20 years on....

The latest attempt to whittle a BIG stick with which to beat the MET gathers apace and is currently keeping a large amount of airtime and print space in the ‘meeja’

An Ex officer has stated he was tasked to infiltrate groups linked to the Lawrence family campaign. He is suggesting that at least part of the reasoning was to ‘smear’ the Lawrence family.

This was the tragic death of a young man 20 years ago.

The ex-officer has now come forward to ‘spill the beans’ about his involvement in the subsequent investigation into this

Reason for this?

Perhaps he couldn’t live with himself anymore about what he was tasked to do. Although it seems it is vague as to what he thought the Met would do with the information he received.

Smear, smear, smear seems to be the key word but maybe that’s the view taken by the Guardian and those behind this.

Does the officer have another reason for coming forward after 20 years with this? Who knows…yet?

It seems reasonably clear that a number of other politically active groups would seek to take advantage of the issues around the death of this young man.

I do not think it unreasonable to assume if this was the case then the MET would attempt to try and monitor who was latching on the family’s campaign and use it as some form of political issue to further their aims.

The Ex officer was used to target groups believed linked to this aims. His spin is that this was part of some overall attempt to discredit the family ( or perhaps that is what the media has interpreted as being the case )

It reminds me of the old adage  ...’ if you lie with dogs do not be surprised if you get fleas’.

The investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence was, in short, frankly inadequate. The thrust of everything since is it was because of the colour of the victim.

We had the media circus at the Elephant and Castle centre

Macpherson himself could not find any officer involved in the matter to be deemed racist

He eventually came up with the concept of Institutional Racism. A hitherto unheard of phrase but was used in subsequent years to bring any organisation to account in its dealing with issue of race.

If any Senior member of staff at that time (and this could only have come from the top)  SPECIFICALLY  targeted the Lawrence family with undercover officers to  ‘dish the dirt’ on them bearing in mind the circumstances of their son’s death then the weight of opprobrium should fall on them.

If some 20 years down the line the intent was to ascertain who was using the family to further their own cause then that should be judged in the context of what was happening in those times and not as is  now , a notion that the MET is as it was 20 years ago…

We have always been, certainly at grass roots level, a hardworking bunch of officer trying to do a job in difficult and ever scrutinised circumstances.

Let the SMT then and now explain themselves and keep the officers THEY directed out of it.