Terry Conway reviews A Chronology of Injustice -The case for Winston Silcott's conviction to be overturned (Legal Action for Women, £6). INSTITUTIONAL racism has been hotly debated in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.
That this was an opportune moment to gain more publicity for another fight for justice was highlighted by the success of Legal Action for Women in getting Winston Silcott's comments on institutional racism prominently printed in The Observer.
Winston Silcott became infamous when he was arrested in 1985 after the Broadwater Farm rebellion and charged with two other men with the murder of PC Blakelock. Six years later Silcott and his co-defendants were cleared after evidence proved that his statement had been tampered with.
But Silcott remained in prison having also been convicted of another murder after Anthony Smith died in 1984.
This book is the story of how the two cases interwove, how Silcott became the subject of not one but two miscarriages of justice.
He was demonised by the press during the coverage of the Blakelock case in a way that denied him any possibility of fair trial. Silcott was the target of this vitriol in a way the other defendants were not because it was easier to pin on him all the negative stereotypes of black men in this racist society. It is to the credit of Legal Action for Women and International Black Wages for House Work (who are also associated with the book) that The book's structure is somewhat disjointed. It jumps between pieces which focus on the case itself and others that are used to put forward the general politics of Wages for Housework.
This is problematic not only because | profoundly disagree with the basic tenets of these, but because they are rather gratuitously introduced into Silcott's story. In the end the whole thing seems less substantial than is merited either by the price or, more seriously, by the campaign that needs to be waged to win justice for Winston Silcott.
IBRAHIMA SEY
MEMORIAL CAMPAIGN Despite angry protests, no police officer will even be disciplined over the unlawful killing of Ibrahima Sey