Book review: Hidden Stories of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

OPEN IN VIEWER The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was ordered in 1997 to investigate the matters arising from the racist murder of a young black man in April 1993 and to make recommendations to improve the policing of racially motivated crime. Reactions to the Inquiry were mixed but the main narrative contained elements of catharsis following a painful examination of racially malign and incompetent policing; indeed Jack Straw was later to describe the commissioning of the report as the proudest achievement of his career. There is little doubt that the Inquiry was a landmark moment in the development of British justice but − despite the overdue conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris in 2011 − ugly stories still swirl around the case such as revelations of undercover police spying on people close to the Lawrence family, or the increasing evidence of probable police corruption in the original investigation, and even continuing racist vandalism of the monument commemorating the spot where he died. So it was with great interest that I read Dr Richard Stone’s account of his role on the Inquiry, along with a senior ex-detective and the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, as one of three advisers to the chair, Sir William Macpherson. Motivated by anger and frustrated by a lack of change, Stone breaks with accepted convention to ‘lift the lid’ on the internal dilemmas and behind the scenes machinations which have largely remained hidden except to those at their centre.

The result is horrifying for anyone who might care about justice as Stone outlines the lengths that powerful institutions − mainly the Metropolitan Police, but also the Home Office − will go to defend their reputations and fortunes. While reading the text, news broke of the allegation that the Met had sanctioned undercover police officers to infiltrate campaign groups close to the Lawrence family during the Inquiry and had withheld from the Inquiry information regarding corrupt officers linked to the original investigation. Although those stories have yet to fully play out, when placed alongside the ‘hidden stories’ presented by Stone it is hard not to conclude that there was a concerted effort by the Met’s senior management to undermine the Inquiry’s authority and ability to investigate.

Some of the problems revealed by Stone can appear, at first glance, to be relatively minor. For example the archive of the Inquiry’s papers, a supposedly public inquiry is not yet fully accessible, fifteen years after its close in 1999. The papers have slowly emerged during the years since, but parliamentary questions were still being asked in 2011 in an effort to secure their full release and, at the time of writing, some of the archive, including Stone’s own personal notes, remain unseen. Contrast this to the other great Inquiry of the time, The Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, where sensitive memos from the heart of the ‘sofa government’ were on the Inquiry’s website on the day. Cost, bureaucracy and incompetence are easily understood and readily accessible reasons for this, but Stone invites us to consider other causes as well as the deeper implications.

Further examples include decisions about the running of the Inquiry which would, and did, limit its accessibility by the minority communities in London and Birmingham. Bizarrely the Inquiry’s visit to Birmingham nearly did not happen at all after a claim that a suitable space could not be found in a large city with numerous facilities. In the end the visit did go ahead but the damage done to the Inquiry’s standing among the communities in Birmingham remained. Perhaps of greater concern was the Met’s attempt to limit the use of an ‘overflow room’ for members of the public wishing to observe the Inquiry, particularly during the questioning of the five principal suspects. Faced with the most significant examination of its practices regarding minority communities, the Met’s response was to limit those communities’ access to the Inquiry on its most significant days based on what Stone shows to be entirely spurious health and safety grounds.

This insensitivity was perhaps only exceeded by that of the Met Chief Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon who, when beginning to give his evidence, launched into a version of a ‘one of my best friends is black’ story. That in itself is bad enough, but the friend he was referring to was a black police officer who had brought (and won) a racial discrimination case against the force in the 1990 and, as Stone points out, their careers track very different paths after joining the force together. Condon then compounded this by an obtuse refusal to accept that the Met may be guilty of institutional racism despite acknowledging all the behaviours that might contribute to any reasonable definition of the term. When one considers this behaviour alongside the fact that, apart from appearing to give evidence, Condon spent no time at the Inquiry at all, and then consider the allegations that the Met both withheld evidence on corruption and authorized covert tactics on people close to the Lawrence family, it seems clear that the Commissioner and his senior management team treated the Inquiry with contempt. I would have to agree with Stone’s assessment of Condon as an ‘irritatingly weak leader’ (p. 81).

The last five years have been a torrid time for the police. The list is almost too terrible to bear, containing as it does some shocking examples of corruption and incompetence: Hillsborough, phone-hacking, Ian Tomlinson, Plebgate, and undercover policing. For probation staff this is so far removed from the police officers we share MAPPA meetings with on a weekly basis as to be on another planet, yet the list is real and the botched investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s murder remains of significant concern as stories continue to emerge. Stone’s worthy book sheds some light on part of this murky subject and his suggestions for improvements on police recruitment, community engagement and accountability should, in my opinion, be required reading for senior police officers.