Having watched the media’s response to the recent Notting Hill Carnival it amazes me how quickly sections of the media and the Police have moved to claim that in the ‘Post Macpherson’ society things have gone too far. Police Officers up and down the country claim they are demoralised and unable to do their job. Yet they have no problem with their most resented and discriminatory police practice-Stop and Search.
Whether it be on the streets of London or Pollokshields in Glasgow, young Black and Asian men are six times more likely than their whites to be picked up.
To them the young Asian male is to be broken on the authoritarian premise that suspecting him beforehand is the best way of stopping him committing a crime. Asian people in Scotland still under-policed as victims of crime, are now being over policed as citizens. lt was this logic, which led to the criminalisation of a generation culminating in the English inner city riots of the 8o’s.
The problem with the myth of a Post MacPherson Paradise is that in Scotland we were already twenty years behind on the issue of race before the Lawrence Inquiry even arrived.
For years in ‘lefty’ Scotland, we had a tradition where Freedom Fighters against Apartheid were feted, whilst local blacks were expected to stand passively in line as they were patronised with we’re “All Jock Tamson’s Bairns”.
Then we had a police service and legal establishment that played ‘the numbers game’ arguing a small black community meant there was no problem with racism. Their initial response to MacPherson was to declare that Scotland had got it right. Almost overnight they did a u-turn and stated we could not be complacent, as Stephen Lawrence could have happened in Scotland too. What they didn’t realise was that it had happened many times over.

Despite Scotland having a proud tradition of welcoming immigrant cultures, we also have a hidden history of murders and attacks on black people, stretching back over a hundred years.
The problem for activists has been to locate and identify racism because up until recently such murders or attacks would not be classified as racist. Recent figures have shown though that in parts of Scotland you are thirteen times more likely to be attacked for being black than in London. The fact that a person can lose their life solely because of the colour of their skin is the ultimate expression of racism in this country, but where our system of ‘justice’ has failed the black community is recognising that racist violence, harassment and discrimination can destroy lives without taking lives. Convincing local police or prosecutors of a possible racial motivation for an attack, especially when families are fighting alone without much community support or the spotlight of the media, seems to be the order of the day.
Lord Kirkwood’s charging of the Jury in the Trial for the murder of 15-year-old schoolboy lmran Khan in 1998, summed up the attitude of the legal establishment to racism-

” Both defence and prosecution have said this was not a racially motivated attack. That is correct because there is no evidence to suggest that this was a racist attack.
This case demonstrates the dangers inherent in young men going about with knives.”

Nearly ten years before a similar attitude was expressed by in the trial over the murder of Somalian Refugee Ahmed Sheikh in Edinburgh, in an attack very similar to that of Stephen Lawrence’s. Time and time again evidence of racist affiliations or racial abuse have been put aside in our courts. ln lmran’s case it was irrelevant to the prosecution, defence and presiding judge that the Gilmour twins who murdered lmran were expelled for racist behaviour or had attacked him with knives a year earlier. These cases and others that followed, revealed what many in the black community already knew; the courts and police believed that racism did not exist in Scotland or simply did not care. They contributed to a loss of faith by ethnic minorities in the system’s ability to seek out the truth, never mind deliver justice. But it never really mattered because the ‘numbers game’ meant there would be no repercussions.
When it comes to black deaths, the most obvious connections elude the police and prosecutors. Within hours of a death, the most pressing need for the authorities is not catching the murderers but to issue press statements denying racial motivation. There is no real speciality built up of study and identification of good and bad practice in the conduct of such cases. Despite the Lawrence Report’s warning against plea bargaining, Scottish courts let racist attackers walk free.
Until all police forces and prosecutors take racial violence seriously, carry out the required level of investigation immediately after an attack, keeping families informed of developments including setbacks, and allow ongoing investigations to be scrutinised by third parties, we will never know whether the guilty are walking free or the wrong suspects were picked up. The way to restore confidence in the prosecution of racial violence is not better public relations but a better response.
Asian parents and white parents fear the ghetto mentality that thrives on the streets of the Southside of Glasgow. Young Asian men remind me of second-generation blacks growing up on the streets of Brixton and Toxteth. For hundreds of years sectarianism divided the West of Scotland, but one only needs to take a walk down some of the streets of the Southside, to find a community segregated along race lines.
We can see the present and our future when school-gates open- Asian kids go one way, and white kids the other.
The Labour Government talks of social inclusion yet provide no solution to bridging the gap that divided lmran Khan and the Gilmour twins who murdered him. Our so-called community leaders/Uncle Toms call for greater resources for the police, that have continually failed both the Asian and white community. More ‘race relations experts’ are appointed to sit on bodies to join hands in a ‘get to know your community copper tea party’.
Within the Asian community there are no real models, there are no political leaders to aspire to, just corrupt rich politicians filling their back pockets.
Their families are conveniently protected in leafy suburbs, with their children sent to the best schools. These parents rarely face the dread of ordinary black parents that when their son or daughter steps foot out of the front door they may be a target for brutal assault culminating in murder.
lmran’s murder highlighted how the community leaders with help from the authorities, intended to keep the youth under control, keep them passive, peaceful and non-violent. As the elders arrived in their Mercedes, their talk was an age old one of acceptance of the status quo, to turn to prayers and to suffer peacefully allowing the legal process to follow its course. But many of lmran’s young friends were justified when they argued we should never have waited for or trusted the courts to act.
Since then a Post Macpherson Paradise has been born in which is the Scottish Courts and the police operate a ‘politically correct racism’. They now just put the boot in without the ‘black bastard’. They justify refusing you a job with the words ‘we are an equal opportunities employer” printed at the bottom of all application forms. They put nice Blackfaces all over their glossy brochures. They appoint token blacks to speak on quangos. These blacks (with a few honourable exceptions) are called sell-outs or gullible but neither description is true. They are well aware of the role they play and of their own class interests.
The argument advanced by the left for years is true -There is more to unite Asian youth from Pollokshields with a white shipyard worker from Govan than there ever will be to unite them with an Asian cash and carry owner.
But much of the left has failed to capitalise on this, with little more than ancient mechanical arguments. Continuing to argue revolution to a bemused community – ‘They turn up and then disappear,’ ‘they hijack our problems and then try to sell us a paper’ – is an often heard criticism amongst the Asian community. The lessons the Lawrence family had to learn as they fought for justice are still to be heeded in Scotland. We do indeed have a proud history of socialist movements and thought in Scotland, but we must learn to give solidarity based on the needs of the oppressed rather than our own ‘party line’.
So what of those who fall foul of the law?
Whether people are innocent or guilty, the question is one of whether the law provides any remedy. There is an acute widespread need for sympathetic skilled legal help. If lawyers are not available or if the law is felt to be a servant of the police, then bitterness, apathy and disrespect for the law will most definitely follow. The blue print was already mapped out in England and once more the authorities are contributing to a decimation of our youth.
A small study was done a couple of years ago which showed that a disproportionate amount of black people appear in the Scottish courts without representation. The quality of service offered by solicitors and barristers is of variable quality and leads to accusations that because the defendants or victims are black they have not been treated properly. There has been much talk of the need for black police officers, but no real concern expressed at the lack of black solicitors or barristers. Racism is rife throughout the whole legal establishment. Those blacks entering it do so on the basis that they must fit in and will need to be whiter than white.
If one adds to this the cuts in legal aid, the reality is that it is already increasingly difficult to give poor people on legal aid the attention they deserve.
From the Law Schools to the corridors of the High Courts, the legal establishment works like a gentleman’s club that for hundreds of years has escaped criticism because nobody ‘outside’ understands their language, their peculiar rituals of robes, gowns and wigs and vanity. They occupy a prestigious status in our society that remains unchallenged. There is nothing revolutionary in the Lord Advocate, the Law Society and Faculty of Advocates condemning racism, after all even the most racist thug in The Met has learned to use the language of MacPherson. The real test of their conviction is what reforms have they introduced and the answer is none.
So what is to be done?
We require a complete shake-up of a system that on a regular basis appoints right wing, well to do, middle or upper middle class predominantly white men to the bench or chambers. Accountability should have been the basis of a new Parliament and of the Lawrence Report.
To continue to argue for reform can be an almost futile exercise in the present climate that is more intent on attacking Asylum Seekers. Every death in police custody, every failure to prosecute racists, every family grieving for the loss of the loved one, has been matched with thousands of words written and spoken, clamouring for reform. Yet in the end in Scotland just as in England there is a fear of demoralising those we rely on for law and order.
When the next big case hits the news, which it will soon, we will hear of how hard they tried and how sorry the authorities are. Once more they will try to fool us by sticking a plaster on a cancerous disease. The bringing in of race relation professionals in their Versace/pinstripe suits will follow the half apologies from the authorities. Having made a career out of fighting for a seat at the top table their contribution wilt be one of further betrayal and compromise.
This time round we have a responsibility to raise the wider issue of accountability and judicial impartiality, which should be the cornerstone of any new democratic Scotland we try to build. Of these fundamentals we have neither.
We must ask ourselves how can we say to the Police or Crown Office, you are institutionalised racists but go away and sort the matter out yourselves? lt is a strategy doomed to failure.
Thatcher gave huge amounts of power to the police and prosecution over the eighteen years to crush the trade unions and their class. We have got to return democratic control back to the people. By that I do not mean police boards. There is not one Scottish Police Board that distinguished itself prior to the inquiry by leading the fight against racism. They have colluded with the police, working with them to hide their racism. lf you look to the Prosecution system then the situation is even worse. Open up all these bodies to real public examination and accountability. lf they have nothing to hide then they have nothing to fear. All I know is that not a single police officer or judge has ever been sacked for racism, not one complaint of racism against an officer has ever been upheld, and not one prosecutor has ever said they got it wrong.
The only effective way of securing justice as a black person is to make sure that you fight the system at all levels that is what the Lawrence’s and others before them had to do. For those who say be patient and wait. We must say we cannot be patient, we are tired of grieving at gravesides.
Many of us have a vision that we are determined to turn into reality. A society based on fundamental human rights, freedom, justice and equality I don’t think this is a dream but a possibility. ln the 21st Century we must fight for that possibility, if there is to be a legacy of Stephen Lawrence and all those who lost their lives to bigotry