It is 25 years since a tragedy and crime evolved into a national scandal. Two of the five original suspects in the racist murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence were jailed almost two decades later, following advances in forensic science, but Scotland Yard says it has no further leads. The time it took to secure those convictions, and the fact that some of his killers remain free, is directly related to the second outrage that followed Stephen’s murder: the appalling failure of police to bring those responsible to account, and their shocking treatment of his family and his friend Duwayne Brooks, with him that terrible night, which extended even to spying on them. Only the extraordinary determination of Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville, confronted the wider public with the reality of racism both on the streets and within the state, and brought to light officers’ bias, sheer incompetence and alleged links to criminals. (The Guardian today reports fresh claims about those connections.) In 1999, the resulting Macpherson report exposed the institutional racism of police and forced a broader reckoning.
The powerful BBC documentary series Stephen: the Murder that Changed a Nation captures these events in full. But it also shows how limited and slow progress has been. Lady Lawrence has repeatedly warned that racism still blights Britain, with discrimination persisting not only in the justice system but also education, housing and employment. This week the family’s solicitor, Imran Khan, revealed their shock on hearing an officer who had won their confidence dismiss the notion that the Metropolitan police as a whole was racist as “utter rubbish” and call Lady Lawrence ungrateful. “You cannot help but think that the improvements we so wanted to see were only skin deep,” Mr Khan wrote.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2HeNG9E
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