Push back the racists! For democratic controls on the police

Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, J D Vance, and Elon Musk are seizing on the 3 December 2025 death of Henry Nowak, and the 14 May to 1 June trial of his killer Vickrum Digwa, to whip up race-hate.

The far rightists rallied on 2 June outside a police station in Southampton. The fascist group Britain First will use the case to fuel its 20 June rally in Birmingham for “mass deportations”.

What are the facts?

• Police are biased against Black people. Police stop and search Black people four times as often as white people, and Asian-background people 1.4 times as often as white people.

• Despite that, Asian-background people have lower arrest rates as well as lower conviction rates. They do less crime. • Vickrum Digwa killed Henry Nowak after a late-night street clash set off by Nowak being bumptious, probably after seeing the large knife Digwa was carrying. Digwa has not been “let off”, but given a life sentence in jail.

• Sikh authorities say that the knife Digwa used was not a kirpan. The knife carried by Sikh men as a religious token is usually much smaller, blunt, and worn under clothing (Digwa had one of those, too). There is little recent history of the “religious” knives being used for harm.

• Vickrum Digwa is in fact a citizen, born in the UK. Anyway, in the UK, non-citizens have lower crime rates (adjusting for age) than citizens. They have lower rates of conviction or jail for robbery or violence against the person.

• The police grossly mistreated Henry Nowak, handcuffing him and ignoring his pleas as he died from his knife wounds. The court found that Nowak would have died even if the police had got prompt medical help (and the one doctor who questioned that has backed off), but the mistreatment is gross.

• The police regularly mistreat working-class people and students, white as well as of colour. They are an authoritarian force trained to think of themselves as “the law”.

• The police mistreatment of Nowak is being investigated by the IOPC, which is independent of the police. However, the IOPC is under no elected control, and in its “Executive Team” of seven, five are ageing white men, of top civil service or police background. Just one is a person of colour, and she is the organisation’s HR person.

• In 1985 the South Yorkshire Police Authority, which included elected councillors, tried to pause the police violence against miners at Orgreave. Like Manchester councillors earlier in the 1980s who tried to curb far-right Chief Constable James Anderton, they were told they had no “operational” control. Since then, the Tories tried to tidy up. They abolished part-elected Police Authorities in favour of only notional supervision by Police and Crime Commissioners.

• In a capitalist society the police will always be pro-property and anti-worker. But degrees of mitigation and curbing - as for example between US cops who kill over a thousand people a year, and British forces who kill maybe one or two - are important. We are for elected democratic controls over the police. We discuss this more in our book on the 1984-5 miners’ strike, Class against class.