Impact of Lawrence Case on Race Relations in Britain

The Stephen Lawrence case dramatically impacted race relations in Britain.

The World’s Marco Werman speaks with Hugh Muir with The Guardian newspaper about some of the changes.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Joining me from London is Hugh Muir with The Guardian newspaper. Hugh, you’ve been following the case of Stephen Lawrence for some time. And as a black British man you’ve got firsthand insight on the arena of race relations in Britain. The attorney who represented Stephen Lawrence’s family called the case Britain’s Rosa Parks moment. Do you think that’s a fair statement?

Hugh Muir: I think it is in a way because I suppose if you look at Rosa Parks as being the incident that made mainstream American look at race relations and want to reassess race relations, in a way that’s what the Lawrence case has done here. Prior to the Lawrence case as a black Britain you faced a phenomenon whereby you would feel that you were getting unequal treatment from the authorities and from the police, and you would make complaint about that. And there would be real skepticism about it. You would actually have to make the case and to almost explain the very concept of racism, and people were very disbelieving that things could happen to you simply because of the color of your skin or that you might not get the sort of service that you expect from the police or the professionalism that you expect from the police because of your skin. And then came this case, and then came the inquiry into this case, and so much came out about exactly what had happened and just how shoddy the service was that the family got, just how the brutal the treatment that Stephen got for no reason other than the color of his skin. And that was the point at which that I think mainstream Britain became prepared to believe that perhaps there was this concept called racism, and perhaps it was something that we have to think about.

Werman: Give us a couple of examples of how you’ve seen race relations change in the past 20 years. I mean even small changes.

Muir: Well, you know, I used to drive around and you would think one, that the police would almost set a trap for you; that you know, the thing that would make their day would be if you would just do something so they could stop you and they could pick you up. And you don’t quite feel that anymore. And one of the reasons for that was because of the recruitment of a large number of black police officers. And so it does ebb and flow, but things in that regard got very much better for a while. And look at where we are now. Hey, you know, the captain of the England soccer team is facing a criminal charge because he is alleged to have been racist to another footballer on the field of play.

Werman: Right.

Muir: Now, it’s worth saying that he denies that and I’m sure he will deny that when it goes to court, but we are in a situation where you know, British society has been prepared to say to the captain of the national team, a much admired figure, we think you may have done that, here’s the criminal charge, we’re gonna take you to court and we’re gonna sort it out.

Werman: In 1992 of course we had the Rodney King case here in the US in Los Angeles. It’s not an exact parallel to the Stephen Lawrence case, but essentially the African American community felt there was a miscarriage of justice. Do you see any similarities between the two cases?

Muir: Well, only in terms of you know, a community seeing this as being the line in the sand. What was interesting about this was that I had a conversation with someone just a couple of days ago before the verdict. And they said to me, how’s it going? And in some ways that could’ve been quite a cryptic comment, but I knew exactly what she meant. She wanted me to tell her how the trial was going.

Werman: Right.

Muir: This has been something that the black community has been holding its breath for. Yesterday what you saw was almost an outpouring of relief that the jury had done what we saw to be the right thing, what we perceived to be the right thing.

Werman: So how do blacks in London regard the police now?

Muir: There’s still a lot of suspicion. I think it’s a relationship that ebbs and flows, and I think that things got considerably better in the aftermath of the inquiry into, the investigation into Stephen Lawrence. Many people will tell you now that they’ve got quite a lot worse again. We need to look at why the police now are going back to stopping and searching so many people. And to some degree the figures in terms of stop and search are as bad if not worse than they were when Stephen was murdered. And so we are actually in quite a sticky period in terms of the relationship between the black community and the police, but I think we’re having a conversation from a different starting point as a result of the Lawrence inquiry. I think there is a distinction to be made. But no one here is wanting to pretend everything is fine because we’ve learned some things because of the Lawrence inquiry, but there’s still a lot of work to do and particularly in the area of relationships between the black community and the police.

Werman: The Guardian newspaper’s Hugh Muir speaking with us from London. Thank you very much, Hugh.

Muir: You’re very welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.