Disappointing article by Vikram Dodd on the front page of the Guardian today.
By giving credence to the claim that the Metropolitan Police are "institutionally racist" without investigating the charge dispassionately Vikram Dodd is just indulging in lazy journalism. It makes no difference that he was repeating an accusation made by Doreen Lawrence. He has a duty to compare and contrast the stop and search statistics he quoted, and balance them against the London crime figures by ethnic origin.
Otherwise the Guardian risks being relegated to the status of a sensationalist newspaper (intriguing perhaps, but without value).
Giving extended coverage to the views of Doreen Lawrence also presents difficulties. Obviously one can sympathise with a mother who has lost a child. But we should not expect someone suffering extreme grief over an extended period of time to look at the world rationally - any more than Mohammed Fayed was rational over the death of his son, or the parents of Stuart Lubbock were rational over the death of their son.
Certainly we should not allow emotion to decide public policy (which is where the 1997 political reaction that led to the MacPherson Inquiry and its aftermath made so many fundamental mistakes).
It is possible that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence were uniquely evil monsters created by the inherent racism of the British state (the MacPherson report singled out the Civil Service, local governments, the National Health Service, schools, and the judicial system) and that this requires a total cultural revolution to purge British society of "racists" at every level.
Equally it is possible that the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence was just another stabbing, among hundreds of other tragic stabbings, in a complex and pernicious pattern of gangs and gang-related crime that permeates London housing estates.
By allowing emotion to sway the arguments we risk going off at tangents and therefore not tracing the crime to its root cause.
I am also not happy at the way politicians jump on the Stephen Lawrence bandwagon - whether it is Diane Abbott and her Twitter posts or Jack Straw (on the Today programme talking to James Naughtie) shooting his mouth off about "racism" in football.
By giving credence to the claim that the Metropolitan Police are "institutionally racist" without investigating the charge dispassionately Vikram Dodd is just indulging in lazy journalism. It makes no difference that he was repeating an accusation made by Doreen Lawrence. He has a duty to compare and contrast the stop and search statistics he quoted, and balance them against the London crime figures by ethnic origin.
Otherwise the Guardian risks being relegated to the status of a sensationalist newspaper (intriguing perhaps, but without value).
Giving extended coverage to the views of Doreen Lawrence also presents difficulties. Obviously one can sympathise with a mother who has lost a child. But we should not expect someone suffering extreme grief over an extended period of time to look at the world rationally - any more than Mohammed Fayed was rational over the death of his son, or the parents of Stuart Lubbock were rational over the death of their son.
Certainly we should not allow emotion to decide public policy (which is where the 1997 political reaction that led to the MacPherson Inquiry and its aftermath made so many fundamental mistakes).
It is possible that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence were uniquely evil monsters created by the inherent racism of the British state (the MacPherson report singled out the Civil Service, local governments, the National Health Service, schools, and the judicial system) and that this requires a total cultural revolution to purge British society of "racists" at every level.
Equally it is possible that the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence was just another stabbing, among hundreds of other tragic stabbings, in a complex and pernicious pattern of gangs and gang-related crime that permeates London housing estates.
By allowing emotion to sway the arguments we risk going off at tangents and therefore not tracing the crime to its root cause.
I am also not happy at the way politicians jump on the Stephen Lawrence bandwagon - whether it is Diane Abbott and her Twitter posts or Jack Straw (on the Today programme talking to James Naughtie) shooting his mouth off about "racism" in football.
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