What is Boris Johnson frightened of – apart from losing the Tory party leadership (for which he is a racing certainty loser already)? He says he needs to be ready for trouble on the streets in the summer. But there’s not the slightest evidence for this – more’s the pity considering what Tory austerity has viciously (and unnecessarily) imposed on ordinary people and particularly the poorest.
Is this the normal Tory hankering after suppressing protest in all its forms? He says he can get them on the cheap by buying 3 German secondhand water cannons. But that doesn’t justify the principle of this development which has national implications. Furthermore every other argument tells against the rashness and folly of this decision. Continue reading
Sir William Macpherson’s famous observation back in 1999 that the Metropolitan Police was ‘institutionally racist’ did not come as any particular revelation to me. That is because the Met is the closest thing I have to a family business.
The two convictions for Stephen Lawrence’s murder are far from closing this infamous chapter in British policing and criminal justice. As Stephen’s father has said, only 2 of the 5 killers have so far been brought to justice. The police who initially dealt with the evidence so tardily and unprofessionally have yet to be held to account. It is sobering that this final conviction was brought about only by the relentless persistence of Stephens’s parents, not by police diligence until the very last stage, helped by advances in forensic investigation and changes to the double jeopardy rule. The inveterate lying of the friends and families of the two convicted killers which delayed justice for 18 years has yet to be dealt with. The question of police complacency about race remains an open one. 
The rioting, destruction and violence cannot be excused, but it still needs to be explained. It was initially triggered by the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday night, though there are disputed accounts of the circumstances, and made worse by the delayed and inadequate response of the police to the family – this in an area which has seen three deaths in police custody in recent years (Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner and Roger Sylvester). But policing in London has improved in training and leadership since the Brixton riots of 1981 since Scarman’s denunciation of its aggressive, high-handed and racist approach. The underlying causes this time go wider and deeper, and certainly reflect the underlying resentment and anger already expressed in gang killings in London and a sense of hopelessness about making out in a white man’s world.