8
The Marchioness Disaster, the Murder of Stephen Lawrence
When, as a small boy, I stood on the footbridge spanning Oakleigh Park station and thrilled to the sensation of the Mallard or Flying Scotsman thundering past directly beneath me, I often found myself wondering what would happen to such titans of the track if their brakes didn’t work, or the old-fashioned mechanical signals failed, or a wooden sleeper was loose or out of place.
As we all know, the last twenty years have seen several major tragedies on the rail network. Two of these, at Potters Bar and Hatfield, were on the very line that ran through Oakleigh Park, while the other places whose names will for ever be synonymous with railway catastrophe include Clapham, Southall and Paddington. But tragedy is plainly not limited to one form of transport, or to man-made causes. Natural disasters – such as flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, droughts, tornadoes, some of which are no doubt provoked by global warming – affect every corner of the world.
And when these disasters take place, there is a desperate need to know. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Who bears responsibility? These are not academic questions: they are vital in helping grieving relatives and friends to achieve some form of inner reconciliation, and ultimately closure, and they are vital in bringing reassurance to the wider public and in minimising the chances of recurrence.
It is one thing to agree about the need to know. It is quite another to get answers from institutions, corporations and government departments – and usually a mammoth task. Given the centrist cabinet-run democracy we currently endure, it is a vain hope that leaving matters to politicians will get you far, and what I have learned, more than almost anything else over the last forty years, is that progress is brought about by the extraordinary efforts of ordinary groups of families, friends and individuals – who care the most, who fight for what is right and who initiate change. They occupy the moral high ground, and their courageous stand benefits us all. None of us should ever sit back and think there is nothing we can do.
There have been two effective forums in which crucial questions can be asked of the very people who often remain invisible, or at least in the shadows: one is the inquest, the other the judicial public inquiry, and the latter often results from issues raised in the former, which is what happened with both the Marchioness disaster on the River Thames in 1989 and with the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The product of these processes is enormous, and has far-reaching repercussions for the safety of the public at large.
I recognise that there are times when lawyers are surplus to requirements or even get in the way – although I wouldn’t go as far as Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ But inquests and inquiries are not such occasions, for there is such a painful emotional charge that it can be difficult for those most affected to compose their thoughts coherently and formulate all the questions they would like asked. And if there is more than one person involved, there is likely to be a difference of opinion about what the questions should be, and about the general strategy. This is only to be expected when people from varied and disparate backgrounds are thrown together by the chance of the disaster itself, and it is then important to ensure that everyone pulls in the same direction. This can be facilitated by focusing on a common purpose and in particular a common target, and it is usually not difficult to create an enduring bond, though in rare cases where the differences between affected people are insurmountable, separate representation is necessary.
A brief word about the nature of an inquest. There is a real lack of understanding of the English system of holding inquests, manifested most starkly during those held in 2007–9 into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed (see Chapter 18). The inquest is unique in English law, because it is inquisitorial rather than adversarial, which means that a judicial figure runs the whole show from beginning to end, from the moment that the body or bodies of the deceased arrive within his jurisdiction to the moment when a verdict is returned.
An inquest is not a trial: no one is in the dock; no civil or criminal liability can be determined; there are no parties to the proceedings, only interested persons. The coroner decides what evidence to adduce, either by live witnesses or by documentation, while the representatives of interested persons have no right to call anybody and only have a right to ask questions. This is the kernel of the exercise: it is a genuine search for the truth, exploring all the possibilities – those raised by the family as well as those canvassed by commentators in the public arena – and all kinds of perfectly legitimate and honestly held beliefs should be examined by the coroner. Unlike in criminal and civil litigation, the lawyers representing the various interested persons do not have an obligation to put a particular case, but on the basis of the available material they do have an obligation to ensure that every reasonable avenue is pursued. Beyond asking questions and making representations about the law, the lawyers are not allowed to make opening or closing speeches, which are entirely within the remit of the coroner alone.
What is often forgotten is that the coroner has an obligation to hold an inquest when he has reasonable cause to suspect that the deceased died a violent or unnatural death; died a sudden death of which the cause is unknown; or died in prison or in such a place or in such circumstances as to require an inquest. The coroner also has to summon a jury if at any stage he has reason to suspect the death was in prison or police custody; was caused by an accident at work; or occurred in circumstances the continuance or possible recurrence of which is prejudicial to the health and safety of the public (even if this has happened abroad).1
When the tabloid press thinks it knows the answer to a suspicious death and that therefore there is no need to have an inquest, it is wrong. In the circumstances outlined above an inquest is a legal requirement, and if anyone from those newspapers had suffered like the families I have met, they too would be shouting from the rafters for a proper inquiry.
The inquest is steeped in history, its roots going back to at least 1194 with the Articles of Eyre or Assize, which empowered the coroner to look after the interests of the Crown on a peripatetic basis. Originally all inquests had to have a jury, and it is not difficult to see that were the jury-based system to be used expeditiously and courageously, it would have the potential for satisfying the paramount need for justice. (In recent years this has been demonstrated most clearly by the Oxford coroner Andrew Walker, in his enquiries concerning military deaths in Iraq.)
While all this theory is fine, in practice there have been substantial impediments to getting legal representation, especially for families, the main one of which has been a lack of public funding, because for some completely unfathomable reason, until fairly recently it was not thought important enough for families to receive this kind of help. Nearly every other organisation is funded – the police, the military, medical, local-authority and public corporations and, for that matter, private companies – but families have to be supported on a voluntary basis, and for most of my forty years as a lawyer the majority of inquests I have undertaken have been pro bono – that is, pro bono publico, ‘for the public good’ – which means that I do it for free, as I have always been prepared to do when there is no funding. Since 1981 a voluntary organisation called INQUEST has provided invaluable and incalculable practical advice and support to bereaved families, despite having to walk an economic tightrope, with the threat of closure at every step.2
On 20 August 1989 fifty-one people were killed when the pleasure-boat Marchioness, which had been hired as a disco boat for a private party, sank on the River Thames near Southwark Bridge, run over – literally – by a nautical juggernaut in the form of a dredger named the Bowbelle, which plied its trade between the North Sea and Battersea and which, in my view, should not have been on the river in the first place. In order to maximise its economic viability and profit, it was essential for the dredger to catch all the right tides, which might entail a tight turnaround time and a departure downriver at night. At 262 feet (not far short of the length of a football pitch), the Bowbelle was hugely long to be plying that stretch of the Thames, and had no proper visibility over the bow or adequate communication system. The Master was situated on a bridge at the stern, while a lookout was positioned at the bow, and if something in the way was spotted, the lookout had to wave or shout. Given the Bowbelle’s size, tonnage (gross 1,472 tons) and speed (average 8.5 knots through the water on the basis of a 3-knot tide),3 stopping within a few feet could not be accomplished, and so the consequences of it coming across another craft in its way were potentially horrendous.
The Marchioness disaster raised a large number of questions about the management of the River Thames. There had been previous collisions on the river between Battersea and London Bridge, and there had been earlier reports about deficiencies in visibility, so in one sense this was an accident waiting to happen, and it was also clear that much greater provision for rescue and assistance was urgently required, because many people were left stranded in the water.
An internal inquiry was set up under the Marine Accident Investigation Bureau, but this did not allow the families proper representation or means of eliciting the facts of what had happened, and its conclusions were unsatisfactory. Fobbed off with bland platitudes, the families were being stymied at every twist and turn, and perhaps most upsetting was the refusal to let many of the families see the victims’ bodies, because the hands of twenty-five of the deceased had been cut off ‘for identification purposes’ – a macabre and unjustified act that characterised years of official prevarication.4
On two occasions the Captain of the Bowbelle, Douglas Henderson, faced charges. Both times the jury was deadlocked, and eventually he was formally acquitted. Neither Henderson nor the company that owned and operated the Bowbelle incurred any penalty.
Once a criminal charge is laid, the inquest is adjourned pending the outcome. It is possible for a coroner subsequently not to resume the inquest, if he decides the relevant issues have been given due consideration during the criminal process. The first coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, did refuse to reopen the inquests, but was overturned on appeal and a different coroner, Dr John Burton, took over.
My initial involvement arose at this stage when, on behalf of Ivor Glogg, whose wife Ruth had perished on the Marchioness, I attempted to mount a private prosecution against the company that owned the Bowbelle. Despite a very sympathetic hearing at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court this action also failed, due to the shortcomings in the law relating to corporate manslaughter: you had to be able to pin responsibility onto the ‘brains’ of the company by showing that such a person had actual knowledge of what was going on, and since there was no obligation on the company to disclose its records, it was virtually impossible to show who knew what, when.
It was not until the inquest was resumed in 1994 that the families could begin to see results. Although Dr Burton was known for his mercurial and quirky habits, he allowed the relatives full rein to express their anguish and their proposals for change. He also had the good sense to transfer the hearings from a tiny coroner’s court to the copious council chamber in Hammersmith Town Hall, and each morning we would all foregather in a consultation room to thrash out that day’s questions and tactics. Some relatives were always early, others always late, some combatant, others passive; but all were devoted to seeing justice done. The solicitor, who carried their burden from the early days and long before I came on the scene, was Louise Christian, whom I have known for many years as a fearlessly outspoken comrade and friend. Tireless and conscious of the political dimensions inherent in such cases, she also represented many families who had been involved in the Paddington, Southall and Potters Bar rail disasters, and gave everyone with whom she dealt momentum and inspiration. And my junior Terry Munyard was unstinting in his support and ability to empathise with the stresses and strains felt by the families.
Preparing them to give evidence in the witness box, to relive their experiences, to voice their misgivings and where necessary to vent their anger had to be carried out with meticulous care. Whether at an inquest or a trial, lawyers are not allowed to suggest what clients may say, but they can give straightforward guidance about what questions to expect; about the need to listen and reply carefully; about the importance of speaking more slowly and clearly than in everyday conversation. Not everyone wanted to say their piece at the Marchioness inquest, but those who did were utterly moving and compelling.
At an inquest, even the verdict is unusual. Strictly, it has to be expressed in answer to four questions: who was the deceased? Where, when and finally, how did he or she die? And it is the fourth ‘how’ question that gives rise to controversy and more extensive enquiry, as it is not restricted to the immediate cause of death, but encompasses ‘by what means and in what circumstances’. So, for example, in the case of the Marchioness the immediate cause was drowning, but the more important issue was what had caused the drowning and the collision. For ease of reference, there is a ‘short-form verdict’ which summarises the broad conclusions: accident, unlawful killing, lawful killing, suicide or open – with various ‘forms’ or versions, such as unlawful killing/murder, manslaughter, gross negligence, etc. After 2000 and the introduction of the Human Rights Act, the jury at an inquest can in addition be invited by the coroner to answer various questions on the facts of the case. This is known as a ‘narrative’ verdict.
At the Marchioness inquest the jury found that it was an unlawful killing, not murder but manslaughter, and went on to recommend a large number of improvements for river safety. This was a real victory for the collective spirit among the families, and the papers were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for reappraisal. No further prosecution was authorised – no surprises there – but our battle seemed far from over.
The families relentlessly pressed their case for a judicial public inquiry, to cover the ground from which inquests are precluded – in this case systemic failure well beyond the actions of the Bowbelle itself – and in response there was all the obfuscation and delay of the kind with which everybody is so familiar: ‘There has been an internal inquiry, two attempted prosecutions and an inquest, so what more do you want? . . . The cost is too great . . . We have to move on; let’s not reopen old wounds . . .’, and so on.
But none of this put the families off their objective, and there was no let-up in their regular meetings with government ministers and with anyone who could be persuaded of the rectitude of their arguments. Ultimately they did convince the government, which in February 2000 announced two inquiries: one into river safety, the other into the Bowbelle collision, which was held at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, under Lord Justice Clarke, who oversaw a model of efficiency, clarity and alacrity.
This was a weird experience for me, since the venue had singularly strong childhood memories. It’s an imposing building with a striking baroque dome, tucked away behind Parliament Square. Every year between the ages of eight and fourteen I was bused in to attend an annual rally of Crusader Bible classes from all over the country. It was a brilliant opportunity to rush about exploring the maze of corridors, stairs and basements – one of which was the largest air-raid shelter in the Second World War. My class was in Woodside Park in North Finchley and I attended religiously every Sunday afternoon: my parents were anxious to keep me off the streets and out of Dollis Brook, which was in general terms the object of its founder, a missionary who spotted the need for his services in around 1900 while tramping the streets of Crouch End, where I ended up living in the 1970s. He called his mission ‘Crusaders’ – a term that many of my recent clients would find disturbing, given the 200 years of brutality perpetrated under this banner during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
A few years before my evangelical escapades in the Hall, the inaugural meeting of the United Nations General Assembly was held there in 1946. Fifty-odd years later it was time for the Captain of the Bowbelle, Master Henderson, to explain his behaviour in far more detail than previously, but at last we also had a chance to confront the company managers. Robert Samuel was the General Manager of South Coast Shipping, and from 1985 was the designated officer ashore, with responsibility for monitoring the technical and safety aspects of the company’s trade. Given that aspect of his role, I wanted to discover how much he knew about the history of the Bow fleet, particularly on the stretch of river between Nine Elms in Battersea at least as far as Tower Bridge. If he didn’t know about this history, why not? And if he did, the really important question was: what had he done to investigate the causes and prevent a repetition? My chance soon arrived:
Question, MICHAEL MANSFIELD: Did you know by 1988 at least this, that there had been a collision between two Bow vessels on the river in November 1987, one of which was in fact the Bowbelle? Did you know that?
Answer, ROBERT SAMUEL: Yes.
Q: Yes. Was it a navigational problem or not?
A: It was a navigational or lookout problem.
This of course was one of the principal issues of concern. In February 1988, a few months after the 1987 incident and on the same stretch of river as the Marchioness disaster, the Bowbelle had struck Southwark Bridge, the very bridge with which the inquest was concerned. And Mr Samuel said that he did know about that. Later in 1988 another vessel in the same fleet, Bowsprite, although not on the River Thames, went down with the loss of life off the Belgian coast. Mr Samuel claimed that it was not his responsibility. I pressed the matter further:
Q: Once you are aware of these three separate incidents, and by the end of 1988, as we know, you’re responsible for safety, were not bells beginning to ring in your mind about the integrity of the Bow fleet?
A: In what respect are you referring to?
Q: Well, is it a safe fleet? Collision on the river between two vessels, a collision between one of the same vessels and a bridge, and now another one sinks with the loss of life off the Belgian coast. That’s quite a lot within one year, is it not?
A: As I explained earlier, with regard to the tragic loss of the Bowsprite, to this day we do not know why the vessel sank. We do not know why the hull split in two. This is after considerable exploratory work carried out by the Department.
Q: Did you after December 1988 say, ‘I’m going to take the initiative as the Merchant Notice 1188 suggests, initiatives should come from the top’? Do you agree?
A: I agree.
Q: Did you take an initiative at the top and say, ‘Right, I want a full and thorough review of navigation and safety on these vessels on my desk within four weeks’? Did you do anything like that?
A: Not specifically. No.
There were in fact a large number of other incidents that cumulatively provided a catalogue of disaster – between 1981 and 1989 nine incidents involving the Bow fleet and collisions with either passenger vessels or bridges, or both – and as I went through each one, it became clear that Mr Samuel knew little or nothing about any of them save the ones mentioned above. It followed that not a great deal had been done to make proper assessments about the safety of the fleet as a whole.
There were some fairly remarkable exchanges relating to specific areas of concern, including the matter of the Master of the Bowbelle:
Q: Had you known that on the night Mr Henderson had consumed at least six pints of beer before going back on duty, what would have been your reaction to that at the time if you’d known?
A: He would have been disciplined.
Q: He would have been disciplined? He would have known that at the time, would he, that if in fact he was found to have been onshore drinking that he would have been disciplined? He would have known that?
A: Yes.
Q: Yes. So it demonstrates, at least, he was quite prepared to run the risk of a disciplinary proceeding for drinking, does it not?
A: That can be assumed, yes.
Q: It is a shocking indictment that the captain of the vessel on the night was prepared to run that risk, is it not?
A: Yes.
Q: Put generally, is it right that you expected crews at that time not to leave the vessel while it was docked at Nine Elms, or what was the position?
A: That would be the case. Yes. The standing orders refer specifically to that.
Q: So it’s not just a case of drinking. It’s also the case that they were in breach of the general policy that they should not leave the vessel at Nine Elms?
A: Yes.
One of the most important questions was of course the extent to which the Master could see beyond the fo’c’sle and bow, onto the surface of the distant water, in order to avoid a collision.
Q: Were you aware before the collision how substantially impaired visibility was from the wheelhouse of the Bowbelle?
A: The vision from the bridge was not perfect, agreed.
Q: Well, would that not be regarded as the understatement of the century? It was not only not very good; it was substantially impaired, was it not?
A: It was impaired.
Q: Yes. Substantially – on a river – impaired, was it not?
A: It was impaired. You have to define substantially, I am afraid.
Q: Oh yes, I will. How badly impaired was it? Did you know, for example, that it was three times over what it should have been in terms of blind distances ahead? [That is, the distance of surface water beyond the bow obscured from the view of the wheelhouse.] Did you know that?
A: That, I believe, relates to the trim of the vessel.
Q: That is right. Did you know that at the time?
A: Not at that time. No.
Q: No. In addition to the trim, of course, is the dredging gear on the deck itself. You knew that impaired vision, did you?
A: Yes.
Q: How far ahead did you think, therefore, leaving aside the trim at the moment, in normal conditions could the Master see something on the water surface? A ship’s length, two ships’ lengths?
A: It is something I did not address.
Q: So how do you know, when you say you’re not prepared to accept it was substantially impaired, if you have not addressed it? You do not know then, do you, what the kind of impairment was?
A: Put that way, that is correct.
Q: Why did you not know?
A: I did not know.
A little further on I finally reached the key point about the lookouts:
Q: Did you know there was no lookout system on the Bowbelle?
A: The evidence suggests there was a system of lookout on the Bowbelle.
Q: Does it? May I just summarise it to you? Captain Henderson did not know who the lookout was that night. Mr Blayney [a member of the crew] said he wasn’t the lookout that night, he was the ‘look about’. The next person on the fo’c’sle said that he certainly wasn’t the lookout, but he thought Blayney was. Is that a system, Mr Samuel?
In answer to this and a number of other specifics, Samuel’s response was mainly to the effect that as he wasn’t on the ship that night, he really didn’t know.
The findings of the inquiry were telling:
The striking feature of the various reports, minutes and letters that followed the 1983 collisions is that almost without exception they anticipated the navigational and operational factors which played a part in the collision that eventually occurred in 1989.5
Another conclusion was that the panel did not think that Mr Samuel ‘can have been designated as (or in fact regarded himself at the time as) the designated person with responsibility for safety . . . because he had no relevant expertise’.6
Most importantly, the main conclusion was that the collision was the result of a failure by both vessels, the Bowbelle and Marchioness, to keep a satisfactory lookout procedure.
That failure to keep a proper lookout was the responsibility of the Master of the Bowbelle, Captain Henderson, the skipper of the Marchioness, Mr [Stephen] Faldo, the owners and managers of the Bowbelle (East Coast Aggregates and South Coast Shipping) and the owners and managers of the Marchioness.7
At the end of the public inquiry in 2002, Lord Justice Clarke magnanimously – as this is not a course usually permitted during the final stages of submissions – allowed one of the families to address him personally.
Eileen Dallaglio, the mother of Lawrence (of England rugby fame), but also of the youngest victim, Lawrence’s sister Francesca, a nineteen-year-old with a bubbly personality and a bright future in ballet, was struggling to cope with the cruel loss of her child. Eileen summarised the feelings of everyone who had been touched by the tragedy in an eloquent, powerful, personal plea:
‘As we approach the twelfth Christmas without our children, our brothers and sisters, our family and friends, we ask this investigation to begin the process of fundamental change in legislation, which still allows the sector of corporate greed to overshadow responsibility and accountability. Never again must companies such as Ready Mixed Concrete, East Coast Aggregates, South Coast Shipping and Tidal Cruisers be allowed to operate their vessels along English waters and the high seas with complete and utter disregard for the safety of the general public at large. Never again must companies be allowed to fail us, the general public, by allowing inexperienced personnel with substandard intelligence, inherent drink problems, forged certificates; thereby perverting the course of justice over eleven years and [with] total disregard for the safe operation of their vessels. Never again must managing directors appoint themselves designated safety officers without any experience of such matters. They have to know that they will be held accountable both in criminal and civil law.’
Tirelessly pursuing justice, she addressed the Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Committees at the House of Commons in 2005:
‘I am Eileen Dallaglio. I am a founder-member of Disaster Action, a founder-member of the Marchioness Action Group, and currently with the Marchioness Contact Group. The aims have always been very clear . . . We want some peace from this disaster and we want to make sure that this Bill for corporate accountability and corporate responsibility is pushed through Parliament . . .’8
In practical terms a great deal has been achieved by this historic struggle. It contributed to the momentum for a Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act following sixteen years in which successive governments dragged their feet. On the river there is now a Royal National Lifeboat Station, with dedicated rescue craft able to lift survivors easily and directly out of the water. These craft can travel at great speed and reach most parts of the tidal Thames within ten to fifteen minutes. New grab-chains have been placed on the banks; more life jackets, life rafts and belts are on shore and on river boats. Furniture on boats is supposed to be secured to the deck; the stern of each boat should have a large, yellow, luminous reflective square; all bridges should have illumination from beneath.
I now use the Thames regularly to commute by river bus from Putney to Blackfriars, and I am acutely aware of, and thankful for, the improvements that have been brought about by people who should not have had to fight for so many years for these simple remedies. Eileen died in 2008, and I just hope she knew how much she had contributed and achieved.
Having the chance to represent people at inquests and inquiries has been one of the most rewarding and purposeful experiences I have had, and none more so than the years I spent with Neville and Doreen Lawrence after the death of their son Stephen. As with the Marchioness, the Stephen Lawrence case was to bring about far-reaching changes to institutional mindsets that had atrophied over many decades.
Born on 13 September 1974, Stephen was the eldest son, and from an early age he apparently slept little, but was full of creativity, energy and life: he was a good athlete and an enthusiastic supporter of Arsenal. Soon the Lawrence family had grown, and Stephen had a brother, Stuart, and a sister, Georgina.
An extrovert who liked to look stylish, Stephen was not perfect (according to his mother), but he was caring and political, and insisted on going on the protest march against the violent racism that had killed Rolan Adams in Thamesmead in 1991 – the same racism which killed Rohit Duggal in Well Hall Road in 1992 and injured Gurdeep Bhangal in Eltham High Street in 1993.
By then Stephen was eighteen, exerting his independence and railing at the normal constraints of family life. He was studying A Levels at Woolwich College and his lifelong ambition to be an architect seemed not such a distant dream. Doreen herself was studying for a Humanities degree, and Neville, unable to get work as a plasterer due to a downturn in the building trade, was helping in the house and looking after the kids.
On 22 April 1993, Doreen returned home at about 9 p.m. from a short field trip to Birmingham. It was natural for Stephen to be out until about 10.30 p.m. on weekdays, but this evening, instead of the sound of a key in the door, came a knock. It was the Lawrences’ neighbours, the Shepherds: their son Joey had been at the same bus stop as Stephen and had seen him and his friend Duwayne Brooks being attacked by four or five white boys.
Within a few hours Doreen and Neville were being shown the body of their eldest son, who had been knifed to death: it gradually emerged that, in an unprovoked attack, Stephen had been brutally murdered by a gang of five white racist thugs. Within minutes of the assault, names were being circulated in Eltham – the same names of local youths known in the community for their notorious racist attitudes and aggression. Within the first twenty-four hours a man whose real identity was known to the police walked into Plumstead police station; it was Friday 23 April at 7.45 p.m. He was given the pseudonym ‘James Grant’. The information he provided was regarded by the Macpherson Inquiry as the most important of all. What he told the police was recorded in Message 40:
A male attended ‘RM’ [Plumstead] and stated that the persons responsible for the murder of the black youth, are Jamie and Neil Acourt of 102 Bournbrook Road SE3 together with David Norris and 2 other males identity unknown. That the Acourt Brothers call themselves ‘The Krays’. In fact you can only join their gang if you stab someone. They carry knives and weapons most days. Also, David Norris stabbed a Stacey Benefield a month ago in order to prove himself. Benefield was taken to the Brook Hospital and told police he didn’t know who assaulted him. He then went on to say that a young Pakistani boy was murdered last year in Well Hall, that Peter Thompson who is serving life was part of the Acourts gang. That in fact one of the Acourts killed this lad. They also stabbed a young lad at Woolwich town centre called ‘Lee’. He had a bag placed over his head and was stabbed in his legs and arms in order to torture him. Jamie is described as white, 17 years, about 5’ 9”, black hair, medium build. Neil is described as white, also 17 years, about 5’ 5”, black hair, stocky build. Both are ‘twins’, apparently the house they live in was occupied by their mum, who has since left. Believed identity of informant established.9
Similar information was also provided in a detailed letter left in a phone box in Eltham on the same day:
The people involved in last night’s stabbing are:
1. Neil Acourt, 2. David Norris, 3. Jamie Acourt, 4. Gary Dobson.
Names 1 and 2 are also rumoured with Wimpy bar stabbing
(Eltham).
Name 1 was definitely seen in the area prior to stabbing.
Names 2 and 1 are ringleaders and are positive knife users.
Names 1, 2, 3 share house in Bourne Brook Rd, Kidbrooke.
Name 4 lives in Phineas Pett Rd.
One of these names stabbed that poor lad.
The names 1 and 2 are very dangerous knife users who always
carry knives and quite like using them.
Names 1 and 2 have stabbed before. Stacey Benefield was their
victim about 6 weeks ago. He lives in Purneys Road off Rochester
Way.
These bastards were definitely involved and must be stopped
because they keep getting away with it.
This is not a BNP related incident. (You must stress this.)
Approach these shits with care. Do us all a favour and pursue it.
Good Luck.10
Anonymous callers also gave the Lawrences the names of Gary Dobson and the Acourts, one of whose mates, David Norris, was also named time after time, and a short while later Luke Knight’s name was added to the list of suspects. But the Brook Estate where some of them lived was not sealed off: there were no police roadblocks that night, no house-to-house questioning or searches.
Jamie and Neil Acourt were not visited by the police until four days later, by which time clothes had been washed and vital forensic evidence destroyed. Their house was being watched intermittently by a civilian photographer on his own (with no mobile phone or means of communication with the police station), and one photo showed Neil leaving with a black sack, containing who-knows-what evidence being taken away and disposed of. The next day another photograph showed Jamie doing the same, but still the police did not intervene – not, that is, until it was too late.
It is recognised throughout the police force that there is a precious period of time after a murder known as the ‘golden hour’, which does not mean literally one hour, but usually connotes a period of about twenty-four hours within which it is crucial to follow up leads, particularly forensic ones, before the trail goes cold and vital clues evaporate.
The police signally failed to follow up speedily, or develop, the intelligence provided by ‘James Grant’. One of his handlers was DS John Davidson, who was described in the Macpherson Report as ‘a self-willed and abrasive officer who more than once became excited and angry in the witness box’.11 This occurred during my cross-examination. Davidson’s nickname among the police was ‘OJ’, which stood for ‘Objectionable Jock’. He claimed to have registered Grant as an informant, but no documents proving this exist. Yet Grant’s source was a crucial one: a young man told him he had seen the Acourts and the others in their house that night, all with wet hair, claiming they had taken a bath together, and yet there was no attempt to find the young man for over a week.
Certain officers stalled and prevaricated. Notes were lost, witnesses mismanaged. There was a calculated indifference which at the public inquiry led me to accuse the police of ‘gross negligence, or worse’.
Why? We were never able to ‘prove’ it, but the relationship between certain police officers and these known criminal families – particularly the Norris clan – was not a healthy one. A woman caller had described them as the ‘Krays’ and told of the stabbing of Stacey Benefield, who had been too frightened of the gang to complain to the police, but bravely came forward after Stephen’s murder and identified Norris and one of the Acourts as the two who had stabbed him.
On 7 May 1993 – more than two weeks after the murder of Stephen Lawrence – the five were finally arrested. The inquest, as is routine, was adjourned once this happened.
The Lawrences’ dedicated solicitor was Imran Khan, whom I now consider a close friend and colleague. He’s almost as handsome as the ex-cricketer turned political campaigner of the same name, and is certainly as committed and stalwart in his opposition to injustice, while approaching everything and everyone with good grace and humour – and he takes on so much that I’m not sure when he sleeps.
Imran briefed me early on in the Lawrence case, and I agreed to be involved, because for many years I had represented black families and he felt that my experience might be useful. But as always in the early stages of a case, I had no real idea where this was going. Was it just another murder – all too common in London – or was it going to reveal some lingering long-term malaise?
While the Lawrences were still in Jamaica, where they had gone to bury Stephen, they were dealt a huge blow with the news from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on 29 July that they were dropping the charges against the five suspects for ‘lack of sufficient evidence’. This was an enormous setback for the family, and for the campaign that had grown up around them, and there were immediate calls for a public inquiry. The police were hugely resistant to this, and decided on an internal inquiry instead under Detective Chief Superintendent John Barker. They clearly resented a black family ‘interfering’ by harnessing the media and drawing supporters like Nelson Mandela to their cause.
The police also seemed over-diligent in discrediting the key witness to the murder, Duwayne Brooks. In the autumn of 1993 he had attended a protest meeting outside the British National Party (BNP) headquarters in Welling and – by then deeply frustrated by the inability of the police to move against the five suspects – had hurled a missile as well as abuse. Out of the hundreds involved that day, only six people were charged, and Duwayne was one of them. The police pursued him with vigour and resolve right up to trial (had they showed a similar vigour in pursuit of Stephen’s murderers, things might have been very different) and the CPS, showing no compassion for the trauma that Duwayne had been through when witnessing his friend’s murder, had refused to drop the case against him on public-interest grounds. Meanwhile he was rapidly being designated ‘an unreliable witness’.
The police reappraisal of the handling of the case – the Barker Review – continued. The Lawrences complied fully and voiced their concerns at the way in which the case had been handled: the focus on Stephen and his friends, instead of on the named suspects; the stalling over the searches and arrests; and the indifference shown by the police liaison officers. Doreen and Neville felt that perhaps at last they were being heard, but in November the press reported that the review had found that ‘the investigation had been progressed satisfactorily and all lines of inquiry correctly pursued’. In fact the Metropolitan Police implied that the team had been under ‘undue pressure from outside influences’. This is correct: they had been called to account by two parents and their supporters, who were trying to get at the truth. But the phrase ‘undue pressure’ was an insult to the Lawrences and their campaign, and made us all the more determined to get a public hearing and scrutiny of the real evidence.
Legally there had to be an inquest, as in any suspicious or unusual death, but there is no legal aid for the victim’s family, so Imran and I took on the case pro bono, and the inquest opened at Southwark Coroner’s Court on 21 December 1993. I had advised the Lawrences that it would be best if it were adjourned, so that any potential future prosecution would not be prejudiced by the information canvassed, and fortunately the coroner agreed.
Meanwhile the police were supposed to be continuing the investigation, with various officers involved: Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Ilsley, Chief Superintendent John Philpott and Detective Superintendent Brian Weeden, who was the senior investigating officer. Doreen felt the racism coming from many of the officers, and their irritation at her determination. They hid behind the ‘wall of silence’ they claimed had surrounded the case, but there was no such wall. The community had come forward from day one, and it was the brick wall of police obduracy that was the main problem.
Around the same time, David Norris was charged with the attempted murder of Stacey Benefield. Clifford Norris (David’s father), known to be a big-time criminal involved in drugs and wanted by Customs and Excise, had supposedly been on the run for many years – whereas in fact he’d been living comfortably, untroubled by the law, in a Sussex oast-house cottage. According to the Macpherson Report, there was undoubtedly evidence of corruption, or attempted corruption, of a vital witness in the Stacey Benefield stabbing case. The strong inference is that Clifford Norris was behind that corruption and that he was closely involved in trying to pervert the course of justice by bribing Stacey Benefield and another witness involved in the case, named Matthew Farman.12
The trial of David Norris started at the Central Criminal Court on 15 November 1993. Towards the end of the case one of the jurors – the foreman, as it turned out – approached the chauffeur or escort for Norris, no doubt arranged by his father, and assured him the verdict would be one of not guilty. Although the matter was reported, no application was made to discharge the juror in question or to ask for a fresh trial. The juror was in fact awaiting trial himself on charges of fraud and handling a stolen cheque worth £23,000. David Norris was acquitted, and the Norris family continued their cosseted lives, leaving Stacey Benefield without justice.
By now Yvette had approached the Lawrences about making a documentary about the case, but they were very reticent as they didn’t want to be seen to be exploiting Stephen’s death in any way (even though there was no financial gain to be had from participating in such a venture). Good publicity is often the vehicle for change, and soon they realised that the documentary might be a way of getting their version of events across.
However, it was not to prove that simple, as no TV channel would commission a film. Yvette’s company was well known by this time for its hard-hitting, award-winning films, but this case was considered too hot to handle. It seems incredible now, given the amount of media attention the case eventually generated, but at the beginning no one wanted to know. BBC’s Panorama finally decided to fund an initial couple of days’ research and filming, to see if the idea ‘had legs’, and Martin Bashir was assigned to the story, but suddenly the BBC withdrew, with an explanation that the ‘suspects’ might not get a fair trial. Later it appeared that Bashir had a more pressing story to follow, an exclusive interview with Diana, Princess of Wales – and later still he was the only British journalist to interview some of the five suspects for ITV and give them airtime. I considered this behaviour shameful.
It was not until 1996 that Robin Gutch of Channel 4 agreed to commission an hour-long documentary, and I remember the first long interview on camera that Doreen and Neville Lawrence ever gave, conducted by Yvette. It was painful for Stephen’s parents to have to relive the awful events of the night he died, but they were as honest and dignified as they have always shown themselves to be. When I came into the room at the end of the filming, I found Yvette in floods of tears. For some reason, she had asked Doreen off-camera when Stephen’s birthday was, and was told that it was 13 September, the same date as our son Freddy’s. This has always made me feel a deeper connection to Stephen – not very logical, I appreciate, but somehow a link that made my involvement all the more poignant. The finished film, named The Stephen Lawrence Story, managed to be both incredibly moving and properly analytical.
Two days before the first anniversary of the murder, Paul Condon, then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, finally agreed to meet the Lawrences, after which he reluctantly instigated a reinvestigation under a new team headed by Commander Perry Nove, who kept us informed of events and reinvigorated the process. Detective Chief Inspector John Carnt took over day-today operations, while Detective Superintendent William Mellish became senior investigating officer when Brian Weeden retired. Quite rapidly, given that he’d reputedly been ‘on the run’ for over four years, Clifford Norris was arrested after being found at his home in possession of a couple of pistols and a sub-machine gun. (Nice people, the Norrises.) He got eight years.
Suddenly a great deal of information came to light. Jamie had kicked a black kid down some stairs at his school, then kept kicking him until he was unconscious; Neil had threatened another black boy with a knife at his throat; David and Jamie had stabbed and beaten up two brothers called Witham in Chislehurst: David Norris had been charged, but the CPS dropped the case six weeks before Stephen died, on the grounds of ‘staleness’.
By 1994 Neville and Doreen (or Deville and Noreen, as I too often inadvertently called them) were desperately frustrated by the failings of the criminal-justice system. They felt strongly that there was a real lack of vigour and enthusiasm, and so – even if it might be considered novel and overstretching the bounds of normal practice – they both wanted to set a new agenda, with refreshed pace. It was in these circumstances, and after much soul-searching, that we decided to mount a private prosecution. This was both extraordinarily rare and risky, for while such a course had occasionally been taken before, those who had succeeded could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The principal risks were that we would have to rely on the resources of the police to help our investigation and to preserve exhibits; that witnesses might not cooperate; and that, at the end of it all, the Attorney General might step in and enter what is known as nolle prosequi (‘no prosecution beyond this’). On top of all this was the question of public funding, which could not be assumed to be a foregone conclusion. Despite all these considerations, a private prosecution was the only option available.
The new police team seemed cooperative and keen to catch the killers, so Commander Nove authorised secret surveillance of the suspects at Gary Dobson’s flat in Eltham. The subsequent Macpherson Report was to state:
As a result of the intrusive surveillance of late 1994, during the second investigation, we have confirmation that the suspects were then and certainly before that date infected and invaded by gross and revolting racism. Jamie Acourt was not subject to the surveillance, because he was in custody, charged with another offence involving violence in a night club. There is no reason to believe that he was any different from the others so far as overt racism is concerned.13
We, and those who attended the inquiry much later in 1998, watched an edited version of the surveillance tape, over an hour long, but only a small part of the many hours recorded. Before he played the tape, William Mellish said, ‘There is no purpose in summarising these long recordings . . . but a flavour of what was repeatedly said should be given. We stress that the sentences used are only part of prolonged and appalling words which sully the paper upon which they have been recorded.’
When we listened to the recording we could see what Mellish meant:
NEIL ACOURT, Sequence 11: ‘I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up, mate, and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps . . .’
DAVID NORRIS, Sequence 50: ‘If I was going to kill myself, do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every Paki, every copper, every mug that I know. I’d go down to Catford and places like that, I’m telling you now, with two sub-machine guns, and I’m telling you I’d take one of them, skin the black cunt alive, mate, torture him, set him alight . . . I’d blow their two legs and arms off and say, go on you can swim home now . . . (laughs).’
GARY DOBSON, Sequence 27: ‘He said “The fucking black bastard, I am going to kill him.” I cracked up laughing. I went, “What black geezer?” He went, “The Wimpy one, the fucking black nigger cunt, fucking black bastard.” I went, “What, the Paki . . .” ’
LUKE KNIGHT, Sequence 11: ‘It was Cameroon, a fucking nigger country . . . Fucking our presenters saying, “Oh yeah, we want Cameroon to win this”, why the fuck should he want niggers to win it when they’re playing something fucking like Italy . . .’
Mellish summed up the tapes when he said that they showed ‘appalling racist or raving bigotry’, and I referred to ‘racism conjoined with an obsession to extreme violence’, since on frequent occasions knives were brandished and stabbing movements and ‘demonstrations’ were practised by the youths.
The footage was indeed horrifying: racism at its most crude and violent. But the four used veiled language about the murder, as if they were aware they might be being bugged. They couldn’t disguise their body language from the hidden cameras, however, and the resulting mock stabbings at exactly the place where the knife entered Stephen, severing a major artery, are chilling. There is Neil Acourt, raising his arm and plunging it into an imaginary body, over and over again.
I know that people argue that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ and therefore it is inviolate, but if it is possible to prosecute someone for a crime committed in the home (such as murder or rape), then why should incitement to racial hatred, so clearly manifest here, escape the long arm of the law? This also touches on the libertarian argument so often bandied around that, in a free society, you can say what you damn well like. I don’t agree, as there have to be limits in order to protect the vulnerable and the freedoms that supposedly lie at the heart of our democracy, and one such basic freedom is the right to exist without being physically or verbally threatened, whether inside or outside the home.
In the run-up to the private prosecution on behalf of the Lawrences I wanted to adduce this material in the case against the five, but the evidential rules made it problematic. There were no admissions of complicity or detailed knowledge of the murder. At that time a person’s behavioural ‘propensity’, ‘disposition’ or ‘bad character’ could not be put in by the prosecution as a matter of course. Although the tape showed extreme racist ‘propensity or disposition’, this in itself was insufficient. Additionally, the conduct took place well after the murder, and it could be argued that it only reflected an attitude of mind present at the moment of filming. In the end, the peg I used to argue its admissibility in evidence was the fact that it demonstrated the possession of knives similar to the murder weapon; a willingness to carry them in public; and a stabbing action strikingly similar to the one used to kill Stephen.
As a matter of interest, the legal position has been changed dramatically by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and therefore evidence of disposition now has a much greater chance of being admitted.14
In December 1994, at Duwayne Brooks’s trial for disorder at the BNP protest, Judge Tilling threw out the case, saying he was worried for Duwayne’s health and had no intention of adding to his considerable stress. But Duwayne had waited more than a year to be cleared and was bewildered and disheartened.
He was central to the private prosecution, especially as some other crucial witnesses – including Joey Shepherd – had been so alienated by the initial police team that they wouldn’t now cooperate. Joey and Royston Westbrook, travelling on a bus on the night of the murder, had failed to identify any of the suspects at parade, and they were scared of these violent men who were still at large. No one could blame them.
On Saturday 22 April 1995 – exactly two years after Stephen’s death – I remember feeling extremely nervous about launching the private prosecution. A lot was at stake, and I had taken advice from a number of prosecuting barristers whom I knew well and who were kind enough to proffer their views. Whenever I get these nerves, which is more often than you may imagine, I have a habit of arriving at court desperately early, as if by doing so I can steal a march on everybody else. This time nothing could have been further from the truth, because when I arrived at Greenwich Magistrates’ Court at around 7.30 a.m. it was closed, and I was forced to wander the streets to find a local café. (What I usually find is a greasy spoon, where the workers who are having their early-morning tea find someone wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase and reading the Guardian to be a mild cause for amusement.)
Three hours later I was able to tell the court that we had information against each of the suspects that they had murdered Stephen Lawrence. Four of them were immediately arrested, while Jamie Acourt was already in custody for stabbing Darren Giles in the heart at a Greenwich nightclub. Fortunately for the victim, this time the wound was not fatal – by a very small margin. But later Jamie walked free, claiming self-defence like Norris. These lads certainly seemed to lead a charmed life.
There followed months of legal process – conferences with the legal team, including solicitors Imran Khan and Caron Thatcher, plus Margo Boye-Anawoma, Martin Soorjoo and Steve Kamlish, all barristers in my chambers who gave their time freely to help with the private prosecution; hearings; committals; then more hearings – until by the end of 1995 three of the five suspects were finally sent for trial: Neil Acourt, Luke Knight and Gary Dobson.
Feeling apprehensive at Greenwich was nothing compared with the first day in Court Number One at the Old Bailey. This was one of the few times in my life I was a prosecutor, and it felt strange to think I would effectively be introducing the case, rather than responding as defence counsel. The suspects were older and tougher by now, while the Lawrences were determined, but very tense. I didn’t know the judge, Mr Justice Curtis from Birmingham, and was surprised that the case was not being heard by one of the judges who usually sat at the Old Bailey.
Straight away the defence lawyers for the three accused said they were going to challenge the admissibility of Duwayne’s evidence. In the normal run of things, as barrister for the prosecution, I would have been allowed to address the jury, setting out the case against the accused. But in the light of the objection, the judge ruled that I could not mention Duwayne’s evidence in my opening remarks, and to try and open the case without reference to the central evidence of identification was going to be exceptionally difficult, as well as highly unusual. In order to provide the jury with a coherent account, I had rapidly to reorganise the remaining material differently, and was worried because already I could feel the case slipping away.
A jury was sworn in and heard a small amount of evidence, but when it came to Duwayne’s turn, the jury was removed and there began a ‘trial within a trial’ concerning the admissibility in law of his evidence. What that meant in this case was a challenge to its integrity as a precondition to it being allowed to go before the jury. It was then that attempts to discredit Duwayne rose to the surface, and sympathy towards him on account of the trauma he had suffered was turned against him, as if he was too traumatised to be reliable. But I was clear that in his initial statement, taken only hours after the event, he had lucidly described the circumstances and people involved. It was his subsequent statements that had muddied the waters, for Duwayne had changed details of his account – and the defence jumped on him and picked him apart in front of the judge alone.
Duwayne had identified both Neil and Luke at identity parades, but a policeman named Sergeant Crowley, who had accompanied him back and forth to the crime scene, gave a statement that Duwayne said that friends had coached him in the appearances of the two, so that he could pick them out. Duwayne always denied this, but it was a young, bitter black youth’s word against that of a policeman. I tried to explain the psychological impact of trauma on the memory, and how stored images can sometimes suddenly flash back when they are triggered, but Duwayne conceded under pressure that he might have confused two people as the stabber.
This blew apart our main witness, but not necessarily our whole case, for I was banking on the jury being able to piece together an accumulation of evidence: other eyewitnesses; the horrific surveillance video; a limited amount of scientific evidence about fibres from clothing; and, of course, our ability to undermine the accused through cross-examination, as back-up to Duwayne.
After over a week of legal argument the judge ruled that Duwayne’s evidence was unreliable. To be perfectly honest, I had never expected that the whole of his evidence would be ruled inadmissible, which is a very unusual course to be adopted by a judge. As lawyers, we were all terribly aware of the shortcomings and fallibility of identification evidence, which was normally dealt with in quite a different way. Either the judge might stop the case at the end of the prosecution’s evidence, if there was nothing to corroborate ‘a fleeting glimpse’ or shaky identification; or he would provide the jury with very careful guidelines about how to approach and treat such evidence. To have it ruled offside at the very beginning of the trial was a bolt from the blue.
There were further objections in the pipeline from the defence about the admissibility of other parts of the evidence, especially the surveillance video that had been used at the committal stage and the fibres, and I had the clear impression from the tenor of the judge’s ruling that we would lose those applications as well. In any event, as a responsible prosecutor I had to consider what the chances were of obtaining a safe conviction without any of Duwayne’s evidence, so we all went to a large oak-panelled room in the Old Bailey to talk through the pros and cons. I was heavy-hearted, upset at having to advise the family that on balance I could not see a realistic way forward, and it was one of the most emotionally searing moments of my entire career when I returned to court to tell the judge that I did not feel it would be right and proper to continue. It was clear from his response that he thoroughly endorsed this approach and that, had we opted to proceed, he would have stopped the case anyway at the halfway stage. Doreen collapsed and had to be taken home, exhausted and crushed.
The next day the judge instructed the jury to bring in ‘not guilty’ verdicts on the three in the dock – and at that time, under the double-jeopardy rule, they could not have been retried.
Doreen wasn’t the only one to be deflated, for I was very angry and miserable at my failure to provide the Lawrences with the justice they deserved. To win a private prosecution would have been a historic event and we knew the odds had been stacked against us, but Imran and I felt it imperative not to give up.
The next major forum was the resumed inquest, which in February 1997 recommenced before Sir Montague Levine, a large man with a handlebar moustache. Doreen was allowed to make a statement to the court, and a powerful and important indictment of the racism of the justice system it was, as she severely criticised what she saw as the ‘staged’ charade of the court case the previous year and called for changes in attitudes and actions by the police, CPS and courts.
We were able to give an airing to many of the Lawrences’ grievances, including the case of Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Ilsley and the folded note.
In the week following Stephen’s murder, Doreen and Neville had visited the police station to hear about the progress of the investigation. Doreen had written the names of the suspects given to them by the public on a piece of paper, and handed it to Ilsley at the start of the meeting. In the course of the next half-hour or so she watched as he folded and refolded the paper into a small square, and at the end of the meeting she challenged him: ‘It’s going in the bin, isn’t it?’ Ilsley quickly unfolded the sheet and insisted that it would be treated seriously.
At the inquest four years later, Sir Montague Levine took the sheet and refolded it – it was exactly as Doreen had described. ‘It is only the size of a postage stamp,’ he declared and held it aloft. The public gallery erupted. A senior officer was caught out: uninterested in and dismissive of people in pain, and crucially of evidence which, had it been acted upon at that stage, could have changed everything.
Then the five hooligans were forced to attend, which was significant in itself – but what a farce it turned out to be. They swaggered and strutted and claimed their right under the Coroners’ Rules not to incriminate themselves by answering, ‘I claim privilege.’
I asked Norris his name. ‘I claim privilege,’ he answered, smirking, and the same reply became like a bizarre mantra to every question, however innocuous, put to each one of them: ‘I claim privilege’, ‘I claim privilege’, ‘I claim privilege’.
Other issues emerged at the inquest, including the reluctance of any police officer to put Stephen into the recovery position at the roadside, and the volte-face of John Carnt, in charge of the second police investigation, who claimed that everything done first time around was professional and was only hindered by the vociferous interference of the campaign group and the family. Doreen and Neville were astonished. These officers had shown apparent support in the run-up to the private prosecution, and now they were resiling. It was reprehensible.
But, in my experience, juries are usually intelligent and perceptive, and when faced with such evidence they brought in a momentous verdict: ‘Stephen Lawrence was unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths.’ They allocated blame in a process that was denied to the jury in the private prosecution, which was hugely important.
The next day the Daily Mail carried the banner headline ‘murderers’ over pictures of the five, accusing them of killing Stephen and inviting them to sue the paper if it was wrong. They never have.
Doreen was galvanised by Carnt’s about-turn. Her faith in any member of the police was shattered, and Imran formally complained to the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) about the conduct of the investigation.
Meanwhile there was change in the air. The Met decided to ask a team from Kent Constabulary to look at the issues surrounding the Stephen Lawrence murder, and by May 1997 the government had changed. To its great credit, one of the first things the Labour government under Tony Blair did was to declare a judicial inquiry – not, however, without some significant prodding from the Lawrences. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, announced that, as well as looking at the particular circumstances of Stephen’s death, the terms of reference were to ‘identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes’.
We had finally done it. At last there was to be a public forum, fully funded for the first time, where issues of ineptitude, corruption and racism had to be explored. And then the work began.
At the end of December 1997, the Kent Report found ‘significant weaknesses, omissions and lost opportunities in the conduct of the case’. The wheels were turning fast and I felt a huge responsibility on my shoulders.
Then Sir William Macpherson of Cluny was appointed as Chair of the public inquiry. Initially Doreen was not happy with this choice, because in the past Macpherson had been severe on asylum-seekers, and we had a long meeting about his appointment with Jack Straw. Finally Doreen was persuaded that Macpherson would be fair in his approach, and he certainly couldn’t have been in any doubt that he was being scrutinised, because her reservations were published by the press.
On Tuesday 24 March 1998 the public inquiry opened in a pink monstrosity of a building called Hannibal House, at the Elephant and Castle, where alongside Macpherson sat his panel of advisors: Ugandan-born Bishop John Sentamu, Tom Cook (former Deputy Chief Constable of Yorkshire) and Dr Richard Stone (GP and race-relations activist). The proceedings were informal, dignified and serious, with a much-respected opponent Edmund Lawson, QC (who died unexpectedly in March 2009) acting for the inquiry and a whole raft of lawyers representing all interested parties.
Taken from the transcript of the second day of the Macpherson Inquiry, 24 March 1998, my opening remarks were these:
‘Nearly fifty years ago from now, namely in 1948, in the Southern States of America there was a black Baptist minister by the name of Dr Vernon Johns, and his parish was a Baptist church in Dexter Avenue, Alabama. Following a series of murders of young black men in that town by gangs of white men, those murders having gone unchecked, no sanction and in the face of enormous public disapproval and the risk of violent retribution to him, he entitled his last sermon, “It is safe to murder Negros”. He was detained by the police and forced to leave. He did.
‘His successor was Dr Martin Luther King, and hence the birth of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of America. Dr Johns’s point then and our point on behalf of the Lawrences now is this: Stephen’s teenage killers and their close friends and relatives all felt safe in what they did and in the knowledge of what they did. We suggest that the Inquiry needs to examine closely how a climate has been created in which such obvious and overt racism can breed and wreak such appalling havoc with impunity. In part there are three answers to this: the first is that it lies with those in our community who continue to applaud and support these attitudes and activities; secondly it also lies with those who remain silent or indifferent and who are not prepared to confront such attitudes at source; thirdly, and perhaps most pertinently for this Inquiry, the climate is created by law-enforcement agencies which fail to take speedy and effective and committed action to pursue such illegality. The magnitude of the failure in this case, we say, cannot be explained by mere incompetence or a lack of direction by senior officers or a lack of execution and application by junior officers, nor by woeful under-resourcing. So much was missed by so many that deeper causes and forces must be considered.
‘We suggest these forces relate to two main propositions. The first is, dealing with the facts themselves, that the victim was black and there was as a result a racism, both conscious and unconscious, that permeated the investigation; secondly, the fact that the perpetrators were white and were expecting some form of . . . protection. The inordinate and extensive delays and inactions, some of which to use the phrase already applied were “crass”, give rise to one plain inference and one plain question which we suggest has to be boldly addressed: was the initial investigation ever intended to result in a successful prosecution? The process being undertaken by all of us must begin from a clear and unequivocal premise that this was a racist killing. The forces that applaud and support and continue to support [such racism] go unabated up to the doors of this Inquiry.’15
Suffice it to say, the days in the inquiry were long, intense and demanding, generating piles of documentation, hours of cross-examination, columns of publicity and huge public interest.
We managed to get a bit nearer the truth on the Norris (father/ son/police) connection. During the private prosecution the chief witness Duwayne Brooks was protected night and day by an ex-Flying Squad Officer, now a sergeant in the Met. Years before, when Clifford Norris was under surveillance by Customs and Excise for drug dealing, this very sergeant had been seen in a pub with Norris making notes, using a calculator, carrying a carrier bag containing a number of oblong slabs or packages, and on one occasion receiving a carrier bag from Norris. Soon after this Norris disappeared for more than four years.
In his evidence before the inquiry, Neville Lawrence said:
I would say that both racism and corruption played a part in this investigation . . . As to corruption I think that some police officers investigating my son’s death were connected to the murderers in some way or other.’ And in my closing speech I summarised Neville’s allegation in this way, ‘We shall be asking the inquiry to draw such inferences – namely, that there must have been collusion between members of the criminal fraternity and some police officers.16
Because of the serious nature of this allegation, the inquiry required a higher standard of proof than for other matters being investigated – the criminal standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ – and this was much more difficult to achieve, especially, as we conceded, because there was no direct evidence of corruption. We were asking the inquiry to make this inference based on a large number of circumstances, in the same way that a prosecution often requires a jury to infer guilt.
I suggested that there were ‘a number of stages that ultimately must be combined and viewed in a cumulative way . . . Firstly, the occurrence in terms of quantity and the nature of serious basic errors made by senior and experienced officers in the investigation, which cannot be explained by accident, oversight or overwork.’ Second, there were ‘clear and obvious examples of senior officers at the centre of this investigation colluding to cover up the truth about vital events’.17 Finally, there was the Norris factor.
It is fair to say that although the inquiry did not find corruption proved, there were an extraordinary number of crass, basic errors:
1 Failure to arrest by Monday 26 April 1993, or at the very least to obtain a search warrant for specific addresses.
2 Failure to consolidate eyewitness identification evidence.
3 Failure to pursue a line of enquiry relating to a possible sixth suspect who could have been the ‘blond offender’, and a failure properly to eliminate potential candidates.
4 Failure to develop information expeditiously and effectively in order to convert it into evidence.
5 Failure to make contemporaneous records and, where some were made, a failure to ensure their retention.
6 Failure to establish an effective surveillance operation in the two weeks after the murder and a failure to put the product that was obtained to any use.
7 Failure to ensure the completion of forensic-science examination of potential exhibits.
The inquiry lasted more than nine months, and by the end we were all exhausted – and yet exhilarated. Duwayne had been vindicated, his trauma recognised; the five suspects were, in Macpherson’s words, ‘arrogant and dismissive, evasive and vague’; police officers had been exposed as either ignorant of the law or downright racist, or both; the highest-ranking police officer in the land had issued an apology; and the public had had their eyes opened to a depth of racism within the police that had never before been acknowledged. It was, according to Macpherson’s phrase, which will always be associated with the Stephen Lawrence murder, a case of ‘institutional racism’.
We awaited Macpherson’s report with anticipation, and it was finally published in February 1999, following an announcement in the House of Commons by Jack Straw, who declared, ‘I want this report to act as a catalyst for fundamental and irreversible change across the whole of society.’
There were seventy far-reaching recommendations in the report, covering accountability, definitions of racist crimes, training in first aid, cultural diversity, changes to complaints procedures and the treatment of victims and witnesses. For example, it is only since Lawrence that the system has recognised that victims have a role to play, because Neville and Doreen were not sufficiently incorporated into the process.
What Macpherson suggested is that victims, whether witnesses or not, should be allowed representation, and this is important. In France in the inquisitorial system – a system that I have been accused of advocating, which I don’t, although I acknowledge that elements of it are interesting – victims do have a status. They become a civil party, even in a criminal case, and are entitled to representation, advice at all stages and official police liaison. This hasn’t been instigated in Britain yet, but I think it should be. I am very conscious of victims’ rights because I represent them often in inquiries, so I know how strongly they feel about the fact that they are left out and not sufficiently recognised. A rape victim, someone who has suffered a serious assault or a child in the legal process should be entitled to a lawyer, in order to ensure that there is communication and protection at a time when they are at their most vulnerable. What has happened up until now is that the state says, ‘We are representing you’, but unless they have a particularly sympathetic prosecutor in the CPS, the individual can feel very isolated.
What else has happened since the inquiry? The Race Relations Act has been amended to cover the police and all central government bodies. These are profound changes, and ones that could not have been achieved, or even contemplated, without the commitment and resilience of the Lawrence family. There is still much to change, and racism has by no means been eradicated in our institutions, but those who perpetrate it have been issued a stern warning.
In 1999 Yvette made another compelling documentary called Hoping for a Miracle, taking the Lawrences back to Jamaica and to Stephen’s graveside. Then in 2000 she co-produced with Granada The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, a powerful drama directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Hugh Quarshie, which won the BAFTA Best Single Drama award and is an exceptional summation of the Lawrences’ experience.
In 2002 two men served nine months in jail for shouting ‘nigger’ and throwing a drink can at a black man, who turned out to be an off-duty detective, DC Gareth Reid, who recognised them in their flash red car, which they drove at him. It happened on Well Hall Road, exactly where Stephen died. The men were David Norris and Neil Acourt.
Doreen has gone on to open a superb centre for the education of young architects as a memorial to Stephen – though in its opening week in February 2008 someone destroyed the beautiful Chris Ofili decorative windows at the front of the new building, a despicable act.
The trauma and the aftermath of this case were to have a profound impact on us all over the following years. Here the state came up against two parents who were not going to rest until justice was done and those culpable were held to account. It was a long and bitter struggle, which had a huge influence both on society and on our institutions, but which left the murderers free. They know who they are – and we know who they are – and to date they have not been brought to justice. Yet.
I am often asked what is the most significant case I have ever undertaken, and I cite this one because I was affected by two ordinary, yet exceptional individuals who displayed remarkable courage and tenacity, changing perceptions and agendas for this and the next generation.
Their struggle continues to this day, ensuring that the achievements of the inquiry are not left to gather dust on some obscure shelf within the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice or New Scotland Yard. Questions are constantly posed by the Lawrences, harking back to Macpherson’s own priority: implementation. On 24 February 2009, in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, senior politicians and police officers were called to account, with Doreen warning about the pernicious persistence of racism in the manner of urban policing. Within days of Doreen’s exhortations a case surfaced at Belgravia police station in central London, where black community service officers (CSOs) testified that they were required to travel in a separate van to white CSOs. Apartheid appears to be operating in London.
It is of interest to note that Dr Richard Stone, one of the Macpherson panel, produced a report entitled ‘The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 10 Years On’ in February 2009, in which he concluded: ‘While much is made of the fact that the percentage of black officers has doubled between 1999 and 2008, in reality this was only from a relatively low starting point of 2 per cent to approximately 4 per cent. This is considerably below the national target of 7 per cent set for the police service overall.’ He also added that the mentality of rank-and-file officers has not altered and that institutional racism still persists.18 The fight goes on . . .
There are many other inquests that have left a mark on my memory, some of which are, as I write, yet to be resolved.
Ricky Reel was a young man whose body was found in the River Thames near Kingston in October 1997. His family remains convinced that Ricky was the victim of a racist attack, and at the inquest the jury returned an open verdict.
In 2003 in Gaza, James Miller, a cameraman who was making a film about Palestinian children, was shot. In the same year, less than a mile away, Tom Hurndall, a twenty-two-year-old journalist who rushed in to rescue a group of small children being fired at by Israeli soldiers, was shot in the head. In both cases the juries at St Pancras Coroner’s Court in London returned verdicts of unlawful killing/ murder by soldiers in the Israeli Defence Force in Palestine, and we are still endeavouring to persuade the British Government to institute proceedings against the soldiers, both junior and senior, who have been identified. So far there has been a serious reluctance to act. As ever it is the family having to persuade, cajole and set the agenda, when you might think that the government itself would want to respond on its own initiative. In a remarkable film entitled The Shooting of Tom Hurndall – written by Simon Block, directed by Rowan Joffe and broadcast by Channel 4 in October 2008 – the fight by Tom’s parents, Jocelyn and Anthony, was brilliantly portrayed. Tom’s sister Sophie has been so affected by his death and the sacrifice he made that she is now working for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
I have also represented families at inquests affected by two different, but extremely serious bombings in Ireland. The first was Dublin/ Monaghan on 17 May 1974, when car bombs killed thirty-two people – the greatest loss of life in a single day during ‘The Troubles’, greater even than the second atrocity, in Omagh in August 1998. In both cases there remain a large number of unanswered questions concerning the nature of the information available to the authorities and, in the case of Dublin, the extent to which the authorities themselves, north of the border, colluded with Protestant paramilitaries.
In doing all these cases I became acutely aware that many of the relatives of the victims had very little support (financial or otherwise) and were having to learn from scratch each time the lessons about procedures and institutions. In order to meet this need and provide a pool of information and support, I and others (including the tireless Suresh Grover) established the National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) in the mid-1990s. I was inspired by Martin Luther King, who became the symbol for the NCRM; the movement subsequently assisted the families of Michael Menson, who was torched to death by racists; Judith Alder, whose brother Christopher died while lying face down and unconscious in a pool of blood in a police custody suite in Hull; Roger Sylvester, who was manhandled by police in a mental hospital; Zahid Mubarek, murdered by a racist in Ashford Remand Centre; Harry Stanley, shot dead by police, who mistook a chair leg that he was carrying for a firearm; and many more.
The achievements in this field were undoubtedly brought about by a small team of highly committed solicitors – amongst them Imran Khan, Gareth Peirce and Louise Christian – and by thousands of ordinary people who responded to the call and helped to organise and campaign throughout the UK.
The irony of all this is that the intrinsic value of public inquiries and inquests is being threatened by legislative change, some of which has already happened. The Inquiries Act 2005 will almost certainly result in no further tribunals along the lines of the Macpherson one, and the Coroners Bill 2009 has resurrected the spectre of secret, non-jury inquests where the government considers it to be in the national interest. The battle continues, and it will probably require another family to stand on the front line and ensure the truth is publicly told.