Musings on the politics of youth work, community work and society at large – dedicated to the memory of Steve Waterhouse and Malcolm Ball, great youth workers, comrades and human beings
The five year delay in making a statement on the James Jones’ report is the latest example of Government complacency in responding to the suffering long endured by Hillsborough bereaved families and survivors. Following the publication of two extensive reports on the disaster in 1990 and 1995, in 1997 Howard Davis and I published a Home Office commissioned report ‘Beyond Disaster’. Its key recommendation was to establish a Charter for the Bereaved. Its 53 detailed recommendations focused on central and local government responses and obligations in the aftermath of tragedies, the need for integrated organisational structures for inter-agency cooperation, together with specialist crisis support for the bereaved and survivors. The Report was shelved.
In 2012 the findings of Hillsborough Independent Panel Report, for which I headed the research and was primary author, brought a ‘double apology’ from the then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, a new criminal investigation and new inquests. The latter reversed the verdicts of accidental death, finding that all who died had been killed unlawfully while attributing primary responsibility to the South Yorkshire Police and exonerating fans of any blame.
Since then it has taken eleven years for the Government to respond and seven years since the James Jones’ report. Yet still the Government fails to address the core issues initially raised by our research 26 years ago. Yes, a quarter of a century! While 97 men, women and children died at Hillsborough, the lives of many others have been cut short as a consequence of their struggle for justice. Today constitutes yet another blow to dignified families and survivors whose determination and fortitude has given hope to so many people involved in other campaigns.’
In an era within which the powerful fall over themselves to claim that they are the victims of misinformation and disinformation it is revealing to read Phil Scraton’s eloquent and painstaking dissection of the cover-up, following the tragic 1958 Munich air crash, an event deeply embedded in sporting history. It confirms the necessity to be ever wary of the official narrative, to preserve an intuitive mistrust of the State. In addition, see the post, Perverting the course of justice: “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up” which contains Phil’s chapter ‘Sanitising Hillsborough’ from his acclaimed book, ‘Hillsborough: the Truth’.
Munich 6 February 1958
The remarkable sequence of events that led to the crash-landing of a highly sophisticated British Airways’ Boeing 777 at London Heathrow on 17 January 2008 was greeted with astonishment by aviation specialists. Some two miles out from its destination, 500 feet above the ground, Flight BA03Munich lost the power necessary to land normally. It happened without warning and the alarm system also failed. The pilot manually glided the plane down, dipping its nose to maximise length and lifting at the last minute to hurdle the 3 metre perimeter fence. All energy lost to the final manoeuvre, the plane literally belly-flopped from 10 feet onto grass, severing the undercarriage and ploughing a 400 foot furrow to the edge of the runway. It was highly skilled flying demanding the calmest concentration. Without doubt, both pilots and the 14 person crew saved the lives of 136 passengers. In the immediate aftermath ‘experts’ theorised the most likely cause to be a freak, localised weather glitch or pilot error. Unanimously they agreed that a system failure within the plane was highly unlikely. They were wrong.
Over the last decade we have become so accustomed to flying, reassured by statistics proclaiming an impressive safety record well ahead of road or rail travel. Planes are technologically so advanced, runways kept in excellent condition, pilots highly trained and the aviation revolution has opened access beyond all expectations. While the cost to the environment and to communities is hotly debated the advances in safety are uncontested. Fifty years ago, however, things were massively different with much of the technology experimental, knowledge limited and conditions arbitrary.
Few people flew. As a young child I remember waving off my sister from Speke Airport, now a Marriott Hotel, as she left for Lourdes. She was the sole member of our extended family to have boarded a plane. Most of the men had been to sea, docking in ports throughout the world, but none had flown. I have flown more air miles in the last eight months than in the first 35 years of my life. Living in Belfast I fly far more than I use any other form of transport. Flying has become habitual and within advanced industrial societies it embraces all classes.
Back then, football was my passion and Billy Liddell my hero. Liverpool were in the Second Division and not doing so well. Most of my mates were Blues although those kids whose families were less committed supported Wolves or Spurs or whoever else was winning.
When Dad took me to Anfield he’d buy a seat in the main stand and lift me over the turnstile. I’d sit on his knee for the game. From the Main Stand, the Kop was unbelievable to watch. In the top right corner the ‘Boys Pen’ – girls not welcome – looked frightening but exciting. Wee scallies flicked lit matches down onto cloth-capped heads below safe in the knowledge that they were untouchable in the pen.
One day both would be my graduation although I’d sometimes slip into the Paddock, close to the halfway line. If Billy and our yellow jerseyed goalie, Tommy Younger, were special, I looked to United’s Duncan Edwards as an inspiration. If he could play for England so young, so could I! We didn’t have a telly but I read the reports and out the back of our house I imagined I had all the moves – I still do. How I wished Duncan had played for us …
It was a cold evening in February 1958 when the radio broke the news that a plane carrying Manchester United’s team had crashed at Munich airport. The manager, the likeable Matt Busby, and his renowned ‘Busby Babes’, were among the dead and injured. It was devastating news especially as playing in Europe was a recent development. We were stunned and I remember going to bed that night, looking at the pictures of the team in my Football Diary and praying that the great Duncan would be alright. Soon we knew. Seven players, three United staff, seven journalists and three others had died. Duncan Edwards and Matt Busby were critically ill. Among the journalists the legendary Frank Swift, former Manchester City goalie, was gone. I’d heard stories about his incredible agility and massive hand span. Duncan passed away 15 days later, and a co- pilot also died in hospital. Nine players, including the young Bobby Charlton, survived – as did the Captain, James Thain, and eleven others. While I was oblivious to what was happening in Manchester – despite it being just ‘up’ the East Lancs I’d never been there – the tragedy left an indelible impression on my childhood.
The European Cup had been introduced only three years earlier and in the 1956-7 season United were the first English team involved. They made it to the semis and lost to the brilliant Real Madrid who went on to win the trophy. The following year, having won the First Division, the Busby Babes were favourites. They beat Dukla Prague, the Czech champions, 3-1 on aggregate and in the quarter finals returned to the Balkans to play Yugoslavia’s Crvena Zvezda, known to us as Red Star Belgrade. On 14 January United beat Red Star 2-1 at Old Trafford.
The midwinter return was in Belgrade on 5 February. The club chartered a British European Airways’ 47 seater plane for players, staff and journalists and flew via Munich for refuelling. Both pilots were experienced captains and knew each other well. They landed the plane in Belgrade in challenging weather conditions. So serious was the situation that airport control was unaware of the plane’s arrival until it appeared from the gloom taxiing across the tarmac. The match was played and despite being 3-0 up at half-time United were held 3-3, winning the tie 5-4 on aggregate. Several others joined the return flight to Manchester bringing the passenger list to 38.
Landing at Munich the runway was laden with slush. It continued to snow. Before leaving for Manchester the crew checked the wings, ensuring no ice had formed. The pilots agreed de-icing was unnecessary. As Captain Thain had flown the outbound flight his friend Captain Rayment was at the controls and they had changed seats. As the plane accelerated along the runway the pilots realised there were problems with the engines and the pressure gauges on the instrument panel. They abandoned take-off and braked heavily, skidding to a halt through the slush. Apparently the cause was ‘boost-surging’ within the engines, a problem previously experienced with this type of airplane.
Clearance was given for a second take off attempt but again, as the plane picked up speed, the pilots aborted. This time the plane returned to the parking bay for checks. Photographs show clearly that there had been a fresh fall of snow on the tarmac adding to the slush. All passengers disembarked. The pilots and the station engineer decided against retuning the engines. A third take-off attempt was agreed. The wings were considered to be ice free but the runway was holding more snow together with an uneven distribution of slush. A quick inspection by airport staff, however, gave the go-ahead.
Reluctantly the team and other passengers returned to the aircraft. To overcome the engine problem the pilot opened the throttles slowly as the plane sped down the runway. It picked up speed towards take off and the pilots successfully dealt with some engine surging. Hitting the undisturbed slush, the plane lost speed, and running out of tarmac it ploughed across snow-laden grass, smashed the perimeter fence then hitting a house, a tree and a garage. The plane caught fire in small pockets but the main fuel tank remained secure.
What followed were moments of great heroism as uninjured staff and players climbed back into the plane to rescue those trapped and injured, including Matt Busby. Already 20 people were dead. Once the rescue services arrived the fires were doused and Captain Rayment was cut free. He died later.
That evening the German accident investigators arrived. Without proper lighting, they examined the wreck concluding that the wings were iced up, covered by the subsequent fall of snow. This early determination was established as the sole cause of the disaster. BEA sent an investigation team to Munich. It found no engine deficiencies. All indications, including the opinion of the station engineer, was that slush on the runway had caused the plane’s deceleration. Captain Thain agreed.
Yet the West German Traffic and Transport Ministry announced that ‘the aircraft did not leave the ground’ probably ‘as the result of ice on the wings’. Captain Thain was criticised for not providing a satisfactory explanation as to why he did not ‘discontinue the final attempt to take off’. Thus the blame was laid entirely at the door of the pilots. A finding of snow accumulation and slush on the runway, alongside inadequate inspection would have placed responsibility on the authorities.
In April 1958, behind closed doors, a full German Inquiry was held. The German senior investigator selected witnesses and, remarkably, the airport controllers were not called to give evidence. After much controversy and contradiction by ‘experts’ regarding ice on the plane’s wings it became clear that the Inquiry judge favoured icing as the disaster’s principal cause. ‘Other circumstances’ might have contributed, but it was now too late to determine their relevance. A year and a month after the disaster the Inquiry report was released. Ice on the wings was the ‘decisive cause’ and the pilots, Rayment (dead) and Thain (alive), were held responsible.
The BEA Safety Committee, however, refuted the report’s conclusions although it accepted that icing on the wings might have been a contributory factor. Slush on the runway, however, was judged crucial. Captain Thain was criticised for not occupying the seat in the cockpit appropriate for the senior captain. A devastated Thain, under suspension and his career in ruins, was determined to clear his name. Yet a further hearing in 1960 criticised his failure to ensure that the wings were free of ice and he was sacked. He had breached regulations by occupying the wrong seat. Manchester United’s negligence case against BEA was settled out of court.
As scientific knowledge developed further, investigative trials were held. In November 1965 a second inquiry was convened in Germany to consider the new evidence. Some consideration of slush on the runway was accepted but ice on the wings ‘was still to be regarded as the essential cause’. The following April the British Ministry of Aviation retorted that the ‘strong likelihood’ was ‘there was no significant icing during take off’ and ‘the principal cause of the crash was the effect of slush on the runway’. A decade beyond the disaster a British inquiry was convened. A key witness, previously not called – an aeronautical engineer first on the scene, stated categorically that the wings were not iced. Not only had the German authorities failed to call him to their inquiries but his written statement had been altered to omit a crucial element of his testimony.
Photographic evidence, it seemed, also had been altered. In 1969 the British inquiry report concluded that slush had impeded the nose wheel of the aircraft and the subsequent drag on all wheels was the ‘prime cause’ of its failure to lift off. Once deceleration had happened there was insufficient runway to pick up speed and ‘blame for the accident is NOT to be imputed to Captain Thain’. The German authorities rejected the findings. Captain Thain died of a heart attack at the young age of 54.
Mike Kemble, whose research has been extensive, states: ‘there is no doubt … that a cover-up was engineered by the West German authorities, possibly even as high as the Federal Government in Bonn. There was never going to be any doubt about the outcome from the first inspection of the crash site to the publication of the report’. He raises ten important unanswered questions regarding the disaster and its aftermath. His detailed research has drawn on many other sources including Captain Rayment’s son, Steve.
Reading Mike’s work and a range of other material for this overview has answered many of the questions and concerns that troubled me in the late 1960s. I have always been uneasy that Munich was considered an ‘accident’ due mainly to pilot error. My analyses of disasters over the last 20 years have shown a clear and unambiguous reluctance of authorities to accept responsibility for their culpable acts or omissions, for their institutionalised negligent custom and practice. It suits those in power, whether public bodies or private corporations, to lay blame with individuals at the coal face rather than look to their institutionalised failings.
What is clear from the above is the depth of injustice endured by the bereaved and survivors of Munich, not least Captains Thain and Rayment and their families who fought for so long to clear their names. The parallels with Hillsborough are clear, right down to the failure to call witnesses and the review and alteration of statements. It is my view, and one I hope that is shared by all who read this, that our commitment to Justice for the 96 should bring compassion for all who died and suffered in the cold of Munich 1958. Our common purpose should unite us. Life and justice is all – and football is but our shared passion. That passion, however, should never spill over into hatred, the vilification of the dead or exacerbating the suffering of the bereaved and survivors. As I write this my tears are in sadness for those lost and injured and for those whose lives were cut short by their pain. They are tears also in anger towards those from both cities who have dared taint the memory of the dead and desecrate the experiences of the bereaved and survivors.
Some of the Busby Babes
Justice for Munich – Justice for Hillsborough Remembering those who died
Players
Geoff Bent Roger Byrne (Capt) Eddie Coleman Duncan Edwards Mark Jones David Pegg Tommy Taylor Liam Whelan
Non Players
Tom Cable (Club Steward) Walter Crickmer (Club Secretary) Tom Curry (Club Trainer) Alf Clarke (Manchester Evening Chronicle) Don Davies (Manchester Guardian) George Follows (Daily Herald) Tom Jackson (Manchester Evening News) Archie Ledbrooke (Daily Mirror) Bela Miklos (Travel Agent) Capt Ken Rayment (Pilot) Henry Rose (Daily Express) Willie Satinoff (Fan) Eric Thompson (Daily Mail) Frank Swift( News of the World) Bert Whalley (Club Coach)
Professor Phil Scraton is Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the author of two acclaimed works on the Hillsborough Disaster: “No Last Rights: The Denial of Justice and the Promotion of Myth in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster”and “Hillsborough: The Truth”.
Bereaved Hillsborough disaster families have condemned the “ludicrous” decision to acquit two former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former solicitor on charges of perverting the course of justice, bringing to a close their 32-year fight for justice.
Peter Metcalf, 72, a former solicitor for the force, and the then Ch Supt Donald Denton, 83, and DCI Alan Foster, 74, had been accused of changing 68 officers’ statements to withhold important evidence and criticisms of the police operation, and “mask the failings” of the force.
However, the judge at the trial at Salford’s Lowry theatre, Mr Justice William Davis, ruled there was no legal case to answer because the altered police statements were prepared for Lord Justice Taylor’s public inquiry into the disaster.
That was not a statutory public inquiry, at which evidence is given on oath, but an “administrative exercise”, Davis told the jury, so it was not a “course of public justice” that could be perverted.
Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son, James, was killed in the disaster and who was the last chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, called the outcome a “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up”, adding: “We’ve been put through a 32-year legal nightmare looking for the truth and accountability. Now they’re saying the police were allowed to change statements and cover up at Taylor. The legal system in this country really has to change.”
I am grateful to my dear friend and comrade, Phil Scraton for this extract from his chapter 10, Sanitising Hillsborough from his book, ‘Hillsborough: The Truth’.
‘Towards the end of an intense programme on how rescuers suffer post-traumatic stress a former South Yorkshire Police officer talked with depth and integrity about his realisation of the damage done to him at Hillsborough … Living with what he felt was the personal guilt of failing to breathe life back into those he attempted to save, the experiences had overwhelmed him. But his suffering was not solely related to his efforts on the terraces.
Speaking quietly, and with carefully chosen words, he said, ‘The police lost a lot of dignity and pride that day. People tried to alter the truth and embellish certain bits and just not admit to certain bits, so that it could be more of a hygienic day for all concerned. It was devastating, completely, and you almost feel after that day you were never clean again and can never be clean again’…
Months later on a cold early winter’s day high in the hills above Hathersage the former officer recalled the dreadful moments in the pens as he fought to save lives. He remembered the pain and sorrow, the anger and insults, the sense of failure. But he also detailed the aftermath. The moment when a young officer with eight years service was asked to change his statement……
Their brief: to provide full and detailed account including feelings, emotions and impressions. These were not usual police statements; bland, factual and written on Criminal Justice Act forms. They were handwritten on blank A4 sheets. Officers thought it had something to do with counselling, like ‘getting it out of your system’.
Not so … he received back a word-processed version of his recollections. It was annotated, sentences scored out, words altered. His most personal comments, his experiences, deleted. Someone had systematically gone through his recollections and reshaped them. He was devastated; the implication being that ‘recollections’ had been taken and turned into ‘statements’ …
He took out the 6 pages of word-processed recollections, altered exactly as he had described. The 154 sentences or phrases from his original hand-written recollections were all there. But 57 had a line through them. A further 28 were substantially edited. The statement was fronted by a solicitor’s letter from one of the North’s leading firms, Hammond Suddards, the South Yorkshire Police solicitors. Referenced in the initials of a senior partner, Peter Metcalf, it was addressed to Chief Superintendent Denton of South Yorkshire Police Management Services.
‘We have the following further comments on statements requested by the West Midlands inquiry. As before, the mention of a name without comment indicates that the statement has been read and we have no suggestions for review or alteration’. The words ‘review’ and ‘alteration’ were stunning. They implied that officers’ recollections, self-written and unwitnessed, had been sent to the solicitors where they were scrutinised as part of a process of transformation into formal statements.
From that moment on, he felt ‘betrayed’ by the Force, the uniform. Other officers had discussed the procedure – and were unhappy about having to alter their recollections. Usual practice had been abandoned. Told not to write a record of the day in their pocket-books, then given sheets of paper to write personal emotional accounts, none of the Criminal Justice Act procedures had been followed. Hillsborough, he said, was being ‘sanitised’.
My much missed friend, Steve Waterhouse, a life-long Liverpool supporter, to whom this blog is partly dedicated, would be incensed. A “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up” indeed.
Advertising Phil’s forthcoming ‘show’ allows me also to introduce you to the group, Skeptics Online,, of whom I’d never heard.
Skeptics in the Pub (abbreviated SITP) is an informal social event designed to promote fellowship and social networking among skeptics, critical-thinkers, freethinkers, rationalists and other like-minded individuals. It provides an opportunity for skeptics to talk, share ideas and have fun in a casual atmosphere, and discuss whatever topical issues come to mind, while promoting skepticism, science, and rationality.
We are a coalition of UK-based Skeptics groups. Formed as the COVID-19 pandemic brought our country to a standstill, we are working to deliver high-quality online events focusing on science, reason, and critical thinking.
Every Thursday at 7 pm (UK time), you will find us presenting live-streamed talks, all for free – you don’t even need to create an account. Simply open up twitch.tv/sitp.
Take a look at our events, past and future, we’re sure you’ll see a lot of content you will find interesting.
Phil’s outline of his show:
Since Michael Howard’s pronouncement that ‘Prison Works’ the prison population in the UK has doubled with the current Government planning to build several more multi-occupancy ‘Titan’ prisons to incarcerate thousands more men and women. This reflects an ill-founded commitment to what became a cross-party mantra. In what sense does ‘prison work’? Does the claim stand scrutiny? Or, as Jonathan Simon suggests, does locking away an ever-increasing number of women, men and children amount to ‘social warehousing’? Derived in three decades of activist work and academic research Phil Scraton will address the harms of imprisonment for those locked away, their families and their communities. He will critique the reformist ‘rehabilitation’ agenda and explore the potential for prison abolition. What would decarceration look like? What are alternatives and how would harms caused to individuals and communities by ‘criminal’ and ‘anti-social’ acts be addressed without the ‘punishment’ of incarceration?
Phil Scraton PhD, DLaws (Hon), DPhil (Hon) is Professor Emeritus, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. He has held visiting professorships at Amherst College, USA, the Universities of Auckland, Monash, New South Wales and Sydney. Widely published on critical theory, incarceration and children/ young people his books include: In the Arms of the Law – Coroners’ Inquests and Deaths in Custody; Prisons Under Protest; ‘Childhood’ in ‘Crisis’?; Hillsborough The Truth; Power, Conflict and Criminalisation; The Incarceration of Women; Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition. Having refused an OBE, he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in recognition of his Hillsborough research.
In the light of a forthcoming play, which imagines what life might have been like for Anthony Walker, the 18 year old student, who 15 years ago was brutally murdered, Phil Scraton returns to a radio script he wrote 14 years ago. Its argument resonates vividly and painfully down the years.
Anthony: A Drama by Jimmy McGovern BBC 1 8.30pm 27 July 2020
Anthony Walker
RACE HATE
For several years I wrote and presented a scripted radio broadcast for Féile Radio in Belfast. Seven each a year, 90 minutes long, the script interspersed with music. What follows is the final section from the programme: The Roots of Race Hate broadcast in 2006. The programme opened with my experiences of working with the Irish Traveller Community on Everton Brow, Liverpool in the 1970s. In this extract I mentioned the murder of Anthony Walker:
‘At the beginning of this programme I recounted my experience of visiting Walsall in the aftermath of an unlawful eviction in which three young Irish Traveller children died. They were trapped inside a burning trailer dragged from its jacks by bailiffs.
At the time I struggled with unanswered questions: • under whose authority could a local authority, using private bailiffs supported by the police, recklessly evict Traveller families in the dead of night, killing their children in the process? • what kind of supposedly democratic, pluralist state – national and local – would sanction such acts of brutality? • what kind of investigative system would deny that a grave crime had taken place? • why was there no expression of public outrage, no media concern, no political condemnation? • what kind of inquisitorial system would return verdicts of accidental death? • why was academic research uninterested in researching and recording the experiences of Gypsies and Travellers?
Alongside these six key questions was what I called the Henry Reynolds’ question. Gypsies and Travellers had endured violent repression for generations. Why weren’t we told? As an active anti-racist, why didn’t I know?
In a typically lucid, moving and considered commentary on Rwanda the Irish journalist, Fergal Keane looks down from a bridge and sees two bodies, man and baby, caught in the rocks to the side of the river. He writes: ‘I saw that the child had been killed with a machete, a gash across its skull. It did not seem like a real child. It looked like a doll. Or perhaps it would be more truthful to say I did not want to accept that it was a child. I looked again and of course knew that further back along the river, perhaps fifty to one hundred miles further back, an adult had taken a knife and ended the life of this child and then hurled it into the water … I kept my eyes closed and gripping the rails of the bridge made my way back to the car in the manner of a blind man. I did not want to look back at the river, to see it ever again. And on the journey north to Kigali where the war still raged, I kept asking myself the same question: ‘what kind of a man would kill a baby. What kind of a man?’
Keane goes on to talk of genocide, of how in Africa ‘we almost invariably explain such a slaughter as a matter of tribalism’. Naively, he continues: ‘A crazy African thing. A horror somehow mitigated by the knowledge that Africans have always been prone to this kind of behaviour. Genocide prompted by implacable and ancient tribal antagonisms.’ Like many of his fellow journalists and photographers Keane had arrived in the midst of recurring massacre and migration. There was no shared consciousness of the ravages of colonial rule and the exploitation of cultural differences.He says, ‘I drove in from Uganda believing that the short stocky ones had simply decided to turn on the tall thin ones because that was the way it always had been.’
Scratch below the surface of this genocide and you find not a simple issue of tribal hatreds but a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology and a struggle for identity. Two years later, following his personal quest to understand the consequences of the brutal colonisation of Africa by competing European States and the protracted and bloody struggle for independence, Keane returned to his initial question, ‘What kind of man?’ he responds: ‘I think the answer is very different. What kind of man? Anyone, anyone at all. Not a psychopath, Not a natural born killer. A man born without prejudice or hatred … but a man who has learned hatred. A man like you and me.’
My research into deaths in custody in England reveals the depth of racism within the state and its institutions. Throughout the 1990s, custody deaths leading to unlawful killing or neglect verdicts at inquests represented the sharp end of the continuum of state violence directed towards Black people. While brutality knows no hierarchy, the killing of Joy Gardner in July 1993, by officers of the Metropolitan Police extradition unit, exemplifies the impunity with which physical force can be directed towards those who resist arrest. She was bound with tape, her mouth gagged, dying of suffocation. Following her death it became apparent that black people featured disproportionately in the numbers of controversial deaths in custody. Oluwashiji Lapite, Brian Douglas, Leon Patterson, Wayne Douglas, Ibrahim Sey, Christopher Alder, Roger Sylvester, Sarah Thomas, Alton Manning and Kenneth Severin became familiar names mourned within Britain’s Black communities. Each died in custody, their families alleging neglect or brutality
As inquest verdicts of unlawful killing began to stack up, actively pursued by INQUEST, the United Nations Committee Against Torture produced a report on its extensive UK investigation into custody deaths. It concluded that a significant cause for concern was ‘the number of deaths in police custody and the apparent failure by the state party (UK) to provide an effective investigative mechanism to deal with allegations of police and prison authorities’ abuse’. Soon after this report was published the Police Complaints Authority stated that the police ‘have to ask themselves whether they are treating black and ethnic minority people as well as they would white people’. Coming in the wake of reassurances from all criminal justice agencies and the Home Office that the Macpherson Report’s recommendations had been implemented effectively, this was a significant indictment of police policy and practice.
In March 2000 the killing of Zahid Mubarek by his racist cell-mate in Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution was a clear illustration of how, within an institution, racism can be ignored or even encouraged. Stops and searches, house raids and wrongful arrests, internment without trial and so on, together add to the experience of vulnerability in communities where institutionalised racism has a long and established history. Racism on the street draws support, even legitimacy, from institutionalised racism.
Anthony Walker died in Huyton, Liverpool just over a year ago. With his cousin, he walked his girlfriend to a bus stop. For no other reason than the colour of his skin he was on the receiving end of a torrent of racial abuse from a young man outside a pub. Frightened, the three walked quickly through the local park to another bus stop. But the racist and his mates jumped in a car and ambushed the three as they left the park. Anthony was left with an axe in his head. He died several hours later. In a climate of hate, to be different is enough to be a target.
To be Black or Asian, is to be other, to be an outsider. With racist attacks throughout England and Wales up six fold, in the current climate the deep seated racism that is Empire’s legacy has once again risen to the surface. And racist attacks are a regular feature of daily life throughout the island of Ireland. Abuse and assaults on the street, people firebombed from their homes, mosques and shrines desecrated. It is a climate of hate that emphasises already existing inequalities in a society that promotes the pretence of multiculturalism.
Working class Black and Asian communities understand all too well the meaning of economic marginalisation and social exclusion. They also understand the historical context of imperialism that treated their ancestors and their homelands as places to conquer, to enslave and to own. And so it is with Travellers. Like Stephen Lawrence and Anthony Walker, Johnny Delaney was killed by racists in Ellesmere Port in 2003. Johnny was 15 and lived with his family on the Travellers’ site in Liverpool. He was attacked by a group of youths on a playing field. Knocked to the ground he was repeatedly kicked and one of his attackers stamped on his head with both feet. He said Johnny deserved the kicking ‘because he was only a fucking gypsy’. To his family and to witnesses the attack was undoubtedly racist. The Cheshire police investigated it as racially motivated. Two 16 year old boys were prosecuted for the killing. The judge, however, ruled that there was no racial motive for the attack. The boys were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four and a half years.
Johnny’s father and mother, Patrick and Winifred, campaigned tirelessly to have the killing recognised as racist. The real concern remains that because Johnny was neither Black nor Asian his death could not be classed as racially motivated. Yet it is difficult to appreciate how the killing could be considered anything but the ultimate act of race hatred. The trial judge’s ruling exemplified how easy it is to take racism out of context, to remove it from the equation, thus denying its ever-present and all-pervasive reality. Hate knows no hierarchy. Yet Gypsies, and Irish Travellers in particular, remain the most vilified of all ‘ethnic’ groups. They exist at the sharp end of the continuum of institutional and interpersonal racism. In the media they endure levels of racist abuse and stereotyping that would lead to immediate censure if directed against any other ethnic group.
Earlier this year Patrick Delaney died, campaigning to his last breath for justice and rights for Gypsies and Travellers. In the tributes to his work one stood out: Patrick took every opportunity to challenge the inequalities that Gypsies and Travellers experience in the criminal justice system. He was destroyed by the lack of justice to such an extent that it killed him.
In understanding racist or sectarian violence and murder, the long history of colonial rule and the power it dispersed to its beneficiaries, at home as well as abroad, is central. Its legacy is racism, its currency is hatred and its consequences implicate us all.’
Protecting Life, Interrogating Death, Seeking Truth
Phil Scraton
Inquests offer the only opportunity for bereaved families to hear and cross-examine evidence concerning the context in which their loved one died. The Chief Coroner’s guidance on Covid-19 deaths advises against inquests investigating the significance of national policies and their implementation, concentrating only on the ‘facts’ of each death. In fact, there is no obligation on care homes or hospitals to report Covid deaths to the Coroner nor to hold inquests. Reflecting on the ground-breaking Hillsborough Inquests, 2014-2016 and the unprecedented jury findings at the inquest into the prison death of Joseph Rainey in Northern Ireland (2020), this talk focuses on bereaved families’ ‘right to know’, and have examined, the full circumstances and wider context in which their loved ones died.
Phil Scraton is Professor Emeritus in the School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast. Widely published, his books include: In the Arms of the Law – Coroners’ Inquests and Deaths in Custody (with Kathryn Chadwick); The Violence of Incarceration (with Jude McCulloch); Power, Conflict and Criminalisation; Hillsborough The Truth. From 2010 he led the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s research, was principal author of its 2012 Report, Hillsborough and was seconded to the families’ legal teams throughout the 2014-2016 inquests. In 2018, with Rebecca Scott Bray, he co-convened the University of Sydney’s research programme on coroners’ inquests into deaths in custody and is co-investigator for the Irish Council of Civil Liberties’ project Deaths in Contested Circumstances and Coroners’ Inquests. In 2016 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.
CHATTING CRITICALLY 