On Monday morning, countless parents across the country took their children to various summer camps and workshops, as the freedom of the long school break stretched out before them.
Football, ballet, art, swimming, tennis, dance… In locations across the UK, excited children will have turned up to take part in activities and blow off some steam after the end of term. As a parent, you live for moments like these, when life is as it should be for children: carefree, joyful, full of possibility.
At The Hart Space studio in Southport, where regular events include postnatal yoga, baby massages and sound baths, things would have been no different. The brochure for the Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class, organised especially for primary school children, shows the beautiful pink and blue summer sky featured in the singer’s Lover album and suggests exactly the kind of morning many little girls would rush to take part in.
Parents and carers dropping off their children on Monday would have had no reason to stop and question the safety of the event. Why should they? The Hart Space is a special community venue, created entirely, as it says on its website, with the purpose of making people feel “at home” and “supported”. “Good Vibes Only” reads the image in the “about us” section of the venue’s site; reading it, I wouldn’t hesitate to book one of its many classes if I lived nearby.
(left to right) Bebe, six, Elsie, seven, and Alice, nine, died in Monday’s attack.
But maybe I should hesitate. Maybe we should all hesitate. Because less than a week after police chiefs warned of a “national emergency” of violence against women and girls (which I wrote about in this column last Friday), three of the children who attended Taylor Swift’s morning out are dead and five others remain hospitalized.
The lives of these girls – Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine – ended just as they had begun. Seventeen-year-old Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, who entered The Hart Space with a knife, has been charged with their murders, as well as ten counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article.
This unimaginably terrible story should have ended there: families should have been able to grieve, Southport residents should have been able to process what happened, and police should have been able to deliver justice.
Instead, large groups of men from Manchester and Liverpool decided to travel to Southport and meet this horrific episode of male violence with yet more male violence, with such an absolute sense of entitlement that they did not stop for a second to think how their behaviour might re-traumatise a community still in shock.
Fueled by online misinformation, dozens of men descended on the coastal town, where they stood outside a mosque, shouting “English to death,” terrifying locals and throwing rocks at the same police who the day before had rushed to try to help the dying children.
Floral tributes left near the scene of the tragedy in Southport
Local MP Patrick Hurley called the men “drunken thugs” and said that “even if this 17-year-old boy happens to be a Muslim, that does not justify an attack on a mosque by anyone under any circumstances.” (The defendant was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, a predominantly Christian country.)
On X, formerly Twitter, other high-profile figures were not so sure. Laurence Fox posted images of rioters attacking police vans alongside the text: “We are about to witness the long-overdue correction of the approved narrative.”
Nigel Farage told his two million followers it was “fair and legitimate” to question whether the defendant was under surveillance by security services, a claim made by a Russian fake news site.
As Farage’s fellow MP Jess Phillips pointed out, he could have gone to the House of Commons and asked the question, but instead chose to stay at home and upload angry videos to his social media.
You know what I think is a fair and legitimate question? That’s why so many men have used the murder of three girls to spread a narrative that allows them to protect nothing but their own fragile egos.
That’s why, even after little Elsie’s grieving mother was forced to take to social media and call for an end to the violence in Southport, even more men took the initiative to riot for a second night in Manchester, London and Hartlepool, some wearing T-shirts bearing the faces of the murdered girls.
It seems incredible that a week after police chiefs warned of a “staggering” rise in violence against women, with perpetrators getting younger and younger, a 17-year-old boy has been charged with murdering three little girls – and a group of blokes shouting “English to death” decided to make it all about them. The story became one of thugs and riots, when the available facts suggest that it was a femicide.
As a result, there was little room for stories about the amazing locals who mobilised on Wednesday morning to clean up the mess left by the rioters. There was little room for reports about the nearly half a million pounds raised for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where the young victims are being treated, after two kind-hearted women set up a fundraising page called ‘Swifties for Southport’.
And there was little room for any discussion of the epidemic of violence against women, where what unites perpetrators is not their race, religion or immigration status, but their gender.
We should be thinking of Bebe King, of Elsie Dot Stancombe, of Alice Dasilva Aguiar. Of the families who began the week like any other, full of hope for the summer holidays, and ended it devastated and mourning their children, yet another victim of this seemingly endless cycle of violence against women and girls.
Don’t want to pay, Kyle? Keep it in your pants!
Lauryn Goodman was criticised by a judge this week for having “exaggerated her need to spend money” during a legal battle with Manchester City star Kyle Walker. Goodman, who has two children with Walker, demanded payments from the footballer equivalent to a salary of £350,000 a year, including a £31,200 artificial turf pitch for the garden and a car for a nanny who couldn’t even drive yet.
Lauryn Goodman leaves court after the child support hearing for her two children with England and Manchester City star Kyle Walker (below)
“I think that because of who I am, what I do and the money I have, you’re taking into account what is really needed,” Walker told the court. “If I was a painter and decorator, I don’t think we would have gotten this far.”
No. But it wouldn’t have gotten that far if Walker had kept it in his pants and hadn’t cheated on his wife and mother of his four other children.
Here’s a little advice for millionaire footballers who don’t want to be taken advantage of because of their wealth: don’t take advantage of the gold diggers that wealth attracts and everything will be fine!
Trusted clinic
Bryony tips her hat to Princess Beatrice, who wears whatever she wants (shown here in a striking hat at Prince William’s wedding in 2011).
I love that Princess Beatrice topped Tatler’s list of the best dressed Brits, especially after she was mercilessly mocked for the elaborate hat she wore to her cousin Prince William’s wedding in 2011 (left). Beatrice’s rise to the style throne is proof that everyone ends up fashionable at some point, so you might as well wear whatever you want, without worrying about what other people think.
According to the RSPCA, one in five children have never fed ducks, and the charity is now concerned about “young people’s relationship with the natural world”. Is it because children are glued to their phones, or because there are signs in parks asking people not to feed ducks?
