Tag Archives: casey review

Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic – Now what?

By John Sweeney | Mon 27th March 2023 - 12:30 pm

The Baroness Casey Review into the Met Police makes for very grim reading for all Londoners. The contents outline some horrific attitudes and behaviours towards minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people across the city it polices as well as within its own ranks. Baroness Casey has simply held a mirror up to this organisation and stated very clearly this has to change.

What makes reading the report even more depressing is that these same issues within the Met were identified back in 1999 in another independent review – the MacPherson report. This report only arose from years of campaigning by the Lawrence family seeking justice for their son Stephen. Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in Eltham in 1993. The Macpherson report concluded the investigation into Stephen’s murder was “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”.

I grew up in Lewisham in a ‘tough neighbourhood’ not far from Eltham within miles of the racist attitudes that prevailed at the time. My local pub, the Golden Lion, was the scene of the unsolved Daniel Morgan murder in 1987. Daniel’s family still wait for a justice that may never come and can only take some comfort the Independent Panel enquiry they campaigned for established the Met was “institutionally corrupt” and Britain’s biggest police force engaged in “the denial of the failings in investigation, including a failure to acknowledge professional incompetence, individual’s venal behaviour, and managerial and organisational failures”

Posted in Local government, London and Op-eds | Also tagged london, metropolitan police and police | 3 Comments

Brian Paddick writes: Swearing an oath to British values would be superficial and divisive

By Brian Paddick | Mon 19th December 2016 - 4:44 pm

At the weekend the Conservative Government proposed that civil servants and other holders of public office should be required to swear an oath to “British values”. I suggested that such a move would be superficial and divisive and here’s why.

This is a reaction to ‘The Casey Review: a review into opportunity and integration’ where she found small pockets of minority communities who were not integrating with the rest of society. These people represent a tiny proportion of the UK population but the report had the effect of further demonising minority communities generally and the Muslim community in particular. Of course, we should do everything we can to encourage people to integrate. We need to provide English language courses for those who find it difficult to communicate and we need to tackle the racism and xenophobia that makes some people feel unsafe in their own communities. Promoting “British values” is not the way forward.

For a start we are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Apart from the far more encouraging tone of a being a United Kingdom, and not excluding Northern Ireland, I personally find Great Britain has echoes of the inglorious past of the British Empire. While this may not be relevant to many young people today, it may be significant for older generations whose origins are in the Indian sub-continent. Some “British values” from colonial times are ones we have thankfully left behind.

The Government has not yet defined “British Values” but they say they include democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. These are not uniquely British and you do not have to delve too far back in our history to discover that some of them were not very British at all.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged british values | 17 Comments