Henry Nowak’s death is being exploited
The murder of Henry Nowak is a tragedy. A young man has lost his life in horrific circumstances. His family is grieving, friends are mourning and a community is searching for answers. At moments like this, our first responsibility should be compassion for those left behind and a commitment to discovering the truth. Instead, we have witnessed something increasingly familiar in modern public life. Before investigations have concluded, before all the facts are known, and before those charged with investigating the case have completed their work, competing political narratives have rushed to fill the vacuum. That should concern us all.
Last week, I sat in the House of Lords listening to colleagues debate Nowak’s death. Some contributions were thoughtful and measured. Others sought to use this tragedy as evidence for broader political arguments, particularly the claim that equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives have somehow “weakened” policing or created a system that favours some communities over others. My heart sank.
It fell to Doreen Lawrence to remind the House of something that should never have needed saying: a family’s grief should not be turned into a political weapon. Nowak’s parents themselves have reportedly asked that their son’s death not be used to spread division. “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” Nowak’s father said, adding, “We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone.” Their wishes deserve respect. That does not mean difficult questions should not be asked. On the contrary, serious questions clearly need answers.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating the actions of officers who encountered Nowak after he had been stabbed. Many people who have seen the available footage, in which officers arrested and handcuffed Henry as he was dying, have expressed shock and concern. It is entirely legitimate to ask whether appropriate decisions were made, whether duty of care obligations were met and whether opportunities to intervene were missed. If mistakes were made, there must be accountability.
But accountability is not the same as speculation. Too often today, public debate rewards those who reach conclusions first rather than those who seek evidence. Social media amplifies certainty long before facts are established. Complex events are rapidly squeezed into pre-existing political narratives. Every tragedy becomes proof of what somebody already believed. For instance, speculation around an offender being a foreign national can be a trigger for civil unrest before it is established they were a British national. That’s not to minimise the crime, just to observe that incorrect narratives can inflame an already bad situation.
That is precisely why independent investigations matter. They exist to separate evidence from assumption and fact from emotion. My friend and former police officer Brian Paddick put it succinctly. This case appears, first and foremost, to raise questions about judgement and duty of care. For example when Henry said he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe, his health and wellbeing should clearly have been a priority. These questions deserve rigorous examination.
Yet some have already chosen a different route. Rather than focusing on the actions of individual officers or the systems within which they operate, politicians and public figures on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to frame Henry’s death as evidence that modern policing has become distorted by diversity and inclusion policies. That is a serious claim. It requires serious evidence. So far, none has been produced.
The suggestion that British policing now systematically treats black people more favourably than white people – the subtext of rhetoric around “two-tier policing” – is not supported by the wider body of evidence. Indeed, much of the available evidence points in the opposite direction. Black people are on average four times more likely to be stopped and searched. This disparity can be much higher in wealthy, predominately white neighbourhoods.
Lawrence’s contribution to the Lords debate was important for precisely this reason. Her family’s experience reminds us what institutional failure in policing can look like. After the racist murder of her son, Stephen Lawrence, in 1993, the Lawrence family did not encounter a system bending over backwards to deliver justice. They encountered years of failures, missed opportunities and resistance. The subsequent Macpherson Inquiry concluded that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, a finding that transformed the national conversation about policing and race.
That history matters. Not because it tells us what happened in Nowak’s case – it does not – but because it reminds us of the dangers of erasing the facts around racial bias against minority groups to suit contemporary political arguments. The Macpherson inquiry report into circumstances surrounding policing in the case of Stephen Lawrence was clear; police officers must end assumptions about black people being suspect. The principle of not being biased is one that applies when the police encounter a person of any background, whether it be race, faith or class. The pursuit of equality, diversity and inclusion did not emerge from nowhere. It emerged because institutions, including policing, were shown to contain barriers, biases and cultures that disadvantaged many people.
Nobody sensible argues that EDI programmes are beyond criticism. Like any policy area, they should be scrutinised and evaluated. Some initiatives succeed, others fail. Some require reform. But using the death of a young man as a convenient exhibit in a wider ideological argument is neither serious nor responsible. The public deserves better than that. And what concerns me most is not disagreement. In a healthy democracy, people will inevitably disagree about the causes of institutional failures and the solutions required to address them. What concerns me is the growing tendency to transform individual tragedies into symbols of national decay before the facts are known.
We live in an age of instant commentary. A video clip emerges, fragments of information appear online and conclusions harden within hours. The pressure to take sides arrives long before the evidence does. Yet justice has never worked that way. The rule of law depends upon patience. It depends upon investigation. It depends upon the willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads, even when that evidence challenges our assumptions.
The questions surrounding Henry Nowak’s death are too important to be reduced to slogans. The investigation may uncover failures of judgement. It may identify weaknesses in training or procedure. It may reveal institutional problems that demand reform. It may expose factors that are not yet publicly known. That is exactly why the process must be allowed to run its course. Responsible leadership requires restraint, especially at moments of heightened emotion. It requires us to resist the temptation to exploit grief for political gain. It requires us to remember that behind every headline is a family living through unimaginable loss.
Henry Nowak deserves justice. His family deserve answers. The public deserves the truth. Those objectives are not served by inflaming tensions, assigning blame before the evidence is gathered or turning a tragedy into another front in Britain’s culture wars. They are served by a thorough investigation, honest accountability where wrongdoing is found and a collective commitment to evidence over ideology. In the end, that is the least we owe Henry, his family and a society that remains stronger when it seeks truth before judgement.
[Further reading: Will Henry Nowak’s death lead to a summer of disorder?]
