Even now it is very difficult to process the scale of tragedy that engulfed Jason Arday and those who loved him. The unbearable sadness at his death; the wretched knowledge that the very public onslaught against him began with the malign machinations of a self-defined “race realist” – who believes that, in an ideal world, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. The horror that a rightwing and far-right campaign seeking a victim to fuel its nativist prejudices can now crow that it found one.

There is wide and profound grief and of course there is rage, focused and unfocused. Both were on display as thousands joined a protest vigil in Trafalgar Square on Monday evening.

His family – in a moving statement remembering an “amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son” – has said he was “subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him”. This we know. The right and far-right desire to identify and then defenestrate anyone or anything that could be seen as symbolic of progress is virtually pathological. The rightwing media, in a quiet summer – a quarry identified – led a charge that meant Prof Arday’s face was disobligingly displayed on almost every front page, every TV screen, for weeks. His family, who knew him best, are clear about what that ultimately meant for a man who was neurodivergent and by the end – according to reports – desolate. “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”

This stokes high emotions. A high-profile, successful black figure is something highly prized. Many attest to the professor’s kindness and the care he lavished on those he was responsible for and, through access programmes, on others he........

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