Years of pain and frustration led Alastair Morgan to develop a catchphrase to explain the series of obstacles put up by the powerful in his search for answers after his brother Daniel was murdered in 1987.
“That’s Britain,” would become his stock response over the years, as the Metropolitan police – in his eyes – dissembled and obfuscated, and those supposed to hold it to account, be it the government, nine Scotland Yard commissioners or three incarnations of a police watchdog, failed to do their job.
Morgan, a professional translator fluent in Swedish, and the rest of the family, had years in the wilderness when few listened, with those in power seemingly not wanting to know.
The settlement confirmed on Wednesday means the Morgan family stand a chance of drawing a line under the affair, 36 years after Daniel was murdered in what his family believe was a targeted assassination to silence him as he prepared to expose police corruption.
Corruption also helped Morgan’s killers escape justice, with the Met now accepting it prioritised its reputation over unearthing wrongdoing.
That was the central conclusion of the Daniel Morgan inquiry panel, which reported in 2021, and a finding the Met, then under the leadership of Cressida Dick, rejected.
She was ousted for failing to show she could stop the descent of Britain’s largest force amid a torrent of scandals, made worse as the Met’s leadership mishandled them.
The inquiry into the Morgan scandal ordered by the government after the last trial of suspects for the murder collapsed in 2011 was always going to be challenging for the Met.
But Sir Mark Rowley, the current Met commissioner, then in retirement from policing, watched in horror as Dick and her team mishandled their relationship with the inquiry panel, to such an extent the then commissioner was accused of obstructing their work.
What was a historic problem had, by the Met’s own missteps, become a very current one. Those errors would in time box in the current commissioner.
By December 2021 the Morgan family sued the Met, then in the final weeks of Dick’s commissionership. The force accepted an offer to go to mediation, where the deal announced on Wednesday was hammered out.
Rowley attended a session with the Morgan family at a venue in central London, just on the edge of the capital’s legal district, last Thursday. The deal was done.
Some will hope that realising the need to reach a deal may represent some small sign of change for the better in the Met.
Raju Bhatt, the solicitor for the Morgan family throughout its wilderness years, said the force had no choice. Settling and making painful admissions was not a gift, but a necessity for the Met.
A hugely embarrassing civil trial was looming, with the Morgan family having the advantage of the 2021 inquiry report and its damning and evidenced findings.
Bhatt said: “The axe was hanging over his [Rowley’s] head in that the claim on behalf of the family would have had to proceed in court if it had not been resolved. Nothing is voluntary with the Met; it is never ever gifted.”
Rowley started his commissionership last September with trust plummeting, and this week launched a plan promising to deliver a new Met for London.
Bhatt said: “The challenge for him is to find the courage and integrity to put those words of his apology into action.
“It is for him to find the courage and the integrity necessary to face up to the sickness in the Met with which this family has had to live over the decades: a sickness where a perceived need to protect the organisation from reputational damage has served only to nurture and encourage a culture of impunity in his organisation.”
