Richard Stone - Hidden Stories of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

HIDDEN STORIES OF THE STEPHEN
LAWRENCE INQUIRY

Personal reflections

Richard Stone

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

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The Policy Press 2013

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ISBN 978 1 44730 848 5 hardcover

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Readers Guide

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This book is dedicated to Stephen Lawrence, who in the words of his mother to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry:

Had he been given the chance to survive maybe would have been the one to bridge the gap between black and white, because he didnt distinguish between black or white. He saw people as people.

The following typographical styles have been used for displayed/block quotations.

Quotations from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report:

Stephen Lawrence had been with his friend Duwayne Brooks during the afternoon of 22 April. They were on their way home when they came at around 22:30 to the bus stop in Well Hall Road with which we are all now so familiar.

Extracts from transcripts of the Inquiry:

THE CHAIRMAN: Please, please, be quiet. I know how difficult it is for you but let me see what is being said let me hear what is being said.

Paraphrased accounts:

Its a crime isnt it? Wasting police time? Cos thats what theyre doing. Instead of winding us up they should be off following up crimes. Why dont they get prosecuted for wasting police time?

Transcripts of the Inquiry ():

Quotations from all other sources:

Violent scenes erupted as the five principal suspects in the Stephen Lawrence killing left the inquiry into his murder.

Dr Richard Stone was a panel member of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry into racism in policing (199799) as Adviser to the Judge, Sir William Macpherson. At the time he was Chair of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality.

His Independent review of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 10 years on (http://richardstonesli.wordpress.com) was launched by the Secretaries of State for the departments of Justice, Home Office, and Communities and Local Government in February 2009.

For 20 years Dr Stone was senior partner of a general medical practice in London. For 14 years he worked with British Muslims as chair of the Runnymede Islamophobia Commission, and in 2004 he founded Alif-Aleph UK (British Muslims and British Jews). In 2010 he was awarded the OBE for public and voluntary service.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Muslim-Jewish Relations and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Criminology at the University of Westminster.

In 2009 Richard Stone closed his grant-making Stone Ashdown Trust (formerly the Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement) following a structured spend down strategy over a five-year period.

I make no apology for thanking above all others, my Ruth. She is my mentor-in-chief and my sparky much-loved wife of 42 years. Our three children and two sons-in-law, have been immensely supportive and also given me wise counsel. I have benefited enormously from the support and advice given generously to me by Doreen Lawrence. I thank her for the photo of her son Stephen with which this book opens. We have, I think, both enjoyed our occasional lunches together in town. I have been immensely fortunate to have gained emotional as well as modest financial support from Juliet Prager at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Behind her has been the overall director of the Trust, Steve Pittam. He and I were colleagues in Notting Hill in the 1980s, and we struggled with issues of equality in funding in the 1990s at the Association of Charitable Foundations. Juliet and Steve moved on from the Trust in December 2012.

In the delicate field of race relations I have never led a project without a close multicultural group of trusted advisers, some of whom have mentored me on more than one project over the years. This time Nathalie Stewart and Yvette Williams have kept me rooted in the black experience. In addition my dynamic, thoughtful team has been Urmee Khan, Nadine Dinall, Maqsood Ahmad, Nadia Habashi, Veenal Raval and David Muir. Each of those brought invaluable expertise and understanding, without which I could easily have fallen into traps for the unwary. I will miss them all when this is over.

I am grateful to The Policy Press for supporting me to publish my book. They have enabled me to tell my personal story from my unique position within the Inquiry. I have not been an easy author for The Policy Press, but Karen Bowler, my editor, valiantly reordered my first thoughts into eight short and well ordered chapters. Kathryn King and Alison Shaw have kept my wilder fantasies at bay. This may not have been a simple task. I am grateful to them all.

Publication of this book takes place within weeks of the 20th anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence on 22 April 1993. Alas, today there is still too much of the negativity that was felt 20 years ago by the Lawrence family and other black families towards the police. The black experience in the UK is now shared by many British Muslims. I have found anger and disappointment to be even greater now than it was then, which are justified by the lack of progress in achieving equality of treatment and equality of opportunity in policing.

Stephen would have been 38 now. Would he have become the established architect that he wanted to be? Perhaps with the help of an organisation like the Stephen Lawrence Trust he might have got there. The Trust was set up in his memory, and is in crisis now after three major central government grants have not been renewed. Even with outside help I fear the obstacles for Stephen may have been too many.