Where now for anti-racism
The MacPherson report into the investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s murder has brought to the fore the extent of racism in Britain today.
For most black people, the inquiry has revealed nothing new, but what is new is that the extent of racism in the police, the judicial system and throughout society should be debated in the national media.
The publication of the report poses fundamental questions for the anti-racist movement – how should it respond to the report and how can the momentum around the inquiry be channelled into combating racism?
It has been clear from the start that the inquiry could not get away with the kind of whitewash that would blame "a few bad apples" in a Police force that is otherwise fairly sound.
However the MacPherson report, whilst being fairly damning in its criticism of the Police, leaves a crucial get-out clause. The report states that there is a "pernicious and institutionalised racism" throughout the Metropolitan Police.
It further adds that "There must be an unequivocal acceptance of the problem … before it can be addressed." The definition of institutional racism is sufficiently vague, however, that even Met Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon was able to agree with it.
Throughout the inquiry Condon defended the actions of the officers involved, and of the internal police inquiry into the investigation that gave them a clean bill of health. It was only after the official police line became untenable that Condon was forced to stop blaming the Lawrence family and instead changed tack to argue that his officers were incompetent rather than racist.
The definition of institutional racism as being ‘unwitting’ has given the police an excuse to get off scott free. The fact is that Black people are far more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be arrested, to be taken to court and if convicted, more likely to face a prison sentence than whites.
There is a racism running throughout the judicial system – whether individual officers are racist is not the main issue. On the other hand there is no doubt that a reactionary, racist and sexist institution like the police attracts many individuals with reactionary ideas and practice - and then defends them when they are caught.
When the police kill black people in their custody, the force as a whole devotes thousands of pounds trying to prove that their officers are not responsible. The only possible signal that this can send out to the ranks of the police force is that whatever actions they carry out, the force as a whole will do all it can to avoid officers being disciplined or prosecuted.
The Metropolitan Police is a racist institution – despite Jack Straw’s claims that Condon has led a fight against racism in the Met.
Condon has time and again defended the racist actions of his officers. Whilst getting rid of him would not end police racism, it would at least signal that these actions are unacceptable.
The inquiry has brought about a sea-change the way the British state aims to deal with racism. The state has no interest in eradicating racism; a fundamental feature of all advanced capitalist countries.
The 70 recommendations in the report propose a number of measures to improve the way the police investigate racist incidents, and to improve ‘police-community relations’, and for Local Authorities to develop educational strategies to address racism. It specifically states that the police powers of stop and search should remain in place and rules out an independent body to investigate the police.
Two specific recommendations that socialists should oppose are the proposal that people could be tried more than once for the same offence, and that people using racist language within their own homes can be prosecuted.
The first would be wide open for the police to keep on putting someone on trial until they got the result they wanted, and the second would be impossible to enforce without breaching civil liberties, and is just as likely to be used against black people.
The Labour leadership may have been competing with the Tories to pledge themselves to fighting institutional racism, but just two weeks earlier, Jack Straw introduced his racist Asylum and Immigration Bill, with the full support of the Tories.
Tony Blair wrote an article in the New Nation saying how he had met with Colin Powell and had realised how far Britain had to go, compared to the United States.
What he meant by this is that he would like a society where black people are able to get top jobs in the military, the, police, the judiciary and the government.
As his example of the USA clearly demonstrates, that does not mean eradicating racism. Racist policing, lynchings, and the vast bulk of their communities segregated into urban ghettos or desperately poor rural communities in the Southern States is the face of ‘civilisation’ facing the overwhelming majority of black people in that society. A few black people having leading positions in the state machine and the government is no compensation for that reality.
Whilst some of the reforms proposed by MacPherson are be supported, the overall agenda that guides it is to buy off a black elite with minor privileges in order to try head off a much more extensive anti-racist struggle.
The chances of this ploy succeeding are less than they were before the inquiry, as many previously uninvolved black people have realised that it is pure chance that their lives have not been touched by tragedies comparable to the Lawrences’.
This has been the basis of the unprecedented mobilisation around this case; the challenge now is to channel that anger and awareness into a real mass movement.
The call for a civil rights movement takes up that opportunity - socialists should have no hesitation in answering the call.