Racism at the Met - the never ending story

The Metropolitan Police once again struggles with racism in its ranks. Today the Deputy Commissioner for the Met tried to reassure the public that the force would not tolerate racism by its officers. Few people believe him. The evidence against the Met is stacking up by the hour. More revelations have surfaced today and a total of 10 officers have already been suspended.

The row developed as it emerged that there was audio footage of a black man being racially abused in the most foul language. Shortly afterwards, an officer who was present at the racist incident then physically assaulted a black teenager in custody. The moment was filmed on CCTV but not released. 

What is most disturbing about these incidents is the cavalier fashion in which the Met treated these racist incidents initially. As the original complaints were made, the file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service which found that ‘there was no reason to prosecute’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

It is hard not to think that this was a case of the CPS protecting their chums at the Met. The CPS has now announced an urgent review of the case. The fact is that any inquiry into the Met’s handling of the case wont do. It is the Crown Prosecution Service that has clearly acted improperly and should be investigated by an independent body. 

If you doubted the urgency of this matter, remember that the riots in London started when an unarmed black man in a taxi was shot by officers from the Met in broad daylight and the police then lied to the family claiming the victim had fired a gun at officers. The inquest into the death of the victim, Mark Duggan, recently heard that the police refuse to provide evidence that can be heard in court citing ‘security concerns’. A travesty of justice that beggars belief. 

The shocking complacency of the Met with which it treats racism in its own ranks and the questionable decisions of the CPS make for very disturbing reading. The Met needs to gets its house in order and fast! 

What shall we do about the Rhondda?

South Wales today is dominated by the services in and around Cardiff and Newport. But that wasn’t always the case. What are large de-industrialised areas now used to be economically vibrant communities up to the 1950s: the valleys. You can detect the signs of former glory everywhere you go. It is not just the industrial landscape that hints at past prosperity, it is above all the sheer number of non-conformist church halls everywhere you look. The valley communities prospered up to the 1950s but suffered enormously as the mining industries declined. 

There is much debate about who should get the blame for the decline of coal mining in the South Wales valleys but the fact is that a whole region depended on a single industry which is never a key to sustainability and long term growth. 

The decline of mining however also brought with it the decline of communities and the statistics bear this out. The Rhondda valley is a region which offers low pay, higher than average unemployment and negative migration patterns, according to the 2006 report of the Welsh Assembly Government. 

Is this decline irreversible? Are the Rhondda bound to be a region of low economic growth where young people struggle to find a future for themselves? 

While Rhondda certainly suffered from a lack of industrial policy in the UK over the last 30 years, perhaps its decline was inevitable given that its ascent was based exclusively on a single product? Yet, paradoxically, the Rhondda is not the only region in Europe (or elsewhere) which suffered the fate of social and economic decline where industrial monocultures collapsed. The Ruhr in Germany experienced a similar period of decay in the 1980s, yet is now a region of stable growth and prosperity. 

So what went wrong in the Rhondda? I recently went up the Rhondda Valley and took the train back to Cardiff. Two things really surprised me: first how steep the hills and mountains are that frame the valley. The potential for tourism is substantial but there is practically no tourism infrastructure. The second aspect that astonished me was how close and yet how far Rhondda is from Cardiff. Close in terms of distance (as the crow flies) which makes it entirely reasonable to commute to Cardiff and back for work (as many people do). 

Yet, it surprised me how far away Rhondda is from the bustling Capital City. This impression of distance is exacerbated by extremely poor public transport. As I was sitting in a delapidated train carriage of the local railways, I struggled to think of trains that are similarly run down and slow even as far away as Bulgaria or Romania which I last visited in the 1980s. True, the railways cut through steep hills and bridge deep gorges at times, which only adds to the picturesque nature of the ride. Yet, the speed of the transport link between the valley heads and Cardiff must be on a par with steam trains of the 19th century. 

So what does this all mean for the Rhondda? There is a broad consensus amongst political parties in the Assembly that the South Wales valleys urgently need development. Yet, equally the billions of pounds that have been poured into the valleys in European aid since 1999 have had little positive effect. In fact, the figures demonstrate that the region is today poorer than before the European payments started. The money was largely used as funding for local authorities to alleviate poverty and engage in so-called development projects; but there is little to show for it. 

In addition, even among the political elite there are few concrete policy proposals. Recently the newly elected leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood, when asked what she would do about the valley economies, pulled a blank. She stammered something about a new economy and people joining Plaid Cymru to revitalise communities. This sort of vacuous rhetoric doesn’t help. 

What may help however is to build effective and 21st century transport links between the valleys and Cardiff. The tracks are already there, and although transport policy is a prerogative of the Westminster government, the Welsh Assembly could, if it was serious about it, finance the electrification of the South Wales valleys railways. This would reduce transport costs and produce significant benefits to the people in the Rhondda. Let’s not wait for Westminster to act. The people in the Rhondda deserve it. 

The Police are still in the dock!

South Wales Police still has a case to answer. And it is a horrific one at that. In 1988 a local Prostitute Lynette White was murdered in Cardiff. The police arrested three innocent men who were subsequently convicted of her murder with the help of false evidence and wrong testimonies by witnesses. The three men always maintained their innocence and were freed on appeal two years later. 

DNA evidence led the police to the real murderer about 20 years later. The police who originally investigated the crime in 1988 recently found themselves in the dock for a shocking miscarriage of justice that they had probably contributed to by failing to meet professional standards and procedures, by allegedly falsifying testimonies and evidence. 

The Crown Prosecution Service however had to drop the case last year against these police officers because crucial evidence against them had ‘disappeared’. The CPS admitted that the evidence had been destroyed. The judge had no choice but to instruct the jury to acquit the police officers. 

Now, only two months later, during an investigation of the Independent Police Commission, those same documents, thought to have been shredded, have re-surfaced mysteriously. Since all police officers have been acquitted, it will be difficult to bring the same case against them again. In other words, they are off the hook. 

The Observer wrote in its editorial on Sunday that South Wales police has a record of ‘shockingly high numbers of miscarriages of justice on its patch’, including high profile wrongful convictions over the last 20 years. 

Over the years, South Wales police have often failed to serve its communities well. Many commentators believe the force had a striking number of corrupt and incompetent officers in its ranks which led to failed prosecutions or wrongful convictions of innocent people. This has to change. The disappearance of the evidence which led to the collapse of the trial against the police officers investigating the Lynette White case needs explaining. How could the files ‘temporarily’ disappear? Why did the CPS think the evidence was shredded? What does South Wales Police and the CPS know about the ‘temporary disappearance’ of vital evidence in this case which helped the police officers to walk away from court? 

Only an independent inquiry can get to the bottom of this. The Welsh Government should demand one. It wants to have authority over the Welsh Police Forces soon. They can prove that they are worthy of having this additional power by demanding an independent inquiry from Central Government. Clearing up the rotten practices which seemed to exist at the South Wales Police for decades now is the first step towards restoring faith in Welsh Police. Nothing less will do.