Transcription
They called him Henry. 18 years old. He's a footballer, a finance student. Few months into his first year. His friends and teammates say he was the kind of guy who walk in a room and lit up a room. When Henry walked in, they cheered like someone had scored a soccer goal. That's what they say.
On the 3rd of December on a street in Southampton, England, Henry was stabbed five times. I'm gonna play the video. He's handcuffed. Police officers show up. He is being handcuffed. He's saying, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe." He tells the officers, "I've been stabbed. I can't breathe. I can't breathe." Officer looks down, side to side. So, I'm just trying to keep a set up. All right. He's got a mouth full of blood. I don't want him at this boy and saying, you know, I don't think you've been stabbed, mate. And they put him in handcuffs, you're hearing the the guy who stabbed him say, you know, he knocked my turban off and they treated this bleeding kid like a criminal because the man who had knifed him said the magic word and that's racism. He said Henry attacked him and abused him. It was a lie. The prosecutors said it was a lie. The court said it was a lie. I mean, you should hear what the judge said in the courtroom. I mean, it was very clear. I can't believe a word you say because everything you've said is a lie. But at the time, the word of this murderer was weighed heavier than the last breaths of a boy dying on the pavement.
Now, I want you to hear me clearly because clarity is the only thing that will honor the dead. The evil here is not people. The evil here is not a faith. The evil here is older and simpler than that. The evil is a justice that decides before a single word is spoken whose life counts and whose word counts. A justice that asked not what happened but who am I allowed to believe. This is the exact evil that Martin Luther King marched against. That was the whole machinery of the 1950s. A system that had already made up its mind about who you believe before you ever open your mouth. You just look at a human being and you're like, "Oh, he's white. He's black. I believe the white guy." In this case, you look at two human beings. He's black. He's white. He's he's a minority. He's white. I believe the minority. I believe the black guy. I believe the brown guy. I believe anybody but the white guy. And this is by design. I mean, we told ourselves that, you know, we were a different country and this is a different century. But the footage here says otherwise.
And this is what Tommy Robinson has been saying. And this was my message that apparently I could be banned for. I don't know if I am banned from I hope not, but I I was told I'd be banned if I spoke at the rally for Tommy Robinson. And I wasn't speaking for Tommy Robinson. I was speaking and standing up for one law, one standard. That's what I was standing up. A life is a life. I don't care what color. A life is a life. Equal justice. It's not a slogan. It's it's not a side. It's the floor underneath everything we claim to believe. And when that floor cracks, everyone falls through it. Eventually, all of us. And I know the rage. I felt it last night outside that police station. The rage boiled over into the streets. Officers were hurt. People were arrested. And God help me, I understand it. I don't excuse it, but I understand it. And the only reason why I understand it is because this is what happens when there's no real leadership. You know, once a brick is thrown, no brick thrown has ever made a powerful institution look in the mirror. Okay? Rage feels like justice, but it's not justice. And it's not going to change the hearts of anybody. It's the thing that lets the powerful change the subject from a dead boy in handcuffs to a broken shop window to a police officer that was hurt by a bottle being thrown. Don't hand them that gift. Don't.
There is another way. It's the way that always works. And it's not weakness. It is the most disciplined strength a human being can wield. Jesus refused the sword in the garden. No, he healed his enemy. Gandhi who emptied a prison by by filling it. King who marched into the fists and the dogs and the fire hoses and would not swing back. And in not swinging back, he made the whole world finally see who the real animal was here. They marched, of course they marched, but they marched unarmed. They marched unflinching. That discipline is what made the injustice impossible to look away from because people all over the world looked and said, "Wait a minute. They're dogs, fire hoses, they're swinging at them. They're beating with clubs and no one is fighting back." It was clear who the good guy was and who the bad guy was. Cuz here's what happens. People watch something and they're like, I don't really know the situation. I don't really know who that person is. I I don't know whose side I should be on. That's why he was like, never strike back. Never ever ever strike back. A mob makes injustice forgettable. The disciplined, peaceful, immovable witness makes it unbearable.
And you know who said the most truest, most Christlike thing in this entire affair? It's not a politician. It was Henry's father. Can we play Henry's father, please? Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times. He told them he had been stabbed four times. The response from one officer was, "I don't think you have, mate." The police have said they were misled by the murderer and that the scene when they arrived was complex. Unfortunately, it seems to us the truth is much simpler. The police were told by our son himself and by a member of the public who called 999 that they heard someone shout that they had been stabbed. But the police did not believe them. Henry was pulled across the gravel, his hands forced behind his back, and he was placed in handcuffs. His murderer, however, was afforded decency. He was believed. He was not handcuffed when arrested. He was not handcuffed when transported to the police station. As far as we understand, he was never handcuffed at all. And as Vicram Digua himself told the court, whilst under arrest for Henry's murder, police even took him to the kitchen so he could choose his food. The contrast is unbearable. What is the difference between this and what we heard coming out of the South in the 1950s? If you were white, you you were treated with kid gloves. If you were black, you were sitt in jail. Didn't matter really. You'd already been judged before you even got to trial. You'd already been judged.
See, this is the plan. This is what is it? Not anti-racism. Yeah, anti-racist. You have to be an anti-racist, right? Isn't that what they called it, Ricky? Anti-racism. When when you had to become a racist to defeat racism, right? There you go. Became the trend in 2020. Right. Okay. So, this is their plan. You you are becoming the 1950s except the white man is the black man. That's not what anyone wanted except people who want revenge. People who want destruction, who want tension. I don't want any of that. I want people to be treated equally. I want the police to not judge at the scene. Just calm it down. Get everybody under control. You don't know, then you don't know. Don't judge by what a person looks like. They want us They want us to be a racist nation. Just in reverse. I don't I don't want anyone in that situation.
And here, Henry's own father standing inside the worst grief a man can carry. He asks that his son's death not be used to create division or hatred or tension. They were chanting last night. They marched in the streets. Play some of this. They marched in the streets chanting and then they started throwing trash bins and they say it's because the police showed up with their riot shields and started antagonizing and pushing back. Okay. Well, this looks peaceful. But if they do come with their riot shields, listen to Martin Luther King. You don't push back. You take it. You don't throw rocks at them. Look, this only works when there are open hearts. You have to follow Christ. You follow Gandhi, you follow King, you follow the grieving father. This is the only method that works every time. But it only works when there is still a conscience on the other side to reach. When when that Judeo-Christian ethic of I want to do right is still there. That open heart and that is a ever enclosing window. Nonviolence is a wager. It's a bet that the people in power still have a heart to be moved. the people who not the politicians, these people on a street that have the power that they still have a heart in there. And that window is the only window you can get through. It's the only thing that changes that. And that window is closing because trust in this country is bleeding out as surely as Henry did on that street. That's why you should be concerned about the death of churches.
But here's some hope for you in Great Britain. It's quiet and it is young and it's happening in our streets, too. All across Britain, all across America, a generation everyone wrote off as done is walking back into churches. There is talk of a quiet revival. Young people reaching again for something bigger than the next outrage. They want to belong to something good. Don't confuse marches that turn into mobs as good. It requires discipline. You know, and I talked to Tommy about this when I was there. You don't have a Martin Luther King. They don't have one. They Gandhi was in a way against the British. So when I said, you know, you got Gandhi and everybody looked at me like, are you out of your mind? And I'm like, "No, you got to look at Gandhi for what he was doing." This is the kind of soil that courage grows in. Don't waste it on hatred. Plant something in it. What do we owe Henry? Not a riot, a reckoning. We owe him relentless, peaceful, undeniable pressure for the truth. Every answer the investigation can give. And not one less. We owe him one law applied to the same soul. every soul who walks either on those islands or here. You owe him our refusal to hate people. We are tempted to hate and our refusal be to be silent and sit down and say, "This isn't my fight. It is your fight." They put a dying boy in handcuffs because someone told him a lie about who to believe. So let her answer be consistent and the truth and so calmly and clearly stated that no one can pretend they didn't hear it. His name was Henry. Say it and believe him, not skin color.