I removed the rate votes from a node then uninstalled rate and anonymous and authenticated users vanished

It seems that uninstalling the Rate module in your Drupal site caused anonymous and authenticated user roles to disappear. To fix this:

Check if roles exist: Go to People > Roles in the admin panel.
Check permissions: Ensure permissions for anonymous and authenticated users are correct under People > Permissions.
Clear cache: Go to Configuration > Performance and clear all caches.
Restore roles: If missing, manually recreate the roles and set permissions.
Database check: Verify roles in the user_roles table if needed.

I Hope this steps will fix your issues.

Yes it did, there were no roles at all in People > Permissions.

I had to re-roll the website back a few hours to fix the issue to negate doing any database work.