2024 Southport stabbings

On 29 July 2024, a mass stabbing targeting young girls occurred at the Hart Space, a dance studio in the Meols Cop area of Southport, Merseyside, United Kingdom. Seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana killed three children and injured ten others at a Taylor Swift–themed yoga and dance workshop attended by 26 children. Two girls died at the scene, six injured children and two adults were taken to hospital in a critical condition, and a third girl died the following day.

The day after the attack, rioters clashed with police in Southport and damaged a mosque after misinformation about the attacker's identity – which had not yet been publicly released – was spread online. Over the next few days, mass anti immigration protests and riots spread nationwide.

Rudakubana was arrested at the scene. He was charged with three counts of murder, ten counts of attempted murder, and possession of a bladed article. He was later separately charged under the Biological Weapons Act 1974 and Terrorism Act 2000 in relation to the possession of ricin and a military study of an Al-Qaeda training manual. He pleaded guilty to all 16 charges on 20 January 2025, when his trial was due to begin, having initially entered a not-guilty plea. On 23 January 2025, Rudakubana was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 52 years. No motive for the stabbings was identified; the prosecution suggested that the motivation could have been "the commission of mass murder as an end in itself" and no evidence of terrorism was found.

After Rudakubana's guilty pleas, it emerged that he had a history of violent and concerning behaviour and had been referred to the Home Office anti-extremism programme Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021, but was not accepted into the scheme as no terrorist ideology was identified. Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to overhaul terrorism laws to include non-ideological acts of violence, and appointed David Anderson to lead a review of the Prevent programme.