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The family of Bebe King, a six-year-old girl tragically killed in last year's Southport attack, is publicly opposing a new government directive encouraging the disclosure of suspect ethnicity in serious crime cases. The policy, which has drawn criticism from anti-racism and women’s groups, became official police guidance on Wednesday.
Bebe's grandfather, Michael Weston King, told reporters that the ethnicity of a perpetrator is "completely irrelevant," and that "mental health issues, and the propensity to commit crime, happens in any ethnicity, nationality or race." He blamed the tragedy, in which his granddaughter and two other girls—seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar—were murdered, on the failure of various organizations and a lack of government investment in anti-extremism strategies.
The perpetrator, 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, was a Welsh-born black Briton from a Christian family. In the aftermath of the attack on July 29, 2024, rumors that the suspect was an asylum seeker with a Muslim name sparked days of online misinformation and led to riots. The riots saw attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, and in some cases, people of color were indiscriminately targeted. A judge took the rare step of publicly naming the underage Rudakubana to prevent further violence, but the riots did not abate until prison sentences were handed down to the rioters.
Weston King expressed disappointment with the new policy, calling it an "apparent kowtowing to the likes of Farage and Reform." He was also critical of the far-right groups that, in his words, "tried to make political gain from our tragedy, only causing further misery to us and others."
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, however, has welcomed the new guidelines, which were developed following a controversy over claims that police "covered up" the immigration status of two men charged in connection with an alleged child rape in Nuneaton. That incident also led to a far-right rally where attendees displayed Nazi imagery.
The debate over crime and ethnicity is ongoing. According to government statistics from the year ending March 2023, there were 668,979 arrests in England and Wales. The arrest rate per 1,000 people varied significantly across different groups. The highest arrest rate was among the Black ethnic group, with 20.4 arrests for every 1,000 people. This was followed by the Mixed ethnic group at 12.5 per 1,000, and the Pakistani group at 11.3 per 1,000. In contrast, the arrest rate for the White ethnic group was 9.4 per 1,000. The Bangladeshi group had a lower arrest rate than the White group, with 8.7 arrests for every 1,000 people, and the Chinese ethnic group had the lowest arrest rate at 2.8 per 1,000. While the overall crime rate within the British Bangladeshi community is statistically low, as seen in these arrest figures, it is acknowledged that serious crimes are still an issue, as they are within every community.
