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THE MURDER OF college student Henry Nowak by Vikrum Digwa, and the way he was treated by police, has set off a furious political debate about knife crime, policing and ethnic diversity in Britain.
The reaction from politicians and the public has largely been a mix of shock and anger.
But for some, the killing of a Henry Nowak at the hands of a person from a minority ethnic and religious background is an opportunity to be pounced on and exploited to promote the idea that white people face discrimination in the UK while other communities are given special treatment.
Reform party leader Nigel Farage has been to the fore in pushing this narrative, but it’s also been taken up by far-right political actors outside the UK, despite Henry’s father Mark Nowak saying his son’s death should not be used “to create further division, hatred or tension”.
In December last year, Henry Nowak (18) was walking home after a night out when he got into an altercation with Vikrum Digwa (23), who stabbed him in the legs and chest. When the police arrived on the scene, Digwa — a Sikh — denied stabbing him and falsely claimed to have been the victim of a racist attack.
The officers arrested Henry and he died while handcuffed.
On Monday, Digwa was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison — a minimum of 21 years. The court heard that the knife he used to murder Henry was a ceremonial one associated with his religion, although carrying that particular knife is not required by the Sikh faith.
What reignited such fervent interest in the story this week was not just the conclusion of the case, but the release of footage recorded on the bodycam of one of the officers involved, which showed how Henry had been handcuffed and held down while saying, “I can’t breathe”.
He can be heard repeatedly saying: “I’ve been stabbed,” to which an officer replies: “Don’t think you have, mate.”
Following Digwa’s conviction, Henry’s father Mark Nowak addressed the media outside the court, saying:
“We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone.”
The public release of the bodycam footage caused instant outrage across the political spectrum.
Starmer said he “felt sick” watching it and that it raised “serious questions that need to be addressed, not least how accusations of racism informed the decision-making in this case”.
He welcomed the fact that an investigation into the conduct of the officers had been launched and condemned Farage for trying to “create division”.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said that “misinformation and inflammatory commentary is making a dreadful situation even worse”.
In far-right circles online, Henry Nowak has been treated like a martyr, while on the streets of Southampton, anti-immigration demonstrators attacked police in a riot on Wednesday that left 11 officers injured.
Far-right campaigner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson) was one of the people who attended the protest outside the police station.
Farage has spent much of his career attempting to distance himself and his various political parties from the likes of Robinson and those who took part in the Southport riots last year.
But this week he appears to have closed that gap somewhat, which analysts in the UK see as an attempt to stave off a new challenger to the right of Reform, the Restore Britain party.
It is not just the British far right who have used this case to promote the idea that white people face racist discrimination, their counterparts in Ireland, Europe and the United States have followed suit.
South African-American billionaire Elon Musk and even the US Department of State have weighed in to push the same narrative.
“Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West,” read a post from the State Department on Musk’s X platform on Thursday.
Musk meanwhile has focused on the police officers involved, but in attempting to do so helped spread an image of an officer who had nothing to do with it.
That misidentified officer is now in hiding with his family.
For years now, those on the right in British politics have railed against policies that aim to address systemic racism across various parts of society, including the police.
This week, they have pointed in particular to a document published by the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, the police anti-racism commitment, a broad promise to address racial discrimination in policing.
That document was the product of a wider plan to tackle racism in policing in the UK, which has been and remains an issue.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch (who is black) told ITV there should be “no two-tier policing, no believing that racism only happens to ethnic minorities”.
“It happens to everyone and the police need to be trained like that, not with the terrible anti-racism training, which is just reverse racism and reverse discrimination,” she said.
For the white nationalist right, Henry Nowak’s murder and the conduct of the police confirmed their idea that white people in the UK are subjected to racist discrimination.
Send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2026
Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak.
According to policing statistics, the opposite is the case, with black people far more likely to be stopped and searched on the street than other groups.
More broadly, policing in the UK has been found to be systemically racist, but not towards white people.
In 2024, the head of Britain’s police chief’s organisation said discrimination in policing operated at an “institutional level”.
Adam Elliott-Cooper, a politics lecturer at Queen Mary University of London who specialises in anti-racism and policing, said:
“Henry should be alive today. The violence and neglect he experienced was not an exception but a routine feature of policing. Officers ignored his calls for help.
“That disregard is a central feature of British policing – those in police ‘care’ often receive very little of it.
“Attempts to distract from this reality with culture‑war myths about ‘anti‑racist training’ only obscure the basic question: how do we build real safety for everyone?”
With reporting from Press Association
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