Killed: Arkadiusz Jozwik

There was a vigil, of course. And a protest march. Candles were lit and flowers laid as politicians from across Britain and Europe flocked to the grim shopping precinct where Arkadiusz Jozwik had been so viciously attacked.

It was August 2016, and in the heady aftermath of the EU referendum, the violent death of a 40-year-old Polish immigrant on the streets of Harlow briefly morphed into a major international news event.

Newspapers splashed it across front pages. TV news teams filed sombre dispatches from the Essex town. On social media, politicians, academics and race-relations campaigners pontificated about a tragic event that, they insisted, laid bare ugly forces that had been unleashed by Britain's vote to leave the EU.

Typically, the BBC went still further, raising fears that Jozwik's killing 'was a frenzied racist attack triggered by the Brexit referendum' and broadcasting an extraordinary claim that Nigel Farage was somehow to blame for being 'part of this death'.

'You've got blood on your hands,' the former UKIP leader, who had resigned after the referendum result, was told in a hard-hitting Newsnight interview.

Briefly, the known facts of the case were as follows: Jozwik, who had moved to England in 2012 and worked in a local sausage factory, had suffered fatal head injuries during an altercation outside a pizza restaurant around pub closing time on Saturday, August 27.

He died in hospital two days later. Six local youths were quickly arrested. One, then aged 15, would later be charged.

Beyond that, the circumstances remained vague. However, Essex police had initially said that 'one line of many inquiries that we are following' was that the incident was a 'potential hate crime', due to an unconfirmed report that Jozwik's assailant had at one point mocked him for speaking Polish.

Candles were lit and flowers laid as politicians from across Britain and Europe flocked to the grim shopping precinct where Arkadiusz Jozwik had been so viciously attacked

The Mail carried a report on the killing on August 31, stating the police were treating it as a 'suspected hate crime' and quoting from eye-witnesses. In the absence of evidence, we were careful not to link the tragedy to Brexit.

Other papers weren't so reticent, even though the police cautioned 'we must not jump to conclusions'. Within days, the Guardian newspaper was claiming that Jozwik's death 'exposes the reality of post-referendum racism'. The Sun, on its front page, carried the headline 'Killed By Teen Mob For Being Polish', while The Telegraph reported 'fears [that] migrants are being targeted in post-Brexit hate crimes'.

These articles were seized on by a host of Left-wing lobby groups, especially those which had supported the Remain campaign. They promptly began using the tragedy to smear opponents, the 17 million who voted to leave, and advance their agendas.

Anti-Brexit pressure group Another Europe blamed the killing on 'the spiral of Brexit hate'. The Corbynist People's Assembly was quoted saying that the 'violent death' confirms 'racism has been on the rise since Brexit'.

On Twitter, a former BBC science journalist called Rob Coppinger summed up the prevailing mood among Remainers using social media, declaring: 'If you voted for Brexit, you contributed to this.'

Then came the politicans. On August 31, Stand Up to Racism, a lobby group which counts Labour's Diane Abbott as President, descended on Harlow for a vigil and protest march to mark what it described as 'a horrible confirmation of the rise of racism'.

A couple of days later, Richard Corbett, a Labour MEP, denounced the 'Brexit-triggered hate crime'.

Poland sent its British ambassador, Arkady Rzegocki, on a high-profile tour of Harlow. 'Before the Brexit referendum there was less xenophobia and racism,' he declared. 'Now we are seeing an increase in such incidents… It's a very important tragedy and we have to work together on this issue.'

As diplomatic tension ratcheted up, Poland's deputy Prime Minsiter, Mateusz Morawiecki, gave a speech saying that the killing would 'pose a question mark for many families in Great Britain'. Theresa May promptly phoned her counterpart, Beata Szydlo, in Warsaw, to declare that 'hate crime has no place in UK society'.

Days later, Polish police were allowed to patrol in Harlow, in a PR stunt to reassure the worried immigrant community. Remain-supporting Labour MP David Lammy dubbed it 'a very sad indictment of the prejudices that have surfaced recently'.

Soon, Jean-Claude Juncker, Head of the European Commission, was getting in on the act, using a speech to claim that the killing was caused by 'galloping populism' that had been harnessed by Brexit. He told MEPs on September 13 that: 'Europeans can never, never accept Polish workers being harassed, beaten up or even murdered in the streets of Essex.'

Meanwhile, in Westminster, Labour's Yvette Cooper, head of the Home Affairs Select Committee, decided to launch a formal inquiry into the 'rise of hatred and hate crime', suggesting the 'terrible murder' was a chilling example of 'hate crime linked to political events'.

So far, so sobering. On paper, at least. But for all the headlines last August, a very different set of facts about this high-profile tragedy has now emerged.

For, in contrast to the sensational narrative so eagerly advanced by a host of Left-wing politicians, Remain campaigners and race-relations lobbyists, it would seem that Arkadiusz Jozwik's death had nothing whatsoever to do with racism.

Mr Jozwik wasn't attacked for being an immigrant. He died from a single punch thrown after a pointless late-night argument of the sort that, sadly, occurs between drunken men in town centres across the country on almost every Saturday night.

The incident was not a 'hate crime', and neither the police, nor prosecutors ever formally classified it as such. Suggestions that it had something to do with Brexit are a complete fabrication.

Furthermore, it seems that Jozwik may even have provoked the fatal attack himself by racially abusing a young black companion of his killer.

Some of these awkward facts were evident soon after the Pole's death. Within days, senior police officers were deeply worried about the way events had been interpreted.

'It's concerning that the widespread media are reporting this as a hate crime,' said Detective Chief Inspector Martin Pasmore of Essex Police, 'when in fact that is no more than one line of inquiry in a number of inquiries.'

In December, four months after the killing, it was revealed the Crown Prosecution Service was not treating it as a hate crime. This — from a body that is never slow to find hate crimes when there is a chance they might exist — made clear there was no evidence that xenophobia could have been a motive for the killing.

Earlier this month, after the case finally came to trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, Judge Patricia Lynch warned the press not to mention Brexit or 'hate crime' in connection with the case which saw a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, jailed for three years for manslaughter.

Predictably, the trial itself was all-but ignored by the Left-wing media and generated fewer than a dozen articles in national newspapers — as opposed to more than 300 printed in the aftermath of Jozwik's death.

Perhaps this was for good reason. For the facts that emerged in court lay bare the staggering and quite shameful degree to which this tragic incident was exploited by our anti-Brexit political class.

Not only was this tragedy used to falsely portray supporters of Brexit as unreconstructed racists who tacitly endorse the murder of immigrants, it was also, as we shall see, cynically leveraged by the race relations industry to promote its fashionable 'hate-crime' agenda.

The real story of the Harlow killing begins around 11.30pm on August 27, when Arkadiusz Jozwik visited the TGF pizza shop in the Stow area of Harlow with two companions, spending £9.99 on an 18-inch pizza.

Polish Ambassador Arkady Rzegocki with Harlow MP Robert Halfon at the scene of the attack

Earlier that night, he'd consumed a quantity of vodka (tests showed he was twice over the drink-drive limit) and he was inebriated as he sat on a wall outside the shop to consume the meal. It was there that Jozwik and his friends began arguing with a group of youths riding bicycles around the pedestrianised shopping centre.

According to Rosina Cottage, prosecuting in the case at Chelmsford Crown Court, the youths at one point laughed at the English spoken by Mr Jozwik and his friends. This was the nearest anyone came during the trial to alleging that his attacker had been guilty of racism. A defence witness, for his part, claimed that the Pole was 'aggressive and loud, swearing and just wobbling everywhere' as well as saying 'fight me fight me' and 'calling a black friend [of the assailant] a n****r.' The court made no finding as to whether this particular allegation was true.

Events then took a tragic turn when, with a fight seemingly imminent, one of the youths walked behind Jozwik and threw a single punch — dubbed a 'Superman punch' in court — at the back of his head. He fell instantly to the ground, striking his head on the way, and was observed to be unconscious and bleeding from his ears. He died from his injuries at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge two days later, on August 29.

Those are the facts: tragic, but largely unremarkable. However, a death which might, at any other point in history, have been largely ignored, became front page news on August 30 when the Press Association news agency reported that Essex police were treating the incident as a 'potential hate crime'.

In the aftermath of a bitterly fought Brexit referendum, during which the Leave campaign had been repeatedly accused — without concrete evidence — of causing a surge in 'hate crime,' the incident took on a totemic significance.

The Left-wing New Statesman magazine, for example, compared Jozwik's killing with the murder of Jamie Bulger, the two-year-old killed in Liverpool by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, in its power to shock the nation, claiming it felt 'like the most violent manifestation of the emotions stirred up by Britain's vote to leave the EU'.

The achingly liberal New York Times alleged, falsely, that Jozwik had been 'repeatedly pummelled and kicked by a group of boys and girls'.

On August 31— the day Essex Police issued its statement saying it was unhappy at the way the killing was being reported as a hate crime — the BBC's Six o'clock News carried a report claiming 'the fear is that this was a frenzied racist attack triggered by the Brexit referendum'.

Then, on Newsnight, reporter John Sweeney interviewed a friend of Jozwik called Eric Hind, who claimed the EU vote had made Britons feel 'secure to be racist'.

Asked who he blamed for this trend, Hind said: 'I don't know if I can mention names.' Sweeney responded by urging him to 'mention names'. Hind then said: 'Nigel Farage… you are part of this death and you've got blood on your hands.'

The claim — which blamed Farage for a racist murder — was part of a pre-recorded package, meaning it was apparently passed as fit for broadcast by both Newsnight's editors and the BBC's lawyers.

Though Newsnight inserted a disclaimer to the effect that Farage denied responsibility for the death, the former UKIP leader quite understandably believes that even airing such a damaging allegation was 'hugely irresponsible'. This week, he filed a formal complaint against the BBC over its coverage of the affair and is considering a further complaint to Ofcom.

He has not ruled out defamation proceedings and is refusing to pay his licence fee until the Corporation apologises, claiming his family was subjected to 'appalling' abuse as a result of the accusation.

'I've been on the front line of politics for long enough to have a fairly thick skin,' Farage tells me. 'But this Newsnight piece opened the floodgates, for me and my family. It led to real nastiness, against all of us.'

The BBC raised fears that Jozwik's killing 'was a frenzied racist attack triggered by the Brexit referendum'

The BBC weren't alone in blaming Farage. On the radio station LBC, the Left-wing talk-show host James O'Brien on August 31 devoted no fewer than 14 minutes of his programme to accusing him of seeking to 'echo completely the vitriol of Nazism' and arguing that he had 'blood on his hands'.

'What is it about Britain in August 2016 that could have created teenagers who thought that it's acceptable to attack, beat up, ultimately kill a man, for being foreign?' he asked. 'I think we can be honest… It's people like Nigel Farage.'

You will, for the most part, look in vain for apologies today from individual anti-Brexit campaigners who wrongheadedly sought to exploit Jozwik's death for political ends. But then, neither have any of the organisations caught up in this scandal expressed much contrition, either.

Take the Green Party. In October, when Essex Police had made abundantly clear their concerns about the killing being treated categorically as a hate crime, its leader Caroline Lucas issued a press release complaining about 'hate crimes during the EU referendum campaign and its aftermath, including the horrific murder of Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow'.

Despite the CPS saying there was no evidence it was a hate crime, despite the judge in the trial earlier this month warning the jury not to link the case to hate crimes or Brexit, the statement remains on her website.

Take also the publicly funded Equality and Human Rights Commission. Its chair, David Isaac, gave a speech last September claiming to be 'profoundly alarmed by the rise in hate crimes since the referendum and in particular by the senseless killing of the Polish factory worker Arek Jozwik in Harlow last month'.

As Mr Isaac (a supposed expert in race-relations law) ought to have known perfectly well, there was at that time no proof whatsoever that this 'senseless killing' was any sort of hate crime. Yet even now, his claim remains on the commission's website.

But then, what do facts matter when you are a fully-paid-up member of the liberal establishment? For as this tragic case demonstrates, hatred and prejudice appear to be perfectly acceptable in today's Britain — provided they are directed against the 17 million people who had the temerity to vote in favour of Brexit.