  We introduce soft colour interactions as a novel mechanism to understand the
observed events with large rapidity gaps in $ep$ collisions at HERA. Colour
exchanges between produced partons and colour-charges in the proton remnant
modifies the colour structure for hadronization, such that colour singlet
systems may appear well separated in rapidity. Our explicit model show
characteristics of diffractive scattering, although no explicit pomeron
dynamics have been introduced, and for non-gap events an increased forward
energy flow gives agreement with data.
