Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(16)

Now, it is public knowledge that the process of convicting Stephen’s killers was tantamount to a charade. But back in 1997, the public still had faith that the police could solve this crime. In July of that year, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw announced that there would be a judicial inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death and the following police investigation. It was to be chaired by a High Court judge named Sir William Macpherson.

Dissatisfied with the police’s handling of the case and their seemingly unending search for justice, in 1998 Stephen Lawrence’s family called on then Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon to resign. He responded not by resigning, but with an apology. ‘I deeply regret that we have not brought Stephen’s racist murderers to justice and I would like to personally apologise again today to Mr and Mrs Lawrence for our failure,’ he told the inquiry while giving evidence. ‘We have heard what people have been saying and I accept that a central concern is that the Met is racist. I acknowledge that we have not done enough to combat racist crime and harassment.’

Despite this admission, Sir Paul chose not to yield to any suggestions that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist. Speaking to the press at the time, Doreen, Stephen’s mother and the figurehead of the Lawrence family’s campaign for justice, said, ‘Sir Paul has got fine words. I still have not been given the answer as to why Stephen’s killers are still free.’1

In a later statement, the Lawrences said: ‘Maybe we need another public inquiry into police corruption for the Commissioner to then accept that these boys were protected in some way. If it hadn’t been for this inquiry, the Commissioner would still be saying that officers did everything they could to bring our son’s killer to justice.’2

The report of Sir William Macpherson’s public inquiry was published in February 1999. It concluded that the investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence ‘was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers’. This institutional racism, the report explained, is ‘the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.’3 Most importantly, the report described institutional racism as a form of collective behaviour, a workplace culture supported by a structural status quo, and a consensus – often excused and ignored by authorities. Amongst its many recommendations, the report suggested that the police force boost its black representation, and that all officers be trained in racism awareness and cultural diversity.

In 2004, and after another review, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute any of those suspected of murdering Stephen Lawrence. In 2005, a change in the law saw an 800-year-old ban on double jeopardy lifted, meaning that it was no longer illegal to try suspects twice for the same crime. A review of forensic evidence led to a new trial of those suspected of murdering Stephen Lawrence.

On 4 January 2012, nineteen years after Stephen’s death, two out of the five suspected men were finally found guilty and sentenced for his murder. When Gary Dobson and David Norris killed Stephen, they were teenagers. By the time Dobson and Norris were jailed, they were adult men, in their mid-to late-thirties. While Stephen Lawrence’s life was frozen at eighteen, theirs had continued, unhindered, in part aided by the police.

Both men received life sentences. When passing the sentence, Judge Mr Justice Treacy described the crime as a ‘murder which scarred the conscience of the nation’. It was a monumental day for Britain, if long overdue. Many were wondering how the police had failed so catastrophically, and why justice took so long.

I was three years old when Stephen Lawrence died, and I was twenty-two when two of his killers were convicted and jailed. Doreen Lawrence’s struggle for justice stretched out alongside the timeline of my childhood. Reports of the Stephen Lawrence case were some of the only TV news I remember absorbing as a child. A vicious racist attack, a black boy stabbed and bleeding to death, a mother desperate for justice. His death haunted me. I began to lose faith in the system.

I used to have a feeling, a vague sense of security in the back of my mind, that if I returned home one day to find my belongings ransacked and my valuables gone, I could call the police and they would help me. But if the case of Stephen Lawrence taught me anything, it was that there are occasions when the police cannot be trusted to act fairly.

For so long, the bar of racism has been set by the easily condemnable activity of white extremists and white nationalism. The white extremists are always roundly condemned by the big three political parties. The reactionary white pride sentiment, so often positioned in opposition to social progress, has never really gone away. It manifests in the ebb and flow of groups like the National Front, the British National Party and the English Defence League. Their political activity, whether it is storming down busy city streets in hoodies and balaclavas, or suited up and feigning respectability at their political conferences, has real-life consequences for people who aren’t white and British.

If all racism was as easy to spot, grasp and denounce as white extremism is, the task of the anti-racist would be simple. People feel that if a racist attack has not occurred, or the word ‘nigger’ has not been uttered, an action can’t be racist. If a black person hasn’t been spat at in the street, or a suited white extremist politician hasn’t lamented the lack of British jobs for British workers, it’s not racist (and if the suited politician has said that, then the racism of his statement will be up for debate, because it’s not racist to want to protect your country!). Then there’s the glaringly obvious point – if white extremism really is the bar at which we set all racism, why and how does racism thrive in quarters in which those in charge do not align themselves with white extremist politics? The problem must run deeper.