In Racist Soil (In Memory of Stephen Lawrence)

London has today seen outside one of its law courts human bouts of stamina that does not need an Olympian fanfare or an expensive ticker tape parade as we shall see magnified later in 2012.

Doreen Neville stood on the steps of the high court to read out a speech that you felt didn’t have the pride of achievement an athlete would show on a podium. In fact it was a speech steeped in a pyrrhic melancholy that will greet the relatives of the Hillsborough relatives when justice is found after their day in court.


When Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death after immediately hearing the words of "Wot wot nigger" the leaders of Britain were dreaming of a world of "back to basics". It was a nation of quiet bowling greens for the post-Thatcher well-to-do village dwellers. But in the other land of that time there was the underclass struck in the motorway queues waiting upon answers from the Cones Hotline. There was recession not only in the economy but also in the feeling that, with every epoch of self-indulgence, there was a bigger recession culturally. The Cones Hotline didn't seem to actually exist; it was the Established institutions which maintained this situation. 

Stephen Lawrence wanted to become an architect, and with a family that was always supportive to him he would have seen this happen in his life. To him, the career in architecture would be just another life getting fulfilled. The problem was that Stephen stood at a bus shelter late at night in 1990s Britain.  

The five who were captured by the police on camera in 1994 acting out fantasies of racist abuse were and are of a typical breed. But they are not typical in the sense that they can easily be worked out as being white, working class thugs from Eltham in London. There is such a thing we see in our lives as cause and effect. In the pitch battles of wars in the middle ages there were two opposing lines of belligerents and that was it. The big bang. The rest was down to fate and its shaping of history.

David Norris would not know how to “set ‘em alight”, as he threatened towards an imaginary “load of niggers and pakis” in the surveillance video. He and his mates acted on a ten second impulse with a large knife, in the pitch darkness of a South London night in April. Lawrence was with a friend who thought he would be the next victim, but Duwayne Brooks needn’t have worried, as whoever struck the blows with the knife ran away. Ironically, the perpetrators were the scaredest.

The five – Gary Dobson, David Norris, Luke Knight and the Acourt brothers – are the victims of their own lack of self-esteem. It is obvious in the surveillance video. They are the epitome of the chuntering under your breath when you don’t really express what you want to say to someone – or some group – that you don’t like. One of the gang is seen acting out a stabbing with a knife. He is on his own in the room. It is an embarrassing and pathetic sight to watch as he could easily have been playing air guitar or scoring an imaginary goal. He is a boy playing out fantasies that have unfortunately in this case been poisoned by their fathers’ or peers’ prejudices.

And then there are the Metropolitan police who let the basic of crime detection skills slip away as easily it was for the five to do on that night. The role of the Met in their direction of ethnic communities versus the macho idiots who drag up their sons into their inept worldview always stay the same. It happened in the riots in the 1980s and also in the incidents in London last year. The Met is a riddled beast that cast pestilence among the minorities of London because they know that it only takes a special handshake to get away with it.

We are now left with three of the cowards, two of whom are brothers whose surname sounds like what they have to see before they die – a court. The three remaining culprits ran away that night into a freedom that they thought would be protected forever by Metropolitan police institutional racism. For Dobson and Norriss this luxury has lasted for eighteen years. Science can beat the stupidity of corruption, so Knight and the Acourt brothers need not be so complacent.

Andy Warhol famously said that every wannabe without the talent have their fifteen minutes of fame. However, when it comes to seeking justice in this country it takes over fifteen years to reach any level of success. The ones who are looking for the justice are the most talented and honest of people. So, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, take up your place on the podium.