Mr Haque’s murderers were racists — so why won’t anyone admit it?

The moment on the video that really hurts, that really digs in — if you are a human being, rather than an ape — is when Marian runs to the prone and inert body of her grandfather and, bending down, distraught, implores him to move, pawing at his body with her hands. She is so small and ineffectual against this sudden new thing in her life, death. Her granddaddy will never move again. Marian is just three years old. Her grandfather is, was, Ekram Haque, 67 years old, a Muslim born in Calcutta who moved to this country almost 40 years ago, hard-working — spent his last years earning a living in a care home — and retired just recently. He was looking forward to taking little Marian on holiday to Pakistan and Australia, the money was all saved up, the flights booked. On that evening he was waiting with her outside their local mosque where he’d been celebrating Ramadan; they lounged on the metal barriers beside the road, chattering — you can see all this on the video — and then the human filth struck, so rapidly and devastatingly, like a swarm of insects.