As the first stage of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry draws to a close, police racism, indifference and incompetence has been widely exposed, reports Simon Deville.
A survey conducted by the BBC revealed that around half of Londoners had less faith in the police than they did at the start of the inquiry. Whilst the first stage of the inquiry has focused on the role of the police during the investigation, the next stage will move on to the lessons to be learned.
Throughout the inquiry the Metropolitan police have been thrown on the defensive. Initially claiming that their investigations were met by a "wall of silence" from the local community, they were later forced to concede that 26 people had given them the names of the five suspects.
Police spent crucial time investigating Stephen and his friend Duwayne rather than looking for the killers. They even blamed the Lawrence family and their solicitor for the fact that there was no sucessful prosecution.
Finally the police were forced to apologise to the Lawrence family, five years after Stephen’s murder, despite the fact their own internal investigation had pronounced a clean bill of health.
Inquiry
Jack Straw, not particularly well known for his stance against police racism, was quite happy to agree to a public inquiry, apparently confident that the inquiry would not be sufficiently independent to undermine the police.
The last time that relations between black people and the police were placed under such intense scrutiny was following the civil unrest of 1980/81 - the so-called "inner-city riots" - with the Scarman inquiry.
Scarman’s conclusions were widely seen as a whitewash. He was prepared to accuse some lower ranking police of racism, but characterised them as a few bad apples. The hated ‘sus law’ which gave police the power to stop and search whoever they felt like was scrapped.
The main lessons learned, though, were about how the police manage their PR, rather than bringing about real change to the police.
Just over a decade later the powers in the sus laws were re-introduced through the Criminal Justice Act.
Whilst the police have learned not to allow senior officers to appear in the media blaming black people for the rise in crime, the underlying racism still exists throughout the force.
An internal inquiry leaked to the press earlier this year showed that powers to stop and search have been overwhelmingly used against black people. All statistics have consistently shown that a racial bias exists throughout the criminal justice system.
Black people are far more likely to be charged than whites, more likely to be prosecuted than whites for the same offence and are more likely to be imprisoned.
The lasting lessons from Scarman are that where the police used to use such statistics to argue that black people are inherently more prone to criminality than whites, now they simply avoid referring to such statistics.
While waiting for the findings of the Lawrence inquiry to be announced, others are already drawing their own conclusions.
Many black people and anti-racist campaigners attended the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.
When Stephen Lawrence’s killers were forced to appear, so many members of the black public exercised their right to hear the evidence that a video link had to be installed so that those who couldn’t get in could watch the proceedings from another room in the building.
Media attention was focused on the presence of the Nation of Islam, whose choice of dark suit, white shirt and red tie made them so visible in their uniformed appearance.
Articles on their reactionary separatist politics were a convenient distraction from the anger of so many black people mobilised against racism, not just that of the killers but that of the state and its uniformed representatives.
A central problem of the Lawrence inquiry is that its remit is focused on the police response to racist violence rather than a more wide reaching inquiry into the role of the police.
It would be difficult for the inquiry not to place blame on the role of some officers. However, there is a danger that it will simply give one or two officers a slap on the wrist whilst serving as a public relations exercise for a police force that is racist through and through.
There are numerous incidents where the police have been called to deal with racist attackers and have arrested the victims of an attack.
Whilst the investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder has sharply highlighted the racist way in which the police conduct investigations into racist crime, this in itself does not address the root of the problem, merely a symptom.
Defending rich
The fundamental role of the police within society is to defend the rich and powerful against the vast majority of the population. As such, black communities, and to a slightly lesser extent, white working class communities are seen as a problem to be dealt with.
With an institution that is built upon such a culture it is inevitable that the police are going to view black people as criminals, and that their investigations into racist crime will be clouded by this view.
It is impossible to understand the real context of the Stephen Lawrence investigation if it is dealt with in isolation from an understanding of the day to day police harassment of black youth, of police brutality of the numerous deaths in custody and of the generalised criminalisation of black communities.
The second stage of the Lawrence inquiry poses a challenge for anti-racists: how should we respond?
The courageous struggle by the Lawrence family and their supporters has played a crucial role in bringing key aspects of police racism to public attention. As the Scarman inquiry has shown though, such attention does not necessarily bring about positive change.
The key demands that anti-racists should make on police must focus on three main areas. Firstly that racist violence is dealt with the same seriousness that police would deal with other violent crime, and that the perpetrators of racist crime are prosecuted.
Secondly, we must demand that police powers to harass black communities are brought to an end, that powers to stop and search etc are scrapped and for a demilitarisation of the police. Finally, we should demand an independent body to investigate the police.
The real reason that the police and the criminal justice system have been able to get away with so much for so long is not simply down to its formal powers given by the state.
The most significant factor is the absence of a mass anti-racist movement, independent of the state, that can hold the police to account for its actions. The divided nature of the anti-racist movement allows racism to continue.
The mobilisation of black people around the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, and the links established between a number of anti-racist campaigns, must be built on.
The current outrage at the death of Stephen Lawrence and at the conduct of the subsequent investigation into his murder, must be used to help develop a movement to ensure that there are no more cases such as this.