8 The murder of Stephen Lawrence and the challenge of institutional racism

It is impossible to overstate the impact of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and the subsequent highly flawed police investigation, on public confidence in the police. Stephen Lawrence, aged 18, was stabbed to death in London by six white assailants in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus. In the days following the attack, names of suspects were provided by local residents, but no arrests were made for two weeks. Two suspects were initially charged with murder, but the CPS dropped the charges citing insufficient evidence.

Figure 11: Stephen Lawrence (1974-1993) and the headline in The Daily Mail on Friday 14th February 1997 [Description: Two photographs: The first is of Stephen Lawrence standing in front of a pot plant wearing a black and white sweatshirt with a logo; he has his fist raised. The second is a screenshot of the Daily Mail’s front page with the headline ‘murderers’ and ‘The mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us.’ Below are five photographs showing the men they accuse.] Source: first image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence; second image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#/media/File:Murderers_(Daily_Mail,_1997).jpg

After a public campaign, the following year (1994), the Lawrence family initiated a private prosecution of the initial two suspects and three others – two had charges dropped and three were acquitted. The inquest (which had been paused) was restarted and the jury returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’. The next day the Daily Mail published the details of those accused, calling them murderers and daring them to sue the paper if this was not true.

In 1997, shortly after the Daily Mail headline, a Police Complaints Authority Report found significant shortcomings in the police investigation into the murder and the Home Secretary ordered a public inquiry, to be conducted by Sir William Macpherson. The Macpherson Report (1999) was a damning indictment of the original investigation, which it described as marred by ‘professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership’. It also flagged ‘inescapable evidence which highlights the lack of trust which exists between the police and minority ethnic communities’ (Macpherson, 1999, Section 45.6, p. 360).

It was the charge of institutional racism which was most explosive for policing. Macpherson defined this as:

For Macpherson, the longstanding issues of over- and under- policing, and frequent miscarriages of justice, could not simply be attributed to ‘bad apples’ – individual racist officers. Rather, it was culture and working practices of policing itself which led to racist outcomes. While the report’s findings were disputed, it did undoubtedly spur UK policing to pay much closer attention to initiatives to improve confidence in the police and improve the diversity of forces.

While some progress was made by the end of the twentieth century, this was partial and limited. All of the issues outlined in the preceding sections carried over, to some degree, into the early 2000s, as you will see in the next section.