No, the British Government Didn't Tell Citizens Not to Be Angry About Lee Rigby's Murder — Here's What It Actually Said
“The British government told citizens not to be angry about a beheading incident”
The argument in brief
A viral claim says the British government told citizens they should not be angry after a soldier was beheaded in the street. This is false. Officials condemned the attack as 'barbaric' and expressed grief — what they actually asked was that people not carry out retaliatory attacks on Muslim communities, a standard law-enforcement request that was then twisted into something far more sinister.
Why it spread
This claim hit a nerve because many people already feel that governments prioritize managing optics over protecting ordinary citizens. The idea that officials would care more about community relations than about a murdered soldier's family feels plausible to anyone who distrusts political institutions — which made the distorted version easy to believe and hard to let go of, even when the real statements were publicly available.
The claim goes like this: after a shocking murder, the British government told its own citizens to suppress their anger and essentially defend the killers. It sounds outrageous — because the real story is quite different.
In May 2013, Fusilier Lee Rigby was murdered on a street in Woolwich, London, in a brutal attack widely described as beheading-style. It was a horrific event. According to BBC News coverage at the time, Prime Minister David Cameron publicly called the attack 'sickening' and 'barbaric' and expressed direct solidarity with Rigby's family. The government was not silent, and it was not neutral.
What officials also did — and this is the part that got distorted — was warn the public against retaliatory violence toward Muslim communities. Police urged calm to prevent a cycle of further harm. As Full Fact has documented, this is a routine law-enforcement response after any attack that risks triggering community reprisals. Asking people not to attack innocent bystanders is not the same as telling them they have no right to grieve or feel rage.
Snopes traced how this distinction collapsed online. Social media posts and right-wing websites took the 'please don't retaliate' message and reframed it as the government 'defending the attackers' or 'silencing victims.' The two things are genuinely different, but the reframed version was far more emotionally explosive and spread much further.
The honest version of this story is still troubling enough: a soldier was murdered in broad daylight, and officials had to manage public fury carefully. But 'be careful how you express your anger' is not the same as 'you have no right to be angry.' When you see a claim that a government told citizens to feel nothing after a violent attack, look for the actual quotes — they almost never say what the viral version claims.
Sources
- BBC News - Woolwich attack coverage (2013)
After the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in May 2013, government officials and police did urge calm and warned against retaliatory attacks on Muslim communities, but they did not tell citizens they should not be angry or grieve.
- The Guardian - Woolwich attack reaction
Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the attack in strong terms, calling it 'sickening' and 'barbaric.' Officials warned against vigilante reprisals but did not suppress public anger at the attack itself.
- Full Fact - UK fact-checking on Woolwich and government response
The claim that the government told citizens 'not to be angry' is a distortion. Authorities asked people not to take retaliatory action against Muslim communities, which was misrepresented online as suppressing all emotional response to the killing.
- Snopes - British government response to Woolwich
Viral versions of this claim circulated on social media and right-wing websites, exaggerating or misrepresenting official statements about community cohesion into a claim that the government was defending the attackers or silencing victims.
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