Chris Selley: The U.K.’s Henry Nowak outrage happens in Canadian courts every day

Floral tributes for Henry Nowak are pictured outside of Portswood Police Station in Southampton, southern England, on June 3, 2026. Photo by BEN STANSALL /AFP via Getty Images

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The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary has contributed a horrifying new classic to the “harrowing police video” genre: Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991; Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver Airport in 2007; Eric Garner in New York City in 2014; George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020; and now Henry Nowak in Southampton, on England’s south coast.

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On Dec. 3 last year, Nowak, an 18-year-old studying finance and accountancy at the University of Southampton, was randomly set upon by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, who stabbed him five times with a kirpan — the Sikh ceremonial dagger — with a 53-centimetre blade, BBC reports.

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Digwa claimed Nowak had been the aggressor, racially abusing him, punching him and knocking off his turban. All lies.

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I would urge everyone to watch the bodycam footage released by police, as evidence of just how casually evil state officialdom can be. (Don’t watch it if you’re already having a bad day.)

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“I’ve been stabbed,” Nowak entreated the officers attending the scene.

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One officer responded, condescendingly: “You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts? Don’t think you have, mate.”

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“I can’t breathe,” Nowak pleads at one point.

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“Put your hand in the cuff,” the male officer responds.

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These officers accepted Digwa’s account instantly, 100 per cent at face value, and handcuffed a dying man on suspicion of assault. Digwa was sentenced to life in prison on Monday.

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“The pathologist who spoke in court was clear there was nothing officers could have done that day to save Henry,” deputy chief constable Robert France very unwisely said as part of an otherwise reasonable apology. In a way, surely, that almost makes it worse that he died in handcuffs.

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This tragedy is going to leave a huge dent in British politics. The notion of “two-tier policing” was a hot topic beforehand (see the grooming gangs scandal, for example). It’s radioactive now. There have been riots in Southampton, with 11 police officers injured, and video of police battling violently with protesters seems likely to enflame the situation further.

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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is well positioned to form a minority government at the next election (although it could be a long time off), and he has been pushing the “two-tier” narrative: The idea that police are, and indeed have been instructed to be, more deferential to non-white Britons than white ones.

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And all Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the progressive media can really do is accuse Farage of fanning the flames of unrest and trying to curry favour in an upcoming by-election in Wigan, a monolithically white and working-class suburb of Manchester.

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That’s only a legitimate strategy if people don’t think there should be flames. Starmer himself has said “serious questions to answer” about Nowak’s murder include “how accusations of racism informed police thinking.”