Charlie Bentley-Astor Profile picture
Writer✍️ @TheCriticMag, @EuroConOfficial, @telegraph • Commentator 🎙️ @TalkTV, @gbnews & podcasts • @cambridge_uni 🎓 • 📩 charliebentleyastor@proton.me

Jul 18, 6 tweets

Southport Documentary – 'One Day in Southport'

A message has been circulated in locals schools by the 'Southport Recovery Team' forewarning parents about a Channel 4 'Southport' documentary airing on Thursday 24 July 2025.

The documentary, rather than focusing upon the systemic failures that led to the Southport murderer being free to roam the streets, looks at the anti-immigration protests and rioting that broke out after the attacked.

The production company, Amos Pictures, have made it "abundantly clear that the rioting was totally disconnected" from Rudakubana's attack on the Taylor-Swift dance class in Hart Street last July, and it is understood that they have recruited the lobby groups 'HopeNotHate' and 'Stand-up to Racism' into giving an account of events.

The Southport Recovery team write: "They have interviewed eyewitnesses, participants, and victims of the disorder that followed across five as yet unidentified [undisclosed] towns and cities in the UK."

Rather than taking local authorities to task, quizzing police officials, and challenging the national government on their inaction towards the extremely violent teenager, the filmmakers have decided to channel their resources into propagating a debunked fallacy – that these "race riots" were unfounded and that professional agitator, motivated by racism were looking to exploit a grieving community.

The notion that the majority of protesters and rioters were "bused" into Southport to carry out violences is not born out in the arrest records. The majority of protesters came from Southport and neighbouring suburbs with only a handful coming from Manchester and Liverpool.

I don't deny, the one could probably pull out 10 or 20 "instigators" who care less about the cause than having a good time. I have no time for such instigator for they enable the establishment – like Keir Starmer and Channel 4 – to dismiss a genuine cry for help as "far-right". Even if such people can nominally claim to have the same concerns about immigration, they sabotage the legitimacy of the immigration debate.

It will be upon this small minority, however, that the documentary will attempt to found their narrative of mob violence, racism, and Islamophobia.

A spokesman from the production company says that, "They condemn the rioting and reject the politicisation of the murders” but have involved at least one political campaign group – 'Stand-up to Racism' – in the documentary.

The documentary features Weyman Bennett, Secretary of 'Stand Up To Racism' and a 'veteran' of three decades of anti-fascist street protests. In relation to the 'Southport riots' he tells the documentary team, “People are rightfully angry but they're blaming the wrong people. Immigration is used as an explanation for everything.”

The documentary makes a point of asking what they call "a wider question":

"Was the 10 days of mob violence last summer merely the product of a cocktail of beer, high temperatures and bored thugs spoiling for a fight, or was it a symptom of something bigger - a simmering revolt by what Tommy Robinson calls “working class dissidents”?

Tommy Robinson is one individual who was blamed for the disorder. Merseyside Police stated they believed supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) were behind the disturbances until members of the public pointed out the EDL had disbanded in 2013 and has been defunct since 2017.

In truth, whilst the working class have perhaps born the brunt of the negative impacts of mass migration, the Southport Massacre outraged a nation – people of all ages, walks of life, and political backgrounds.

Communities across the UK are having their lives turned upside down by disproportionate levels crime and violence being committed at by foreign born individuals and their dependants living in their communities.

The democratic mandate has failed them for decades with politicians and police alike turning their back upon crime and crimes statistics which were inconvenient to their narrative of multiculturalism and the bottomless virtues of "diversity".

The "grooming gang" or "Pakistani-Muslim rape-gang" scandals were fresh in the public's mind at the time of the Southport attack. Child-victims were mocked, abused and ignored by officials who did not want to admit or break up the gangs in name of preserving "community relations". In reporting of violent crimes committed by people with an immigrant status, the phrase “a man” is often used in place of a description of the perpetuator and has come to be a by-word for “immigrants” in some online circles and a general feeling of contempt for the lack of public transparency about crimes committed by immigrants and their descendants.

The Southport murderer had initially been described by Police and the Press as ‘Cardiff-born teenager’. This gave the public the erroneous impression that a native British white boy had been responsible for the knife rampage against the group of primary-school-age girls. To say the least, this sounded unlikely.

Whilst it is all too common for young men — particularly and disproportionately among black youths in cities — to stab each other in Britain, these attacks and homicides most often occur in instances of gang warfare between adolescents, or one-on-one assaults. It is not a mass attack against a group of girls, especially not girls of primary school age, defenceless, and enjoying a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Attacks against this demographic — young girls and women in Western nations — are committed by young-to-middle-aged men with an immigrant status, originating from Arab countries, often motivated by Islam.

The prospect, then, that the suspected perpetrator behind the Southport Stabbing was a white, Welsh, ‘Christian’ boy was both shocking and implausible. Young men from white, devout Christian backgrounds do perpetrate heinous attacks against large groups of young children — namely in school shootings as seen in the United States of America — but such attacks are unheard of in the United Kingdom, and, if true, the attack in Southport presented a terrifying new style of violence rupturing onto Britain’s streets.

British public were condemned by Prime Minister Keir Starmer as wrongheaded and “far right” for suspecting the perpetrator of the Southport attack would be an immigrant, or of immigrant descent, and potentially inspired by radical Islam.

It was, then, with some public anger, that the ‘Cardiff-born karate-loving teen’ — the “quiet choir boy” was named as “Axel Muganwa Rudakubana” — and was:

• revealed to be a second-generation immigrant — the son of two Rwandan immigrants

• charged with producing the biological toxin, ricin

• charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for being in possession of “a pdf file entitled ‘Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual’ of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

It is not possible to underestimate the extent to which this gaslighting and slight-of-hand word play fuelled – or even caused – the public outrage.

It is a fact: had Axel Rudakubana's parents had not been given 'refugee status' – eight years after the Rwandan genocide had ended – the Southport Massacre would not have happened.

This is true of great number of assaults, murders, rapes and thefts going on in Britain today and the British public – the native population above all – are allowed to be upset about their homeland and people are being exploited and then treated like fools.

It is not for me to say how victims of the Southport attack nor people of Southport how they should or should not feel about the documentary. I respect the experience and opinion of all who found themselves at the centre of this national tragedy; and I understand feelings about what happened both on the day and in the aftermath will evolve for years to come.

I can only speak for myself about the documentary, and it is my opinion is that if the British establishment want to continue to kick the ordinary people of this country when they are down, and go-on construing them as villains in their own oppression, they should not expect a favourable response.

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