25.06.1998

Police shift on Lawrence

‘Race relations’ row

Last week the Metropolitan Police made a public apology for its failure to bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. He was stabbed to death by racists in April 1993.

The apology, which came at the London public enquiry into the murder and subsequent investigations, marked a shift in the balance between two contradictory establishment pressures.

On the one hand, the ruling class must always stress the ‘impartiality’, ‘honesty’ and ‘reliability’ of its police and judicial system. In this way it hopes to maintain respect for these institutions in the eyes of the majority - and, by implication, acceptance of the bourgeoisie’s own right to rule. For that reason the establishment’s instinctive reaction to allegations of police corruption or negligence is to deny their substance. Hopefully any shortcomings or improprieties can be covered up or, failing that, the odd ‘bad apple’ can be scapegoated.

On the other hand, if it appears that respect for bourgeois institutions may be breaking down amongst a substantial section of society, it may become necessary to drop the insistence that all is well. In the Lawrence case a large part of the black community - not to mention liberal opinion - clearly believes that something is amiss, following the failure to secure a conviction.

Blair’s attempt to win a new consensus in order to rejuvenate British capital has given fresh impetus to bourgeois anti-racism. Whereas the social democratic consensus was built on the foundations of the post World War II boom and the neo-colonial influx of ‘inferior’ peoples, Blair’s New Britain requires the full integration of their descendants into the British mainstream. While most postwar immigrants might have been prepared to accept second-rate citizenship, their children and grandchildren certainly would not. Social stability now calls for the redefining of a multi-cultural Britain. As part of this process trust for the police must be consolidated within the black community.

In this context negligence and incompetence in the high-profile Lawrence investigation has been a setback. For that reason Ian Johnston, the third highest ranking officer in the Metropolitan Police, was instructed to make his fulsome apology, despite having consistently defended the conduct of the murder inquiry right up to last week.

Speaking from the witness box at the public enquiry, Johnston addressed Stephen Lawrence’s father directly: “On behalf of myself and the commissioner, who specifically asked me to associate himself with these words, and the whole of the Metropolitan Police, I offer my sincere and deep apologies to you,” he said.

Standing up for dramatic effect, he continued: “Mr Lawrence, I wanted to say to you that I am truly sorry that we have let you down. It has been a tragedy for you. You have lost a son and not seen his killers brought to justice.” But, he added, “It has been a tragedy for the Metropolitan Police, who have lost the confidence of a significant section of the community for the way we have handled the case.”

Clearly Johnston’s change of tack did not come about as a result of some miraculous conversion. It occurred after his boss, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Paul Condon, was leaned on by the government.

Indeed the setting up of the enquiry was itself a specific component of Blair’s scheme to win over the black community. It also appeared to meet the wishes of many black activists and large sections of the left. For example only last week The Socialist seemed content with what the enquiry has uncovered: “Accusations that police racism and corruption lie behind the failure to bring Stephen Lawrence’s murderers to justice are slowly unravelling as the public enquiry progresses,” it stated (June 19).

But others were not so content. Earlier this week Sgt Mike Bennett, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, reacted to Johnston’s remarks by condemning the whole “stage-managed” enquiry. The hearings were undermining race relations, he said - just what the “militants and agitators” wanted. It might be inspectors and chief constables who utter the apologies, but it is the rank and file represented by the MPF who carry the can. They would prefer to improve “race relations” through continuing to repeat dead-end assurances that the police are not racist. Some ruling class elements were also distinctly unhappy that the government could engineer such a humiliating police climbdown. They too favour improving “race relations” through the culture of unquestioning respect for state institutions.

Most left groups, however, believe that senior police officers, if not personally racist themselves, nevertheless represent the ‘racist state’. It has become a matter of faith for these comrades that the capitalist state must always and in every circumstance be ‘racist’. In fact Condon and Johnston form part of an establishment that now accepts an anti-racist consensus. That is not to deny the widespread racism that does exist amongst the police, as in all sections of society of course.

But it is not only individual racist attitudes that account for the disproportionate harassment and arrest of blacks - particularly black youth. Capitalist society is based on a pecking order, and those at the bottom often become lumpenised and therefore the ‘natural’ suspects of crime. The socioeconomic position of blacks is on average below that of whites. Which is why the police ‘naturally’ regard a young black driver of an expensive sports car as much more suspicious than a young white man.

Equally naturally however, it would never occur to the bourgeoisie to locate the essence of the problem in capitalist social relations themselves. On the contrary the solution offered by bourgeois commentators and the black middle classes alike is one of more ‘positive discrimination’. Black journalist Peter Victor thinks the answer to police racism lies in the promotion of blacks to “the commanding heights” (The Independent June 16). He writes:

“Put brutally, nothing of any significance is going to change until ... the police fear the black man they are subjecting to an illegal search might well be a detective superintendent himself - or the victim of a race attack be related to the home secretary ...”

Victor’s complaint seems to be that the police associate respectable members of society like himself with the lower order simply because of his skin pigmentation. Hence, when it comes to the Lawrence case, it would be

“hard to imagine such a sloppy investigation into the murder of a teenager from any other ethnic group. Would police wait two weeks before arresting the prime suspects in the murder of a Jewish youth? ...”

His colleague, Trevor Phillips, takes a slightly different angle: “What is most disheartening is that the police officers who failed the Lawrences will never be persuaded that their actions stemmed from any kind of racial bias. Carelessness, incompetence, neglect even; but they are clearly baffled by the suggestion that their behaviour might have been affected in any way by the colour of the victim ... the hardest task we face is convincing the perpetrators - I mean the police, not the murderers - of their own unconscious prejudice (my emphasis The Independent June 22).

No doubt Phillips would like to add an extra, psychological, content to police race awareness courses.

It is precisely comments such as these which led New Labour to set up the Lawrence enquiry in the first place. After two failed prosecutions (the second was conducted privately by the Lawrence family itself), the government wants to be seen by the black community to have done everything possible not only in admitting to police failings, but in putting Stephen’s killers behind bars.

Last week two high court judges ruled that five men previously charged with his murder must appear before the enquiry. Lord Justice Simon Brown said: “One might have thought that the applicants, if they were innocent, would be clamouring for the chance to proclaim that innocence and clear their names. But that is not the position, and their rights must be respected.” Therefore they could not be asked at the enquiry as to their innocence or guilt.

Nevertheless, it may well be that the state will find some means of locking them up. At present nobody can be tried a second time for the same offence after being found not guilty. It is unlikely that the government would move to change the law to permit a retrial - especially as without dramatic new evidence a conviction would remain far from certain. Despite the high court constraints on questioning, the enquiry lawyers will try to extract such evidence from the men. Two of them, Jamie Acourt and David Norris, have never been tried for murder, since their cases were dropped before coming to court. They could face fresh murder charges without a change in the law. All could be jailed for perjury.

In its clamour for action to be taken, the left seems oblivious to the dangers of giving yet more powers to the state. Powers assumed in order to jail Stephen Lawrence’s killers today will be used against the workers’ movement tomorrow. In condemning the police for not pursuing them with enough vigour, the left is happy to ignore the methods employed. The use of hidden video recorders - which may have demonstrated that Acourt, Norris et al are vicious racists, but failed to link them directly with the murder - will be aimed sooner or later at revolutionary ‘suspects’.

Only through our own working class organisation can we defeat the racist thugs. Far from calling on the state and its police to do the job through further oppressive measures, revolutionaries are fully aware that the state itself is the main problem. It exists to defend a system of exploitation which ensures that elements the most alienated sections of society are driven into the arms of reaction over and over again.

Alan Fox