Joyce McMillan: Stephen Lawrence family provide a lesson in dignity for us all to heed

Fight for justice shows the qualities we should be aspiring to

IT HAS not, let’s face it, been a good week for Diane Abbott, the outspoken Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. On Wednesday, she sent a tweet to her many thousands of followers, suggesting that “White people love to play divide and rule, and we should not play their game”; and within hours, she was under siege, following an angry phone call from Labour leader Ed Miliband – who apparently ordered her to apologise – and calls for her resignation from Nadhim Zahawi, the new Tory MP for Stratford-upon-Avon.

There’s no doubt, on balance, that Abbott was right to apologise, and to delete the offending message. All the same, the exaggerated outcry caused by her message, and the blatant attempt by some to equate her remark with the attitudes of white racists, reveals a persistent and worrying lack of perspective on racial issues in Britain, and of basic empathy with the realities of black experience.

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This week’s momentous events in London, with the final conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of black student Stephen Lawrence after a 19-year struggle for justice, were accompanied by a disturbing tone of self-congratulation from some establishment figures in London. Many argued that the Metropolitan Police have undergone a “complete transformation”, since that evening in April 1993, when they simply did not trouble themselves to gather vital evidence in what they saw as just another knifing of a young black guy.

Yet as Doreen Lawrence pointed out in her statement following the verdict, those who deal from day to day with the reality of race relations in Britain have a different tale to tell: of persisting problems with even-handed policing, of frequent racial attacks, and of a continuing absence of black and Asian people from top jobs and decision-making bodies.

In reporting on this week’s verdict in the case, one BBC correspondent offered the view that Britiain was now a country “far more at ease” with its racial diversity than it was in 1993.

Yet simply for inventing the useful term “institutional racism”, to describe the unexamined assumptions of the Metropolitan Police at the time of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, the distinguished judge Sir William Macpherson, who chaired the inquiry into the investigation in the late 1990s, was subjected to astonishing levels of vilification. And a survey published in 2010 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission showed that even here, in what we like to think of as kindly, tolerant Scotland, slightly more people believe that efforts to improve opportunities for members of ethnic minorities have “gone too far”, than believe they have not gone far enough.

It’s therefore worth pausing, as Scotland proceeds towards its independence referendum, to consider just how far this nation really lives up to its self-image as a tolerant and inclusive modern society. It’s clear that Scotland starts with some advantages, when it comes to racial and ethnic inclusion. Our ethnic minorities are relatively small in numbers, and their presence has not caused the kind of culture-shock that shook many English cities in the 1960s and 70s. Scotland’s heightened awareness of its own minority identity in the UK means that Scots tend to embrace anyone, of any ethnic origin, who sounds like a Scot, and seems to know and care a bit about Scottish history and culture; and the Scottish Government has a strong and explicit policy of cultural inclusion, often eloquently articulated by leading politicians, including the present First Minister.

Yet it’s in the nature of processes of constitutional change that they often provoke unexpected cultural reactions; and it is striking how often, in the discussion about Scottish independence, old ideas about an ethnic and blood-based definition of Scottishness tend to recur, and to find an echo in Scottish communities where the number of racially-motivated attacks has tended to increase in recent years.

Many Scots still routinely ask their black or Asian compatriots where they come from, as if they could not possibly be from Scotland. People complain, bizarrely, that third-generation Scots living in North America will have no vote in the independence referendum. Scots living in England express outrage at their exclusion from the process, as if their decision to move south, and to become Londoners or Mancunians, should have no civic consequences at all.

And at the back of the nationalist project, there sometimes lurks that thoroughly questionable idea of “Homecoming”; the notion that once Scottish nationhood is reinstated, the Scottish diaspora will somehow return, bringing back with them all those superior Scottish genes that caused them to get up and go in the first place.

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Now it should go without saying that this kind of genetic fantasy has no place in the politics of a progressive, modern nation. At best, it is backward-looking and unhelpful; at worst, it seriously destabilises the notion of Scotland as a nation of citizens defined by their presence on Scottish soil and their commitment to Scotland, rather than by their race or birth. So this might be an opportune moment for the Scottish Government to restate its progressive position on this matter; to reaffirm that what they are proposing is a referendum of voters who live in Scotland, and to deliver a sharp and well-argued rebuke to ethnic romanticism in all its forms.

For I don’t know, when all is said and done, whether Neville and Doreen Lawrence would consider themselves English. I do know, though, that in their long and dignified battle to see that right is done, and the underdog defended, they embody more of the traditional “English” virtues than any of those thugs who murdered their son. And their story stands as a rebuke to all those who toy with the idea, in any form, that blood and genetic heritage matter more than kindness, commitment, or the rule of law.

The Lawrences’ struggle has been gruelling, and it is not over. But they have shown – to use the words of Robert Burns – that in the end, sense and worth can sometimes triumph over the cruel and arbitrary politics of ethnicity.

And for that reminder – sharp, timely and true – everyone in these islands owes them a debt of thanks.