Some anniversaries, even those commemorating tragic events, provide a welcome opportunity to mark the progress made. Others serve as a reminder of how far is left to go. This Saturday, which falls 30 years after Stephen Lawrence was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack while waiting for a bus in Eltham, lies firmly in the latter category.
This morning, Stephen’s mother, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, spoke to the BBC about her decades-long fight for justice and despaired at the lack of progress within the Metropolitan Police. “I don’t know how many more inquiries and how many reviews you need to have to say the same thing – and still no changes, and still denials,” she told Reeta Chakrabarti.
Following Lawrence’s murder on 22 April 1993, and the failure of the initial police investigation, a report was commissioned into the way racially motivated crimes were investigated and prosecuted. The landmark Macpherson Report was published in 1999 and amongst other findings, concluded that the Met was institutionally racist.
Nearly a quarter of a century on, Baroness Casey’s review, commissioned after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens, came to the same chilling judgement: that the force is institutionally racist – as well as misogynistic and homophobic.
The review further stated that the force is riddled with bullying, poor leadership and the “rotten” treatment of black people. Baroness Casey called for an overhaul of stop and search, saying the Met “under-protects and over-polices Black Londoners”.
In re-reading some of the case studies, the Casey Review loses none of its horror. I would encourage you to read the summary conclusions and one or two of the examples. If any sound like isolated incidents, Baroness Casey goes to great lengths to demonstrate they are not, but instead symptomatic of a culture that has gone badly wrong.
That the same charge of institutional racism can be made 24 years after Macpherson is profoundly troubling. Little wonder Baroness Lawrence concludes that “nothing much has changed”.
Elsewhere in the paper, you probably didn’t need the Office for National Statistics to tell you that food prices are rising at an alarming rate. As a result, CPI in March remained at double-digits, making an interest rate rise more likely. Britain’s inflation rate is currently the third-highest in the G20 group of leading economies, behind only Argentina and Turkey. When it comes to price stability, this is not company we ought to be keeping.
In the comment pages, Martha Gill says the Tories are sitting on a sewage timebomb that could blow next month. Ayesha Hazarika takes aim at the anti-woke backlash. While Vicky Jessop reveals the era of NHS strikes is a nightmare for hypochondriacs like her.
And finally, Fortnum & Mason have unveiled their relaunched 3’6 bar, where customers can mix their own drinks. There will be supervision.
