The big read: Manchester 10

Building community and resistance in the darkest of times.

What would you do if your best friend died? What if they were murdered? What would you say in the privacy of a group chat? How would you express the pain and horror of what happened? How would the 16 year old version of you handled it? What would they have said?

These are the questions that swirled around my head as I read the appeal judgment in the case of the Manchester 10. They were a group of young people convicted of a conspiracy to cause Grievous Bodily Harm and conspiracy to murder in spring 2022. The convictions of four of the teenagers are based solely on messages sent to a group chat in the aftermath of the murder of their friend John Soyoye in November 2020.

John’s killing was part of an altercation with another group of boys from a different part of north Manchester. In the aftermath of the killing, in a number of the boys shared stories about John in group chats. They talked about their friend and how much they missed him. Talk then turned to anger at the people who had done this to him. There were expressions of that anger that, though dressed with the vernacular of 16 and 17 year old boys, we would all recognise from ourselves if we were ever unfortunate enough to find ourselves in that situation.

What came next was a series of incidents across the festive period of 2020-21 involving a small number of the boys in which violence took place.

In January 2021, all 10 of the boys were rounded up by the police, eventually to face conspiracy charges linked to that violence. In the trial, the friends – most of whom had known each other from school – were repeatedly painted as being members of a ‘gang’. Videos of Drill songs, some with explicit reference to events that link to the killing of Soyoye and the violence that followed, were used as evidence of membership to the gang, and of violent intent. Pictures of one boy, Ade Adedeji, holding the cash he’d earned working in a shop up next to his ear was poured over in the courtroom. The so-called ‘money phone’ picture was a sign of clear gang membership, the prosecution argued.

The more details that unfurl themselves through the 31 page appeal judgment, the more farcical the case becomes. The more infuriating and unthinkable it becomes. It is a point of fact that one of those in the dock – Harry Oni – enacted harm on someone else. And that others were present for it. It is also a point of fact that some of those in the dock had no more involvement than sending a few messages whilst in the rawest part of their grief.

Many of those that suffer oppression and horror at the hands of the state are not perfect. We lead messy, complicated lives. These details of our lives, of moments when we handled ourselves in one way or another do not define the entirety of who we are, and yet – in situations like those at the centre of this case, when put in the hands of a rabid state intent on the continued criminalisation of young black men, they often become it.

It makes arguments against state repression sticky. Complex and nuanced. They are arguments that some on the left will actively shy away from. Over the past few years, I’ve watched on from afar as a community and a campaign has sprung up around the boys. Time and time again, at hearings, during trials and across the appeal process, people from the community, and indeed from much further afield, have come out to support the Manchester 10. To fight against the risible nature of so much of this case and to put arguments for abolition at the centre of that.

One voice in particular – that of youth worker Roxy Legane – has been so strong, so unwavering in its passion, belief and support of these boys. Never shying away from that stickiness or that complexity, but continuing to fight and argue and expose the injustice at the heart of the clampdown on these young lives. Legane, who works at Manchester based anti-racist youth worth organisation Kids of Colour has spent the last few years developing relationships with the boys and their families, supporting them through the process, organising and advocating for them.

What Roxy, the team at Kids of Colour, the boys and their families and indeed the wide, sprawling community of support around them has done resulted in the quashing of Adedeji’s conviction and the reduction in the sentences of two others.

When I started this substack I said that every month, I would write about the people, groups and organisations doing inspiring things. To learn lessons, connect the dots and celebrate their work. Even when we don’t achieve all that that we set out to, we build the groundwork for our next great victory. Watching the struggle that Roxy and others have fought over the last few years, I knew she was the first person I wanted to talk to for these features.

Below is an edited version of our conversation over video call last week. For the purposes of transparency, and because in situations such as these I believe it’s good practice, I let Roxy read and suggest edits and changes to this piece before it went out.

I hope you come away from our conversation feeling as hopeful and inspired as I did.

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When did you first become aware of what happened in November 2020?

So initially it was through Ade (Adedeji) really. He’d started coming to some of our events through his youth worker, and spoke at one in spring 2019 about policing so I knew him but it was pretty light touch. He was always pretty difficult to get in touch with!

Then in early January 2021 Ade reached out via his youth worker for some help. He had just been arrested and I was his appropriate adult at one of his interviews. In those early stages we thought that it was put to bed. We kept in touch and then, a couple of months later, he got pulled back in for his next interview and was arrested and sent to the young offenders in Wetherby. It all happened quite quickly and suddenly I was all in building up our relationship, ensuring that he and his family had support.

He was only in Wetherby for about a week before getting bailed and then we started to build a relationship really quickly. I think, had it not been for him getting that bail, the connection to his case and the support we could offer would have been really limited.

After building that relationship with Ade, did you then broaden out to all of 10 of the boys? Were you able to reach out to family members? Did the fact a few of the boys were held on remand [kept in prison before trial] make this more difficult?

It was a really slow journey of building. Six of the boys were on remand so, through the year between the arrests and trial [in Spring 2021 and 2022 respectively], I was able to see the boys who were on bail but only briefly. In the hearings that came between arrest and trial I started to take all the parents' numbers from the courtroom and in December 2021 we had a family meeting with all those who were on bail (the boys weren’t allowed to come because they weren’t allowed to associate with each other) so that was when I started those very initial relationships.

We’d hoped to go quite public and do some proactive campaigning from January 2022 but, as is completely understandable, some of the parents got quite nervous. I think it’s a common feeling that ‘if we just stay quiet and continue to go through this process, it will be fine’. I think this was especially true of those four boys on bail because the evidence against them was just telegram messages. Because of this anxiety, we didn't go as explicitly public about the case in January but we did release some statements.

Just before the trial the charges, which we initially thought would be joint enterprise trials, changed to conspiracy (which was useful for the prosecution!) The main core of relationship building was with those four boys and their families because we were in court together everyday. I was also, at that time, able to meet the other parents of the boys held on remand, and to start building relationships with them. After all of the boys were convicted I was able to start writing to the other boys, have phone calls with them or connect through their families.

What is that like on a personal level? Courts and much of the apparatus around them are inherently horrific places, places of violence and trauma. Trying to do that building, that bringing together of these disparate people in that space – what was it like?

It was nerve wracking. You have to, quite quickly, get people to trust you, your politics and your intentions for their children. And that is hard but you’ve just got to go for it. Go and introduce yourself to these people and try your best. You know some of these families actually weren’t that disparate in that they lived down the road from one another, a lot of these boys went to the same school, some of the families knew each other so there were some relationships already there.

My concern, before even trying to do that building, was managing the dynamics. Often in joint enterprise cases, you get a lot of divisive narratives. It’s totally understandable you know, someone is harmed and ultimately the other families want to be like – we’re not them. But that didn’t happen in this case. I don’t want to underestimate my role in that but I think there was really strong solidarity between parents and always has been, even for the boy who did harm someone, which often isn’t the case. So yeah, it was nerve wracking and obviously very heavy – the more you get to know people, the more you love them, the harder it all becomes.

On that point actually, what really struck me from reading the judgment was the big disparity in each of the boys' involvement and, I guess, roles in this “conspiracy” according to the summing up of the trial judge. There were obviously weird broad brush things like ‘some of them are drug dealers’ but there are also quite specific things about the case. How do you manage that on an individual level with these boys and their parents? In an appeal situation where, for example, the evidence against one boy is CCTV footage and the other is a few text messages, the likelihood of success becomes much different right?

For me, personally having this relationship it’s been continuously and unwaveringly reintroducing arguments about who is to blame, arguments about the state and the police choosing to do this. There has never been that much anger towards Harry [Oni] who was the boy who harmed. There has never been ‘my kid never went and did anything’. It was clear from Harry’s testimony in court that he didn’t want this to happen. He would have happily just been there by himself, taking responsibility for the harms he committed, but the police chose to do this. It is their choice to have all 10 of those boys in that dock.

So reminding the parents of that and then always speaking about the bigger pictures of institutional racism and the end goal, the end purpose of having more black children in prison and having those conversations really explicitly and not infantilising them.

Ultimately, in this case, I just think you have to give so much credit to the boys and the families, because the boys would be the first to say ‘Harry's a good kid. Like, yeah, he's done some bad things.’ But that kind of empathy, and although they wouldn't articulate it this way, but that kind of abolitionist empathy as well is there. They know who he is, they know what he's like, and they also have been brought together by grief, right? They understand why these things may have happened, but I think the the absolute shock and wildness of being brought in for telegram messages then also helps enable this kind of cohesive resistance.

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From a youth work perspective, I wanted to ask how you support a young person developing their identity and figuring out who they are, and expressing themselves as they need to do that whilst that identity – be it their blackness, their age, their vernacular etc – is being criminalised?

There might be a kind of youth language element, but actually the core of what they're saying [in these group chats] would be exactly what all of us said, whoever we are if someone we know was killed, right?

So it's actually making sure to them that there's this complete detachment of that conversation from their blackness, because that is what's being completely appropriated and taken and drawn upon by the police. The courts are creating this whole new language that they're speaking in that almost then makes a jury think, oh that's gang talk when it’s not. So it’s also reiterating to them and their families that all of us would have done this. Yes, it might not have sounded exactly the same, because we’re not 17. So I think there are important discussions about the criminalisation of language for black young people, but also more broadly the criminalisation of youth.

What was wild was the complete removal of context from so much of it. So one of the pieces of evidence against Ade at trial, that the prosecution pushed again at appeal, was that he had sent a message threatening to ‘kill’ another gang member.

We know factually that the rest of that conversation is him talking to a boy who has shared John’s death online. I’m paraphrasing here but Ade messages the boy saying, ‘what the fuck are you doing? That’s John!’ This boy responds saying ‘oh my god, I didn’t know it was John, I love John, if I’d have known I would never have shared this’ and Ade replied with ‘ok cool if you do that again I’ll kill you’. They completely removed the section of the conversation where the boy has been like ‘I’m so sorry’ and purposefully rewritten these conversations.

All I can think of as you’re saying this is the picture of Mark Dugan that the press used just after he was shot to make him look menacing when he was actually a picture of him standing next to the grave of his daughter. This removal of context, this criminalisation of words in a vacuum sort of crosses over to the criminalisation of Drill right? I know how important art in so many different ways is for people, particularly young people, to express themselves and relate to the world. How do you hold access to that outlet whilst acknowledging its potential to be used against people?

As a youth worker, what I’ve always tried to push is - you keep making music. What I find frustrating about arguments that Drill shouldn’t exist, that these kids need to stop making it etc. is that it’s the criminalisation of it that’s the problem! I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with some of the stuff that’s put in the music but I think that’s an opportunity to talk to young people.

I think we need to continue to think of ways that we can support young people to make music, with the support of youth workers and the community behind them. Whether that’s young people making their music and when they put stuff on Youtube it has disclaimers by youth organisations saying – we helped make this, if the police have any issues with it, come talk to us.

You know it's having their back and defending their right to be able to make that kind of music and also having pastoral conversations if you think it's gone a step too far. But ultimately, it also diverts a lot of anger and feeling and holds a lot of feeling itself. This music is always also completely acceptable on a certain level. Like, loads of middle class white people go to see their favorite Drill artist, right? It's just not acceptable on a grass roots level.

One of the pieces of evidence against one of the boys was that he had the MD 40 music video [A Drill song in memory of John Soyoye] on his phone. He had 3,000 pieces of media on his phone and one of them was that video. It has millions of views but they pulled it from his phone and used it against him in his trial as evidence of a link to a gang.

So many parts of the case are just manifestly ludicrous. How do you yourself cope with that? And then more broadly how do you help a community cope with that?

It’s been very hard. Ultimately though, people have been fighting before us, and the reason we’re here now is because people have done the work that we’re trying to do, and we have to carry that forward. I have the privilege of working with a great team of people and building these mechanisms for care at our organisation to support us to do this work. I want to be doing this and there is a lot of joy in this process. It’s mainly shit and of course, it’s not as simple for the boys to be able to say there’s joy in this process because that’s not their experience, but there is something so grounding about getting to know families, becoming their family, fighting with them, pushing forward, taking inspiration from other people, seeing their fight.

Obviously people's lives are being destroyed, but the process of coming together with the community, of making very small steps forwards and wins and collectively working with people that have been deeply harmed is such an important work. I’m sad often, but it’s the work we’re doing.

The community has come out time and time again across this process, can you talk a bit about how that happened, what it’s meant etc?

The community has been the best bit. What we haven't had is cross Youth organizational support, or institutional organizational support from loads of different kinds of places in Manchester, but what we have had is people. Organising in Manchester is, in the most part, really really wonderful. Everyone’s pretty tight knit. All of the organisations, groups, people that have the same kind of value in terms of abolitionist organising support one another, come out for everything.

Community instantly showed up for these boys in Manchester as soon as they were needed and then as that’s grown it's also extended to London. Honestly, we cannot thank people in London enough as well because it’s difficult to get everyone down there for all these really important dates. Time after time though, people turned up and filled up the courtrooms.

It meant a lot to us, but importantly, it meant a lot to the boys and their families. We were told that these courtrooms are usually empty so to be able to send photos to the boys with people outside the court, that they can put up in their cells meant so much. Knowing there’s random people out there who give a shit about them, it helps them through their sentence. It helps them have hope. It supports families knowing that they’re not alone.

One of the most difficult things about this, the really sad thing that I hold sometimes, is that we can't do this for everyone. There are many, many families and young people who are going through trials in empty courtrooms. People we won’t have met and don’t have capacity to help so it’s been amazing to be able to contribute that for the boys and their families in this case.

How do you sustain the support you’ve had and been able to give to the boys and their parents through the next two, four, twenty years, to make sure there is some community support when the boys get out?

We just keep slowly going. We keep sending letters, we keep talking if they need to, we touch base with families every now and then, and that's all we can continue to build. When they come out, we just have to get prepared for that, and we have to start asking questions near the end of their sentences of what they'd like to do on release and what their hopes are.

During sentencing there was a community sentencing report where over 500 people put forward support that would offer these boys. When the boys finish their sentences, we will try and retouch base with some of those, start organising things but it’s going to be hard. You know, keeping people engaged on a specific case throughout the end of the sentence. It might not work perfectly. People will tire. We just have to keep that small relationship building going with families, and that’s a huge part of the work we commit too. There are so many other families and young people in the background we’re continually in touch with.

We’ve just got to try.

I wrote this in a statement that we put out about the outcome of the appeal but, we are indebted to the boys as well. Our organisation has grown as a result of this case. That is not the intention we had, but it’s an inevitable outcome. As people look at this case, and try to learn more, they find us and we build and we become people that others go to on these issues. The boys' lives essentially pushed that forward and we as people, as well as an organisation, owe them to continue these relationships. Not to just dip in and dip out. It will be hard but that's the role we hold. We have a privilege to hold it as well.

Roxy Legane is the Director of Kids of Colour.