Freedom of speech has fallen to such depths, even the utterances of grieving families are not safe from interference. Earlier this month, Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man, was sentenced for murdering Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old white student. There was public outrage at the response of the police, who seemed more concerned with a false allegation from Digwa that Nowak had racially abused him than a dying teenager, who was handcuffed in his final moments. On June 13, something that sounds faintly conspiratorial but that many of us have long suspected was confirmed to be true: a “secretive government propaganda unit,” as the Daily Mail put it, filled with “spies, spinners and soldiers” is routinely deployed to “control the narrative” following atrocities that may inflame racial tensions. The Research, Information and Communications Unit apparently “made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were well briefed.” It has been claimed that the unit “intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks.” The newspaper’s source said: “You can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations — they usually have a similar tone.”