On July 29 2024, Labour councillors Dave Neary and Greg Myers were on their way home from a council meeting in Southport when they saw one of the roads had been blocked. They stopped and asked a policeman what was going on. He told them there had been an incident. The pair headed down to their local incident centre at the Meols Cop youth club, at the heart of Norwood ward, where they both served. The scene was “hectic”, Neary said. “Distressed parents, distressed emergency responders, ambulances, police cars, blue lights.” He saw a “visibly shaken” fire and rescue worker being comforted by colleagues. Although facts were bare on the ground, Neary and Myers were about to have their lives transformed.
Less than an hour earlier, Axel Rudakubana had walked into a Taylor Swift themed dance class armed with an eight-inch long knife. He stabbed 13 people, killing three little girls: Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice Da Silva Aguiar, and Bebe King. The attack sent shockwaves through Southport, and in the hours that followed, confusion, grief and anger ran rapidly through the community as details slowly emerged and false information began to spread online. What happened next now seems inevitable to Neary. “It had all the preconditions for a riot,” he said. “It was a hot day and there had been a terrible event. It does make me sound as if I’m wise after the event, but these are all the preconditions you need for something to happen.”
By the next evening, crowds began to gather. What started as a vigil and an outlet for collective grief quickly escalated. Tensions with police intensified, and before long a police vehicle had been set alight. The violent scenes would soon be replicated across the country. In the days that followed, Southport attempted to pull itself back together, but the scars of both the attack and the riots of summer 2024 have lingered.
Many residents still describe a town struggling to process two traumatic events that unfolded within a day of each other. I spoke to Imam Ibrahim Hussein, who was trapped inside the mosque during the riots. Almost two years later the mosque continues to have security guards outside. “There is an undercurrent of unease,” he said. “People are worried and apprehensive, they feel there is something still there. Having said that, it’s under control, but only because we have security.” He blamed the language used by politicians for stirring hatred. “The government are the cause of a lot of the trouble as well, because of the way they are trying to appease or overtake Nigel Farage’s party.” Instead, he said it should highlight the contributions made to Britain by hard-working immigrants.
In a few days time the town will go to the polls with most wards expected to be a two-horse race between Reform and the Lib Dems, according to Britain Elects, with Nigel Farage’s party projected to win seats in Cambridge and Duke’s ward in the town centre. Norwood ward, the scene of both the attack and the subsequent riots, is a dead-heat between Labour and Reform.
Southport is in Sefton Borough Council, which itself is part of the Liverpool City Combined Region Authority. Sefton Council stretches from Southport in the north to Bootle in the south, straddling Formby (famous for housing footballers) in the middle. Labour hold a majority on the council heading into the election, and the party is expected to still do well in culturally Scouse Bootle. A local Lib Dem source said the party is targeting multiple wards across the town, including Cambridge, Duke’s and Kew.
However, the party is staying away from Norwood, where Labour’s competition on the left is coming from the Green Party. I met Laurence Rankin and Lara Cron, two of the party’s candidates in Norwood at a cafe in the Atkinson gallery. Rankin, a veteran of politics who left the Labour Party in 1998 over the bombing of Belgrade, said the Green’s membership had doubled in the borough to more than 900 members.
“A lot of young people are getting very interested in the Green Party,” he said. “A lot of that is the Zack effect if you like, the impact he’s had as a leader. He’s brought a new kind of dynamism to the party, the way he talks.” Cron, who had previously served as a councillor for the party in Warwickshire, said Gaza was still coming up on the doorstep. “It’s always there in the background. For sure, there’s a group of people who say they’re going to vote Green because of our stance on Gaza.”
Despite being against the war, she questioned how appropriate it was for local councillors to campaign on the issue. “We’re dealing with bins and we’re dealing with whether your recycling gets taken away on a Monday.” She added: “I think as a local councillor it’s not our bag.”
When I asked people in Southport about the riots they were quick to say it was mostly people from outside the town. That’s not a characterisation Neary agrees with. “About half of them were from Southport, or at least from Sefton or very nearby. These weren’t just out of towners,” he said. Neary lists a man on his street as one of the people convicted. “That’s a really uncomfortable thing for us to acknowledge. It shows how much you only had to scratch a surface and the boundaries of normal behaviour were easily broken, with bricks and fire bombs thrown at police officers in the name of protecting our kids.”
For Myers, the weeks and months that followed were defined not just by the scale of what had happened, but by how it was handled. “We were left with no support at all during that whole period. There was no pastoral support either.” He said this reflected both a lack of emotional backing and practical assistance for local representatives dealing with the aftermath. “It just felt like we were elected to do what we could for our community and we were thwarted at every opportunity.” He described being prevented from communicating freely with residents and excluded from key decisions by the local party leadership.
“There was an understandable emphasis on the attacks, the murders, but there also seemed to be a real desire to ignore the fact that we had also had a race riot,” Myers said. While he stressed that prioritising the victims and their families was right, he argued that focusing too narrowly on the attack meant the fallout from the violence that followed was not addressed quickly enough. “We were completely marginalised the whole time. We were the democratically elected representatives.” He added that, although some support reached affected businesses, much of the recovery funding was directed towards town centre improvements, with little investment in community projects in the ward where both events had taken place.
Myers initially decided not to stand in Norwood in the coming election, but was persuaded months later to apply due to fears of Reform taking the ward. He later withdrew due to longstanding concerns over local and national direction. “It’s not just me. People need to ask why half the Labour councillors in this town aren’t standing this time round?” he said. “It’s certainly not because they are concerned about taking on Reform, who I hope are thoroughly rejected. I’d venture it’s because they are concerned about the way they were being treated locally, and the missteps nationally which are overshadowing good work in areas like the NHS and raising wages.”
Now, as the town approaches another election, the political aftershocks are still being felt. “What I fear is that the Greens take enough votes off that Reform slips in,” Myers said. “If Reform do get in here genuinely I will be in tears.” He warned that a victory in a ward so closely associated with both the attack and the riots would carry symbolic weight. “If Reform take this ward… they can shout about it: ‘we can even win there’.” Despite that, he believes the result could be close. “If they play their cards right and hone in on the hard work we have done they might just scrape through.”
To understand why the events of that summer cut so deeply, it helps to look out toward the sea. Southport Pier, stretching out into the Irish Sea, was once the town’s proud centrepiece, a symbol of Victorian ambition when holidaymakers flocked here in their thousands. For decades, Southport thrived as a genteel resort, its economy built on visitors seeking fresh air and seaside charm.
But like many British coastal towns, that prosperity ebbed away. Some of the grand hotels that once catered to tourists began housing migrants, placed in temporary accommodation. The high street, too, hollowed out, with its decline accelerated by the Covid pandemic. Footfall reduced and shops shuttered. When Debenhams closed its doors, it felt to many like the end of an era.
The pier would close again not long after the pandemic, another blow to a town already grappling with its identity and future. Against that backdrop of slow decline and unresolved plight came the shock of the murders, and the violence that followed.
When I visited, it was a bright, beautiful spring day. Sunlight spilled across Lord Street, catching on the glass fronts of cafés and pubs, where people sat outside with coffees and pints, sleeves rolled up, sunglasses on. And yet, beneath it, there was a tension that surfaced quickly in conversation. The face off between Labour and Reform hung over everything.
I met Martin, 54, smoking outside the Southport Coaster pub in the town’s centre, his long grey hair slicked back. “I think [Nigel Farage’s] got a bit more knowledge than what Starmer’s got,” he said. “[Starmer] promises things but it doesn’t happen, like heating for the old dears.” He was angrier at Starmer than he was enthusiastic about Reform. “Personally, I’d like to knock his lights out,” he said. His friend Darren, an enormous South African transplant to Southport, joined. “All we want, as people on the street, right, is security. Offer us security and we’ll support you. The problem with politicians is they have to lie to do their job, we all know that, it’s no secret.” He hadn’t decided who he’d vote for yet. “I’ll read all the leaflets then I’ll make my mind up.”
That sense of frustration, not always ideological, often deeply personal, came up again and again. I spoke to Dave, 43, on the High Street, a wide-set man wearing a suit. Normally a Labour supporter, he hadn’t made his mind up who he’ll vote for. “I’m not a big Reform fan. I’m anti Reform, Restore, all of that.” However, he thought Reform would do well. “I think they’ll get quite a few seats. It’s just the political climate isn’t it? People aren’t happy, and when people aren’t happy they’ll go for change.” He blamed Reform for the violence that followed the 29 July attack. “I think Reform stoked the riots. There was not enough information out there. I was personally affected by it, I know people who had children in there that session that day. They did not want the riots, and they’re not voting Reform.”
Despite this, Reform is popular in parts of Southport, areas like High Park in the suburbs and pockets of the town centre are seen as strongholds. Near the train station I met Harry, 40. He’s voting for the party because he wants a change. “Starmer came here and laid a wreath for 17 seconds before pissing off,” he said. Starmer’s ill-fated visit to the town in the aftermath of the attack is still referred to by the right online, after the Prime Minister was heckled while laying a wreath just hours before the riots began. Harry blamed the cost of parking meters, and high rates, for killing off businesses on the high street. “Something different needs to happen,” he said.
Others expressed something closer to exhaustion than anger. I met Wendy, 76, walking with a zimmer-frame near the pier. “A lot of people seem to be voting for Reform. I can’t think why, because Nigel Farage is a… disaster. I don’t know what to do, I might spoil my vote.” The whole way British politics works needs to change, she said. “I think they’re all a waste of time. I’ve never voted Conservative, I used to vote Labour but I think they’re doing a terrible job. I don’t like Reform because I don’t like Nigel Farage in particular and their members seem to be too young. What does a 20-year-old know about life. They’ve made a lot of mistakes, I’m fed up with the lot of them.”
Earlier this month, Farage visited Southport for the first time since the riots. In an interview with the Liverpool Echo, he denied that his social media posts in the aftermath of the attack stoked the subsequent disorder. “What I said was ‘can the police please name the identity of the attacker?'” he said. “The reason we had the riots is that there was a vacuum. Nothing was being said, and I said ‘just tell the public the truth’, and the government hid. The government hid behind this.” Asked how he expected his party to do in the local elections in Sefton Council he said: “We fancy our chances of doing very well, and I think there’s a big change. Do you know what the big change is? Starmer. Traditional Labour voters don’t like him. Don’t see him as perhaps representing their interests; perhaps he looks too much like a North London lawyer that he is.”
At the far end of town, past the shops and traffic, the space around the Town Hall is being remodelled as part of a £10 million regeneration project announced in response to the attack. Fences mark out the work in progress, but the outlines of what it will become are beginning to take shape. The gardens are being transformed into something new: an open-air performance space.
It will stand as a tribute to the three little girls who lost their lives that day. It was there, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, that thousands gathered. The grass disappeared beneath flowers, handwritten notes, soft toys. For days, it became the emotional centre of Southport, a place where the town felt united in its grief.
Now, as the regeneration takes shape, that moment is being fixed into the town’s physical landscape. Whether it can carry that weight is another question. But as the work continues, other possibilities are emerging. That a place which held grief might also hold something else. That a fractured town might still find ways to gather again.
[Further reading: Dogs days at the Romford races]
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