Henry Nowak’s death exposed Britain’s two-tier justice system

By Jarrett Stepman, Op-ed contributor Saturday, June 06, 2026

A young white man crying out that he couldn’t breathe was ignored, then died while in the hands of police, and the British political establishment has declared, “Don’t you dare politicize this,” as protests erupt around the country.

What a difference skin color makes, right?

Last December, Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man, stabbed and killed 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton with his ceremonial knife. Digwa was convicted on Monday, and the police video was released. The released video has triggered protests around the country.

I’m putting the video here because I think it’s necessary. But be warned, it’s deeply disturbing.

WARNING: DISTURBING VIDEO

Nowak can be seen on the ground, growing paler by the second, mumbling that he’d been stabbed as the police question him and Digwa — who had knifed him moments earlier.

The dying man, who was in obvious distress, kept pleading for help and saying he couldn’t breathe.

When he said he’d been stabbed, the officer responded, “I don’t think you have mate,” as they put him in handcuffs. The officers showed far deeper concern for Digwa, who peddled a now-proven false tale about how Nowak had been racist toward him and grabbed his turban.

Nowak wasn’t being disruptive; he wasn’t resisting police. He was simply pleading for help. There isn’t much to contextualize here or to debate. 

It’s hard to watch the video without being sickened and enraged.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called it a “wake-up call” and a watershed moment for his country.

“It marks a moment when we collectively, as a nation, need to take a step back and take a long, hard look at ourselves and ask what on earth we have become,” Farage wrote for The Telegraph. “That barbarous act was bad enough. But what compounded the horror, and shocked so many of us to the core, was the behavior of the police officers who subsequently arrived on the scene. … Far from assisting the dying teenager, the police’s focus from beginning to end was on the allegation made by the assailant’s brother that they had been ‘attacked and racially abused by a white guy.’”

I agree with Farage. In the name of “anti-racism” and the cause of multiculturalism, Western societies have created two-tier systems whereby those deemed the “oppressed” are held to different, and frequently much lower standards than the “oppressors.”

That wave sort of crested in the United States, for now, as the high tide of DEI, critical race theory, defunding the police, and a whole host of woke policies have been repudiated. At the very least, those ideas are now being seriously challenged, both culturally and legally.

The Great Awokening hit the U.K., too, and continues crashing through its society without abatement. It became worse in the U.K. as it crossed the Rubicon into outright censorship of people who question, for instance, the benefit of mass immigration.

It is creating a pernicious two-tiered legal system that is fast abandoning the ideal of colorblind justice.

It’s the interaction between the officer and Digwa that highlights this problem and makes the video so notable and grotesque. 

“They were racist” has become a sort of “get out of jail free” card. Digwa and his family knew exactly what buttons to try to press with the police, and the police went right for the narrative that they’d been forced to accept.

Cry, “racist!” and let slip the bonds of justice.

We must face the reality that among some in the West, racism by a white person is seen as a greater, more terrible crime than murder.

Let’s consider for a moment that the Sikh man had been telling the truth, that Nowak had really committed racist acts. Are the wages of racism death? The answer in many Western societies is quite nearly, “Yes.”

If a man or woman can have the God-given right to free speech stripped for even creating the perception of racism, or be put in prison for it, it doesn’t take much of a leap to say that they deserve to lose their right to life.

And here we get the reaction of the British political establishment, which has almost uniformly been to say, “Sorry you died, mate,” and to insist that the real villains here are the people, like Farage, trying to “politicize” the murder.

The powers that be in the U.K., the same people who demanded protests and inquisitions following the death of George Floyd — an incident that took place in another country, to boot — are angry that you’re angry.

Here’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer telling Farage in Parliament that he is creating “grievance and division.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the protests “completely unacceptable.”

Here she was back in 2020.

Political commentator Narinder Kaur said that Farage was inciting violence.

Again, here she was in 2020.

The NGO class has had a similar response.

Here’s Amnesty International’s saying essentially that this is just a random tragedy. The real problem you should be concerned about isn’t murder or having a useless, ideologically compromised police force. It’s racism, of course.

These folks aren’t just hypocrites; they’re wrong.

This case is inherently political because the attitudes displayed in the police video of Nowak's death were clearly created by political ideas. Their ideas. And that’s why they want everyone to shut up about it.

If the police are more concerned about rooting out racism, real or imagined, than saving the lives of British subjects, then the people certainly have a right to be concerned and protest.

Suppressing the truth and tut-tutting people who disagree with their narrative has worked so far. But it feels like this time it’s different. Anger and resentment are rightfully growing. Can the British Lion finally wake up from a long slumber? It’s now or never.

Originally published at The Daily Signal.