we don’t believe you’ – and then she later died.
“Henry Nowak says nine times to the police officers, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and this is obviously a phrase that is made famous by George Floyd – but in Britain, it was said by Kevin Clark, who died in police custody in 2018 in Lewisham. We have had many other people who have died in custody saying those exact words, and the police ignoring it. This is not a race issue – as the far right would like to portray it – this is about police disregard for people in their care. It tends to be that when you are in the care of the police, you actually end up receiving very little of it.”
Whilst there are undoubtedly serious questions about the way in which the police handled Henry Nowak’s murder, the fact remains that black people (and other ethnic minorities) remain over-represented in jail and receive longer custodial sentences than their white counterparts – evidence of structural racism that the Black Lives Matter movement sets out to challenge. Nigel Farage omitted this important context, says Kyerewaa, when he responded to Henry’s death by arguing that ‘white lives matter’.
“We absolutely grieve the lives of everyone who’s died in police custody,” Kyerewaa said. “We do not believe that there is a hierarchy of grief or of pain, and we believe that everyone should get safety. That is what we organise for – but one of the barriers to safety is a hierarchy of human value, which we call racism. That is the problem that contributes to and aggravates these problems.”
“This weaponisation of a family’s grief is being used to attack anti-racist movements more broadly, and I think that tells you about the nature of the people who are claiming to be upset about what’s happened to Henry Nowak… They are using this as a stick to beat people who want more justice in this world. That is what is happening, and I think we need to be very robust in arguing against that.”
Kyerewaa’s view is supported by Tippa Naphtali, whose cousin Mikey Powell died of asphyxiation in the back of a police van in Birmingham in 2003. Naphtali observes that “Henry doesn’t seem to be at the centre of this anymore. At the heart of this is the police duty of care. They had a duty of care to this young man, and they didn’t listen…this has been hijacked by the far right”.
As a veteran of the era when he and his friends would be set upon by National Front thugs after night out, Naphtali takes pride in the progress that has been made in the decades since then. His own organisation 4WardEverUK has worked with West Midlands Police (and other forces) for two decades and says that there have been no controversial race-related deaths in custody in Birmingham for 14 years. He insists that progressive forces will not be defeated: “All these far-right groups may feel that they’re rolling back the progress that’s been made, but that will only incentivise people like me, Kojo, and others to fight even harder to restore things back to where they were – even though they weren’t perfect. Mark my words – they won’t succeed.”
Listen to Adrian Goldberg’s full interview with Kojo Kyerewaa and Tippa Naphtali on the Byline Times Podcast.