The Colour of Justice

Based on the transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

Richard Norton-Taylor, Richard Norton-Taylor

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781849437219
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

In 1993, black teenager Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in a racist attack by a gang of white youths. The police investigation failed to provide sufficient evidence to convict. Based on the harrowing transcripts of the public inquiry, this is a dramatic reconstruction of the first hearings which reflected the national outcry at the police's mishandling of the case. First seen at the Tricycle Theatre, London, this remarkable production received instant acclaim and subsequently transferred to the West End.

Opening statements by Macpherson of Cluny, Edmund Lawson QC, Michael Mansfield QC and Jeremy Gompertz QC

MACPHERSON: The procedure of the hearings will be reasonably informal: nobody need stand to ask questions unless they wish to do so. And of course people may come and go exactly as they please.

Inevitably this room looks rather like a court, but the stricter rules of procedure and evidence do not apply to us in our search for the truth.

Our hope is that, at the end of the day, we will establish what happened and what may have gone wrong over these last years in connection with the investigation and management of this case.

To Mr and Mrs Lawrence, these years must have been dreadful. We hope sincerely that while nothing can alleviate the pain and loss which they have suffered, they may accept that all of us have done our best to establish what was done so that the future may not see repetition of any errors which may be uncovered during our hearings.

We will now turn to Mr Edmund Lawson, Queen’s Counsel.

LAWSON: Stephen Lawrence was brutally murdered. The attack upon him was obviously cowardly, was unprovoked and was demonstrably racist. He was attacked in the street. He was black. His attackers were white.

No-one has been convicted for his murder. It might be appropriate just to remind the Inquiry and to inform those who listen of this description of him by someone who knew him at the Cambridge Harriers Athletic Club of which he was an active and successful member. Quite coincidently the someone was a policeman who knew him at the club because his son was involved. “During the period I knew Stephen,” he said, “I never saw him display any form of aggression and would describe his temperament as the same as his father – quiet and unassuming, exemplary character.” He was a young man who had never come into contact with, or the notice of, the police.

It appears that in a number of very material respects the police conduct of the investigation went badly wrong, not least in the decision to delay arrests of the principle suspects who were identified from various sources immediately after the murder. We will be inviting you to consider, and producing evidence to assist you to answer the question: were any of the errors due to simple, or perhaps more accurately, gross incompetence, or were they as some vociferously asserted – and as police officers have vigorously denied – attributable to or contributed to directly or indirectly by racism?

Nobody, police or civilian, has any proper basis for declining to assist this inquiry in its quest for the truth and that includes those who I will be referring to as the five suspects: Neil and Jamie Acourt, Norris, Dobson and Knight.

Neither Stephen Lawrence nor Duwayne Brooks did anything to provoke an argument, let alone a fight. They moved away a little from the bus stop looking to see if there was a bus coming when a group of some five or six white youths approached them. Duwayne Brooks recounted that he heard at least one of them make a reference to “nigger”. He shouted to his friend to run, but Stephen could not because he was surrounded by thugs, attacked by one or more of them and knocked to the ground.

The first issue to be considered relates to first aid. It appears from the evidence that no police officer sought to administer first aid.

It seems, as a matter of tragic fact, that Stephen’s injuries were so severe that first aid would not, in any event, have helped him. But questions do arise – whether first aid was denied by the police because “they did not want to dirty their hands with a black man’s blood”, as Mrs Lawrence asked after the inquest into her son’s death. A witness on the night told her that Jamie and Neil Acourt were walking around the corner. Apparently one of the Acourt brothers carries a machete down his right hand trouser leg.

That information came to the police on the 24th of April. Apparently no action was taken until a week later.

On the 13th of May, Mr Brooks did identify Neil Acourt. On the 3rd of June, he identified Knight on another parade. The identifications led to each of those two men being charged with the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Unfortunately, a Sergeant Crowley asserts that at the time of the parade when Knight was identified, Mr Brooks made some comments to him suggesting that he had received information before the parade which may have enabled him to make the identification or prompted him as to who to identify.

Mr Brooks disputed Crowley’s account. The importance of it is obvious. Mr Brooks’ identification of those suspects was vital. The private prosecution that followed much later was forced, in effect, to be abandoned once Mr Brooks’ evidence was excluded by the judge.

On the evening of the 23rd of April, there first came on the scene a man who has been given the name “Grant”.

He accused the Acourts and Norris of Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

The message stated: “The Acourt brothers call themselves the Krays. In fact, you can only join the gang if you stab someone.”

Some of the suspects were under surveillance from the 26th of April. What was the object of this surveillance operation? There was a particularly crass failure. A photographer was put in place to keep surveillance on the Acourts. Before he got his camera set up, he saw somebody leaving their house with what appeared to be clothing in a bin bag, get into a car and clear off. He made no report at the time of either of these events.

This was a racist murder, there is no doubt about that. It was recognised as such by the police. I am bound to say that it is repellant that anybody who commits a murder should get away with it and anyone who does so and murders for racist motives and should escape is doubly repellant.

MANSFIELD: 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 that the victim was black and racism, both conscious and unconscious, permeated the investigation. Secondly, the fact that the perpetrators were white and were expecting some form of protection.

The fact that the same teenagers are equally capable of killing or maiming anyone in their way does not preclude them from being racist; racists rarely concentrate their venom on the black population or the Jewish population or whoever happens to be the ethnic group which they regard as barely worth living. When Doreen Lawrence first left home after this appalling crime, merely to go shopping locally, in a car park she was confronted by a woman who indicated that her son would not have been killed if he had not been there.

It went on, this racist force. Their tyres have been slashed, their home has been watched by white youths and barely two weeks ago, the memorial plaque was desecrated, painted, daubed, and smashed with a hammer. These are activities that the Jewish population are only too familiar with. It was on the spot where Stephen died.

GOMPERTZ: Sir, it is a matter of the greatest regret to the Commissioner and to the Metropolitan Police Service that no one has been successfully prosecuted for the callous murder of Stephen Lawrence.

With hindsight, the Metropolitan Police Service acknowledges that it should have done better. The Metropolitan Police are determined to learn every possible lesson from any constructive criticism which emerges from this inquiry.

Although it is right and proper that their actions and attitudes ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Note
• Chronology
• Map showing where Stephen Lawrence was killed
• The Cast
• THE COLOUR OF JUSTICE