The unprovoked killing had a huge impact upon attitudes to race in Britain. At the forefront of the fight for change was Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother. The unnecessary, unnatural death of a child must surely cause any parent the greatest grief imaginable. But Doreen somehow converted the heartache and injustice into a campaign that transformed the conscience of a country so badly scarred by Stephen’s murder. She united Right and Left, black and white, rich and poor, uniformed and civilian in her vital mission.
But 20 years on, and more than a decade after the Macpherson Inquiry into the police’s handling of Stephen’s killing, concerns over the police’s approach towards racist crime remain. Despite the repeal of the discriminatory section 44 of the Terrorism Act, the use of stop and search under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act remains and is applied in similarly discriminatory fashion – with statistics showing you were far more likely to be stopped and searched if you were Black or Asian. Following Macpherson, police were required to record details of all stops, including the self-defined ethnicity of the person. But the requirement to record “stop and accounts”, where a person is stopped and asked to account for their presence or actions, was subsequently scrapped by the Coalition Government. Such discrimination has left many questioning whether the police should have the power of stop and search at all. As the Home Secretary Theresa May has herself admitted, there are still racist police officers and those who subconsciously treat those whose race is different to their own in unacceptable ways. There’s also still a shortage of Black officers, despite some advances in recruitment.
Meanwhile earlier this year the Home Affairs Select Committee delivered a damning indictment of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Its report exposed an overwhelmed, misfiring body that’s completely lost the public’s confidence – not least amongst minority communities, whose members are disproportionately represented in cases of death and serious injury in custody.
Progress has been made since Macpherson, but such ongoing concerns demonstrate there’s some way to go in challenging racism and its tragic consequences. Proper transparency and scrutiny eventually delivered some form of justice for Stephen, and they remain the only way of ensuring public trust in our proud model of policing by consent. Two decades after Stephen’s shocking death, proper accountability and a truly independent police watchdog with bite are surely the least Doreen and her family deserve.
