Introduction
The Labour MP Lucy Powell has written a letter to the Justice Secretary to complain that four black teenagers in Manchester convicted of conspiracy to commit gross bodily harm shouldn’t have been jailed, saying they’re being “punished for their vague association with others”, on the basis of messages sent in a Telegram chat. She also passed a letter of support onto the teenagers.
The four are part of a group of ten, who were convicted of plotting revenge attacks on a rival gang after the murder of their leader; in total six of the ten were convicted for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, whilst four were convicted of conspiracy to murder. Powell said the former convictions constitute them “being prosecuted based on messages sent while they were trying to navigate their grief". She also challenged the prosecution’s “gang narratives”, saying they relied on "racialised assumptions, loose associations and outdated or inaccurate stereotypes".
The teenagers are also being supported by Kids of Colour and its boss Roxy Legane. She said that all ten defendants “have been failed”, calling for “solutions that address root causes…to break cycles of violence and trauma” instead of “punitive punishment”. In addition, Kids of Colour have accused the prosecution of “thought policing” and “guilt by association”, saying that the fact the teenagers were black was “used to frame them as a criminal gang”. So were the teenagers unfairly jailed?
Who are Kids of Colour?
Kids of Colour describes itself as a “a project for young people of colour aged 24 and under” where they can “challenge” racism in society and build “collective resistance and solidarity”. They work across Greater Manchester. It is registered as a Community Interest Company but began three years ago with a JustGiving fundraiser, which to date has raised over £50,000. Amongst the first projects it supported was a “White Allies Workshop”.
Kids of Colour offer amongst other things a regular Youth Space, a Summer School, and the opportunity for young people to share their views on their YouTube channel. Examples include: “If you're white, cisgender, and straight, then just sit down and listen”, “I refuse to be the 'good migrant”, and “They mainly carry on touching my hair, even when I tell them to stop”. They also offer “anti-racist workshops” to those working with young people. In one video they confirm that they’ve delivered these workshops at schools in Manchester and across Britain, discuss how they teach about non-overt forms of racism such as touching the hair of black women, and call for anti-racism workshops to be made compulsory.
Other examples of their work include a thread condemning a school for punishing a mixed-race child who used the n-word in public, telling white people reaching out to anti-racist organisations to “take a breath” first in case they “speak over the person of colour you’ve reached out to for their expertise”, and offering books to children on “Israeli Apartheid” and “Black Resistance to British Policing”.
Kids of Colour have provided extensive support to the convicted. They reacted to the verdict by saying that “racist policing has once again ruined lives”. They denied that the convicted were a gang; claimed that charges like conspiracy, association, or Joint Enterprise were “used against our communities to divide us, and then oppress us; especially black and brown communities”; said the “(in)justice system” is upheld by racism; called for “rage” against the “racist ‘gang’ narrative”; and asked for people to join them in campaigning for “healing-centred approaches to youth violence” not “cages to punish children and young people”. Those healing approaches involve youth centres, conflict resolution teams, therapy, and grief support.
They also organised a demonstration in support of the convicted, alongside JENGBA, a group who campaign against Joint Enterprise, to which they tried to invite Jeremy Corbyn. At the demo, they claimed that a “RACIST and CLASSIST injustice system, purposefully built to oppress us” was taking away their children and building courts was part of creating a “profitable prison-industrial complex”. After the convictions, they raised funds to be split equally amongst the ten (which would include those who had committed violence), aiming to give them £100 each.
One of the accused wrote a blogpost for them (anonymously) in which he complained that he’d been “failed by the system” and declared that he is a “future leader for young people”. On a drawing made in prison the same person writes, “this is shit I think I got emanick depression I think I am going made again its like one second I am happy then I am sad again”.
Roxy Legane sat through the whole trial and tweeted daily. A full record of her tweets can be found here (link to her Google Drive). She has recorded a podcast about it and clearly has a strong personal interest, promising to get one of those convicted a pet turtle, sharing her Netflix account with him, and joking that he should have described her as his “wife” in official paperwork.
The group have benefited from other supporters. Garry Green, a criminal barrister with Doughty Street Chambers, said that the teenagers’ “positive and constructive backgrounds appear to have been ignored” and that there is a “tendency to adultify young black people”, constituting "a failure to see or recognise the humanity of young black people, treating them much older than they are”. He has been working with the charity Justice on racial inequalities in the law. The Runnymede Trust responded to the convictions by saying the verdict handed down to “these 10 grieving boys” was “disproportionate sentencing” and could “never be considered justice”.
The case was also extensively covered in The Guardian, which described Powell’s comparison of the case to the stabbing to death in Manchester of Yousef Makki by white teen Joshua Molnar, for which he was acquitted of murder and manslaughter. Powell claimed that the difference was that Molnar had an expensive barrister, went to private school, and was white; which meant that Molnar filming himself making stabbing motions to drill music in the court house wasn’t treated the same way as the ten black teenagers who’d been labelled as gangsters because they’d watched or been part of drill music. This ignores that the video was filmed after Molnar was acquitted and was therefore inadmissible, as well as that the ten black teens were represented by QCs.
What actually happened with the teenagers?
Events began with the murder of John Soyoye, 16, an aspiring rapper known as MD or Morsley. He was described as the leader of the M40 gang, based in Moston. His killers belonged to RTD (Representing the Danger), based in Rochdale and Oldham. He was killed on Bonfire Night 2020, only a few hours after members of M40 had attacked the brother of Francesco Raji. A member of RTD, Raji led members of the gang to Moston to get revenge. There they found and fought eight members of M40, using knives and machetes. The M40 members were forced to retreat but Soyoye had been injured and lost his machete. Too slow, he was caught, punched, kicked and stabbed. He suffered 15 stab wounds and died at the scene. Eight members of RTD were convicted of his murder; all were black. One of those convicted had drill lyrics referencing the killing.
Shortly afterwards, the ten black teenagers, who were members or affiliates of M40 began to plan a revenge attack. Six of them sought to acquire weapons and find RTD members, whilst four of them tried to locate members of RTD to target. One of them, Ademola Adedeji, told an RTD member over Snapchat, "Bro can't even lie to you your boys kille cousin and that can't slide". Adedeji was described by Kids of Colour as “one of the most beautiful souls on this earth”. Seven of them participated in a Telegram messaging app group chat where they discussed targets they would “touch”, meaning stab. Drill lyrics on the phone of one of them claimed they’d visited Rochdale looking for revenge: “On my life we will put you in grave… If i get caught in this ride I'm finished, We will doing up 20 to life, In rd tryna catch me a m.” RD stood for Rochdale and M for murder.
Six weeks after Soyoye’s murder, three people launched a machete attack in Rochdale, striking their target multiple times with the blades and then running him over. Two of the ten teenagers were accused of being in the stolen Ford Focus. A 12 inch knife and a machete were seized from the home of one; whilst body armour, three machetes, a crossbow with bolts, and an axe were found in the home of another. Another attack in Rochdale by two of them with machetes was only stopped when the man they slashed with a machete escaped into a shop. Other plans included finding “young females” who had information on RTD or kidnapping the cousin of an RTD member. The Judge said that if it wasn’t for the arrests, the attacks would have continued.
Comment
The details of the crimes make it clear that attempts to minimise the actions of all ten involve excusing violent criminality. When it comes to the four mentioned by Powell, it is less clear, as they were only involved with the Telegram group chat. However, in that chat they discussed locating targets for revenge violence or even murder. They may not have been involved in violence but they were involved in planning it; and they did nothing to stop the violence which did happen, which can’t be excused as part of the normal grieving process.
That leaves the issue of race and the gang narrative. It is clear, from the multiple mass fights and attacks, as well as the use of a group chat to plan revenge, that this case involved organised violence. It would be silly to deny this the label of gang violence, especially when both groups had chosen names under which they operated. Claims of racial stereotypes ignore that the gang label is uncontroversially used with regard to majority white gangs. It’s a form of special pleading, in which charities and activists argue for certain criminals to be treated more leniently because they’re black.
As both perpetrators and victims of violence in this case are black, the best way to protect young black men is to jail those who commit violence and to dissuade those tempted by it, not to throw around unproven charges of racism.